Revelation: Part 50

When anyone anywhere, responds to this knowledge by having a desire to know this God, God will move heaven and earth to get the message to them.

You see, the Bible always follows a thread. On every important truth in the Word of God, it will be introduced in embryonic form in the beginning of the Bible and it will be traced through and then it will be brought to full description as we reach the end. Babylon, the plains of shinar, that is the place where organized false religion first started. So when he says, Babylon, mystery Babylon, it’s talking about the fact that man’s false religion as an organized system started in Babylon on the plains of shinar.

Permeated and carried through all of these Gentile powers. And will reach its worst in our near future. So it says that she is the mother of harlots. Harlots being false religious systems, and of the abominations of the earth.

In other words, the worst kind of sins. It all came out of here. In verse 6, and I saw the woman drunk. Now, up until this time, you know, you can just imagine how John must have felt.

Put yourself in his shoes or in his sandals. Think of the impact on him of what he was seeing. And just imagine that you were there. I mean, this was a dazzling display that he is seeing.

On the outside, it’s absolutely amazing. And, you know, evil, and false religious systems, frankly, can put on a dazzling display. They can be very inviting. They can be very deceptive.

They can really draw you in. But as he’s looking, he sees that this woman is drunk. And with all of her beauty, with all of her dazzling apparel and jewelry, she’s drunk. But when he sees what’s made her drunk, his blood must have run cold.

Because it says the woman is drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered greatly. I looked up very carefully this statement, when I saw her I wondered greatly. Man, is that the most understated translation of what the Greek says that I’ve seen in a long time.

So I looked it up and this is what the best Greek lexicon had to say about it. It says, it’s a word that means to wonder, to marvel, to be dazzled and astonished. And the context determines whether it is in a good sense or a bad sense. In other words, you can be dazzled by something bad.

So the context has to tell you. This is the way the best Greek minds translated it. They said when I saw her, I wondered in great amazement. John just couldn’t -it was hard to process.

It was overwhelming to see this thing. The angel in verse 7 says, the angel said to me, why are you so amazed? Literally, why do you wonder? Why are you so amazed?

I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and ten horns. So, you see, he says I’m gonna tell you what it means. Don’t be amazed, don’t be astonished, I’m gonna tell you what it means. All right.

So in verse, verse 8. The beast that you saw was and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go into destruction. And those who dwell on the earth whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and yet will come. So he says the beast.

That’s the first thing he focuses on. The thing that is astonishing and that is a mystery is that it was, today it is, in John’s day. I should say, it is not right now to us. And yet, it will rise again.

It will be. So this beast is a mystery because it appears to die. It appears to be gone. And then at the appropriate time, it will be raised into life again.

Now, this is true of both the political system and the great leader who will lead it. Both of them are raised from the dead. Political systems are going to suddenly be miraculously raised from the death of history. And the man who runs it will be brought back from the dead from a mortal head wound.

So he introduces that idea there. Now, in verse 9, he begins the interpretation of these. And I call this, I love a mystery. Verse 9.

Here is the mind that has wisdom. Now, when the Scripture uses a statement like that, it’s kind of like Jesus saying, he who has ears to hear, let him hear, and he who has eyes to see, let him see. Because when it says the one who has the mind that has wisdom, it’s talking about a human mind that is being taught by the Holy Spirit. The greatest wisdom comes when the Holy Spirit teaches you from God’s word, and he teaches you the meaning of things.

Okay? So he says, okay, he who has ears to hear and a mind that’s open to the Holy Spirit to teach. In verse 10, and they are also, in the Greek it emphasizes the word, also. And I’m amazed that some translations do not bring out the word also.

And they are also seven kingdoms. So he says not only is the seven heads symbolic of seven mountains, but it’s also symbolic of seven kingdoms. Now, he says, five have fallen. One is, the other has not yet come.

And when it comes, it must remain a little while. All right. Remember what I said that this is talking about the times of the Gentiles and the seven dominant great empires of the times of the Gentiles. And they’re selected particularly because they had an impact and an effect on the nation of Israel.

Now, you look in history and it’s easy to find those seven empires, at least six right now, ’cause the seventh hasn’t come, but it’s easy to find the six. Egypt. Assyria. Babylon.

