Rome and the Jesuits Goal for America

ItIsFinished!

Blood bought child of the King of kings.
Interesting that the 112th Pope who is the first
Jesuit Priest ,set aside Vicar of Christ .
Instead he prefers Bishop of Rome.
Why of course.
Rome never fail.
They just transferred the "power" to religion.
Which they carry abundantly throughout the world to this very day.
Satan's throne is in the Vatican.
They continue to carry the spirit of Nimrod.
What a deceitful bunch of killers.

Great thread @SkyRider .
 

ItIsFinished!

Blood bought child of the King of kings.
Interesting that the 112th Pope who is the first
Jesuit Priest ,set aside Vicar of Christ .
Instead he prefers Bishop of Rome.
Why of course.
Rome never fail.
They just transferred the "power" to religion.
Which they carry abundantly throughout the world to this very day.
Satan's throne is in the Vatican.
They continue to carry the spirit of Nimrod.
What a deceitful bunch of killers.

Great thread @SkyRider .
Suppose to be Rome never fell not fail.
 

Everlasting Life

Through Faith in Jesus
I was going to answer this yesterday, but I wanted to read those scripture verses again. Although, I find, the more I read, the more of an enigma it becomes because of all the cryptic language that is used in the verses. I had heard the same thing about the mountains maybe having a dual application, like not only hills or mountains as to where the woman sits ("And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits" Rev.17-9 - which to me still points to Rome) but also of successive world empires that eventually lead up to Rome. But I am not so sure that the verses do that.

One other verse that I think is pointing to Rome is the last one in Rev. 17: "And the woman which thou saw is that great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth." Rev. 17:18. In John's time, when he was given this vision and scribed the verses, the Roman Empire ruled the world. To me, Rome IS that great city.

One puzzling aspect of the way it is written, is the fact that the beast is described as being scarlet in color:

"So, he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns." Rev. 17-3

I was trying to figure out why the color scarlet? What does that represent? Does it represent the second horseman that rides across the earth when the second seal is broken? But that horseman is identified as being red, instead of the word scarlet. But then it dawned on me this morning that scarlet was the color used by Rome, and especially the Roman legionaries. Their military wore those scarlet-colored tunics and had the red headdress atop their helmets. Roman Catholicism must have adopted that color also for its highest-ranking prelates, the cardinals. Also, this Mystery Babylon woman is identified as riding on the back of the beast system, which could mean, she comes into being as riding upon the back of this Roman Empire beast system that had preceded her. Her popes took over the rule of the Holy Roman Empire when the caesars vanished from the scene.

So, if the scarlet-colored beast refers to Rome - the Roman Empire - what about his verse:

"And there are seven kings: five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space." Rev. 17:10.

Possibly, the five fallen kings or caesars were:

Augustus 27BC-14AD 40 year reign
Tiberius 14-17AD 22 year reign
Caligula 37-41 AD 4 years
Claudius 41-54 14 years
Nero 54-68 13 years

The emperor who reigned at the time of John could have been Vespagian, who reigned from 69 to 79 AD, for 10 years. John may or may not have scribed Revelation during this time frame, but most believe it was somewhere around 70 to 90 AD. The general, Titus, was the one who sacked Jerusalem in 70 AD, and he is next on the list to become the emperor or caesar. He ruled from 79 to 81AD, or only two years, or a very "short space". Is he the one referred to or another future leader of this Roman system? We know another is coming, but it is still interesting that he only reigned a short time, as those verses allude to.

But the verses that are really confusing are the two following:

"The beast that thou saw was and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is." Rev. 17:8

"And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition" Rev. 17:11

Really hard to get a handle on that. Does it refer to ruler who once was, expired, went into the bottomless pit and then will be "miraculously" resurrected? Is this a human figure or demonic entity? I've often wondered why Satan disputed the Lord over the body of Moses after Moses had died, as recorded in one of the scripture verses. Satan doesn't more than likely have the ability to resurrect someone, but can he fake it by having a demonic being enter into it??? Could he do that with a fallen caesar??? He can appear as an angel of light, so maybe he can fake a resurrected leader of the past? I don't know. We are told that Satan will indwell the AC midway thru the Trib, so it must somehow be a reference to that eventuality.

So, all that to say that I don't think Rev. 17 deals with past world empires. I think it is specifically referring to the Roman beast system and the false religious system associated with it, and how it came about. The prophet Daniel even refers to the "prince who shall come" as being associated with the people - Romans - who destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple (Titus).

I still can't see how the literal Babylon would fit any of the references made that indict Rome alone in all of this.

And again, the Rev. 17 narrative talks about the judgment of this woman and the beast system that birthed her, and not some other religious system that will arise post Rapture or in the End Times. The AC and his appearing will be something different but I think the Babylon reference is only an indicator of where this false religious system had her initial roots and has morphed into what we see of Roman Catholicism - it's pagan, idolatrous, blasphemous, anti-Christian, anti-God practices and declarations/anathemas.