Media Persia. Greece. Those were the five that had fallen. One is.

What empire followed Greece? Rome. Daniel tells you all about this. The book of Daniel and the book of Revelation are really woven together, interlaced.

Now, it says the other has not yet come. And when it comes, it must remain a little while. Okay. Now, this gets us back to the mystery of this final stage of the beast with the ten horns.

Because it says that there’s a mystery about the final stage of this pageantry of world empires. The seventh kingdom comes -it was, it is not now, and yet it’s going to come. This is the revival of the ancient Roman Empire. And it is revived in the form of ten nations that will become dominant just before the time the Antichrist appears.

And the Antichrist is introduced in how he relates to this next. It says the beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth, and yet is one of the seven. He leads it to destruction literally. Okay.

So what we have here is that it’s saying that this sixth empire was, is not, and yet it’s going to come up again and become a seventh form of it. And yet it will not -it says it must remain for a little while. That means it won’t have great power at first. But then there is another part of this beast that comes up.

And it says, he will be an eighth, yet out of the seven. You see, this beast is the man who is gonna run it. This is the Roman Antichrist. This is the man who’s going to come, he’s going to take over those ten nations, and he’s going to use it as his political platform to gain control of the world.

But more than the political, he’s going to use the great whore to really get control. So, you see, it’s both a political system. That’s what we’re talking about here. And the harlot is the religious system.

He uses both of them to gain control of the people. Now, in verse 12, the ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they receive an authority as kings with the beast for one hour. That is a short time during the Tribulation. These have one purpose and they give their power and authority to the beast.

And that’s the Roman Antichrist. Verse 14. These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them. Because he is Lord of lords and king of kings, and those who are with him are called chosen and faithful.

So we know that this is talking about the fact they’ve waged war with the Lamb, they’re gonna wage war against him and his followers that become believers during this period. And there’s gonna be a wholesale slaughter of believers. And I have seen evidence of that kind of hatred in some parts of the world today. I mean, the slaughter that goes on around the sudan and in that area.

Eritrea, that’s always hard for me to pronounce, that is a place where it’s basically muslims against christians and they’ve wiped out about, oh, probably more like ten million there. So that’s only a small preview of what’s coming. Those who believe during the Tribulation, after we’re gone, they’re gonna have to pay a heavy price to be a believer. Today, being an outspoken christian may get you criticized or ostracized but you’re usually not gonna get your head cut off.

But they will. So why not be one now when it’s not so hard? All right, this is the fifth explanation. And he said to me, the waters -remember, that was a symbol in the first part.

The woman was sitting on many waters, it says. The waters you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. So this is a system. It shows that the religious system is something that would be in power all during the history from back there ’til now.

Did you notice that? It’s the political system that was, is not and shall be. But not the religious system. It says the religious system develops all during this interim from the time he wrote the book of Revelation right up until today.

So it shouldn’t be a big mystery as to what system we’re talking about. But we really have to be careful to make a short distinction between the system and the people who are in it. Because there are a lot of people in the system that by the grace of God have come to know Jesus Christ as personal Savior and are born again. So you can never separate the wheat from the tares.

Jesus said you leave that job to me. But the system is a whore. The system burned at stake thousands and thousands of true believers for the great crime of translating the Scriptures into their own language. Drunk with the blood of the saints.

Many believers were put on racks and tortured during the inquisitions for the crime of not going along with some of the things that were taught. Let’s read on. And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot, and will make her desolate and naked and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire. For God has put it in their hearts to execute his purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God will be fulfilled.

All right. Now, that’s something that I must admit, the first several times I studied the book of Revelation I failed to factor in what that said. The Antichrist himself is gonna destroy this religious system. Now, why?

Because he’s gonna declare himself to be God. See? He doesn’t have any use for this system anymore after he goes into the temple in the middle of the seven-year Tribulation, and he declares himself to be God in the holy of holies of the temple. And that’s when all hell breaks loose, literally.

But he and the ten kings that brought him in are going to have one purpose, and that’s to destroy this system and get it out of the way. Verse 18. And the woman, now you’ve got to go back and catch up, everything has been said in this chapter. The woman is who?

Babylon the great, the mother of all harlots and abominations of the earth. The woman is the whore of Babylon, the religious system. The one who became the recipient of what was tracked through all of these different successive Gentile empires. And the false religious systems just kept getting more refined as they went through.

And now mystery Babylon, the harlot, is this woman. And so remember that when it says, and the woman whom you saw is, present tense, in other words, it’s in John’s day. The woman whom you saw is the great city which, present tense in the Greek again, is reigning over the kings of the earth. There’s only one city that could be.

When John wrote the book of Revelation, the caesars of Rome ruled the known world. It’s Rome. Specifically, a part of Rome that is a religious system. And you can see how that when the political Roman Empire fell apart, in around the fifth century, and ceased to be, the religious Rome empire continued.

And it says the kings of the earth committed fornication with her. The kings were all crowned by the pope. And all kinds of shenanigans were done. You ought to watch on television a series called, “the tudors.”

It’s pretty raunchy, but it does give some pretty good history. But it shows how the cardinals were so involved in the politics and everything else. It’s pretty accurate. Now, I’m not trying to drum up something here, am I?

I’m simply trying to teach the Scripture. I’m not trying to bring anger at anybody or anything else. I love a lot of priests I know, and love and know they’re born again. I remember when I was in the ’70s when I was on the constant speaking circuit with all the books I had out there, malachi martin -we used to -they would always bring us on the same show and we’d sit there in the green room and they’d be trying to pit us against each other and we’d be sitting there laughing and saying, I can’t think -I said, malachi, I can’t see a thing wrong with you.

I’m not gonna argue with you. And he said, I like you, I’m not gonna argue with you. So we’d have a big love fest out there on the set. The guys would be all frustrated because they wanted us to argue.

There’s nothing to argue about, the guy was a believer. What I’m trying to say is, there’s always a difference between a system and the people. You must always keep that. God is the one that will judge the system.

We’re not supposed to. But we should be with a mind that has wisdom, too. Thank God that through all of the deception of Satan, and the times that he tries to blind each one of us in this life, that we’ve come through all of that. We’ve come to be believers in Jesus Christ.

You know the miracle that is? I mean, the Bible talks about the fact that one of the things that the world’s gonna rejoice about is when Jesus takes Satan and binds him. It says he who deceived all the nations has been bound. Well, he’s the deceiver.

His name means it. And with all of the apparatus he has to use, to deceive people and keep us from the truth, that blessed are your ears because you heard it. Blessed is your mind because you received Jesus Christ and received the gift of pardon that he gave his life in our place to purchase for us. And I’m thankful that through prophecy, we have a good outline and guideline of just where history’s going right now.

I mean, I’m so thankful as I look at a lot of world situations today and I see it’s, in many cases, hopeless. I’m glad I know the end of the book. I know where it’s going. I know where I’m going, more importantly.

And I know that there’s only one thing that we really need to be doing, and that’s bringing people to faith in Jesus Christ and helping people to grow in faith. Keep that in perspective when you look at some of these things. But I can surely see things developing to focus toward what the Bible predicts is gonna be the world conditions. I mean, you look at the Middle East right now and what’s happening right now, it’s like Ezekiel 2,600 years ago wrote the script for them to follow, and they’re following it unwittingly right to the letter.

So you see all of these things happening, but you don’t have to be in despair. You don’t have to be afraid. We know this is soon going to come to the point where Jesus is gonna say, come up here! And before he gets to the end of that little phrase you’ll be looking at him face to face.

If you have the guts to be a real revolutionary, come forward right now and accept Jesus Christ as your real revolutionary and he’ll make a revolutionary that will change lives. As I prepared for this week’s program, I was again struck by the speed with which events are moving into the scenario the prophets predicted for the end times. I believe we’re there. People on the street are talking about what all of these things mean.

Folks that wouldn’t darken the door of a Church or pick up a Bible, are now very curious. This may be our greatest opportunity, maybe even our last opportunity, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ before we’re silenced by political correctness. The message that God has given me is more important now than it’s ever been for the Church and for the nation.