Hi SkyRider! I was exhausted yesterday so waited to get a good night's rest to come back to this thread (which is quite a good one). I totally get where you are coming from in this quote and I've had some similar thoughts. After listening to Andy Wood's series on Revelation, he explained the 17 and 18 chapters of Revelation so well and how it streamlines with other passages which has caused me to reconsider my views in some places. I'll post the transcripts of two portions of chapter 17 that he went over to help give perspective on this subject and why I said what I did about the mountains that you might find interesting. There's no doubt that the RCC will play a major role during this time, her colors so to speak (yep, play on words) in regards to 'theology' give her away. His whole series is on their Sugarland Bible Church website and I'll let you peruse that series yourself (I love that they include transcripts!!).

Here's two sequential sermons he did explaining who Babylon is and who the Woman on the Beast is:

https://slbc.org/sermon/revelation-054-the-beautiful-side-of-evil/

Transcript​

Andy Woods
The Beautiful Side of Evil
Revelation 17:1-6a Lesson 54
Happy October to everybody, can you believe that? Wow! Let’s take our Bibles if we could and open them to the Book of Revelation, chapter 17, as time allows it we’re going to try to look at verses 1-6 today as we continue on in our verse by verse teaching through the Book of Revelation. The title of our message this morning is The Beautiful Side of Evil. That title is not a title that’s original with me, it was a book that helped me quite a bit as a young Christian, a book written by Johanna Michaelson, dealing with the occult and the cults and things of that nature. And that title has always sort of captivated me, attracted me, “The Beautiful Side of Evil.”

Evil has an attractive side to it. If it didn’t we wouldn’t be drawn to it. It’s Halloween and every-body is going to be putting their costumes on their kids and all these kinds of things, and some kids are going to dress up like Satan (I don’t know why they would want to do that but they do that) and they walk around with horns and a mask and a pitchfork and a cape. The problem is I can’t find that in the Bible. Satan comes, as we’re going to see this morning, as an angel of light.

We have been continuing through the Book of Revelation, sort of in that section of the book where the bowl judgments have been poured out upon the earth and as that seventh bowl judgment is poured out upon the earth a lot of things are happening, including the destruction of a particular city called the city of Babylon.

And just to sort of prepare us for the sermons that we’re not embarking on concerning Babylon. We did probably about a two week background on Babylon so if you haven’t had a chance to hear those I would encourage you to go back into our sermon archives and watch or listen to them because it’ll give you background on the things that are coming here in the Book of Revelation.

But with that background in mind we’re now ready to move back into it verse by verse teaching of the Book of Revelation today beginning with chapter 17. Chapter 17 is one of the most interesting and at the same time one of the most misinterpreted chapters, I believe, in the entire Bible.
Here is just a two part outline. Number one, we have The Vision that John receives Concerning Babylon, verses 1-6. That’s the part of it that if we’re fortunate we’ll get through today. And then the second part of it is The Interpretation of the vision. It starts at the end of verse 6 and goes all the way to verse 18. It’s interesting to me that God doesn’t just give us data for the sake of data; He gives us an interpretation so we’re not left to our sanctified imagination trying to figure out what these vision, or this particular vision actually means.

So let’s begin there, verses 1-6, and here’s sort of a small outline that we’re going to try to work through this morning. Number one, you will notice Babylon’s introduction. Notice chapter 17 and verse 1. It says, “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters,” It’s interesting how Babylon here is introduced, it’s introduced by one of the angels having the seven bowls. I would understand it this way: the very angel that God dispensed from heaven to pull out the final bowl judgment resulting in the destruction of Babylon now says to John in this vision, as John is seeing these things in the first century on the Island of Patmos, “come here and let me show you some further information about Babylon that you just saw destroyed by Me in bowl number seven. Bowl number seven no doubt destroyed Babylon, chapter 16 and verse 19 says that. “Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath.” The angel that brought this wrath now says to John in the description and in sort of a pause, let me give you more information on Babylon that you just saw destroyed in the vision.

That’s why this chapter, chapter 17:1, is intimately linked to what precedes it. Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters,” This now becomes our fifth and final non-chronological parenthetical insertion into the Book of Revelation. The Book of Revelation is very confusing to people because no one ever takes the time to explain to folks that the chronology of the vision is basically the same, it moves chronologically. But there are pivotal times in the Book where the chronology stops, the chronology pauses to give more information concerning what has just happened. And we’ve just entered into that kind of section.

Babylon has fallen, the seventh bowl judgment has been poured out, but before we get information about the next chronological events, which would be the return of Christ to the earth, we get a pause in the action, chapters 17 and 18, as we get more information about Babylon. The Book of Revelation has done this four times already and this is our final time where the Book of Revelation will do this.

So we move away from her introduction (Babylon) to her judgment. And you see that there at the end of chapter 17, verse 1, saying, “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters.” Now you’ll notice here that Babylon is called a harlot; she is a harlot, that’s what she is symbolized as. Her name, as we will see, verse 5, is “Babylon, the Great,” and when you drop down to verse 18 we will see, we have seen and we will continue to see that Babylon actually is a city. So this harlot is the city of Babylon in the last days that reigns over the kings of the earth.

So it’s very important to keep in mind that every time you see a reference to a woman or a harlot, the woman is mentioned to be understood figuratively because here identity is given there in verse 18, she’s an actual city, a city named Babylon. And you’ll notice her judgment; you’ll notice what it says of her here, that she “sits on many waters.” That imagery should remind you of Jeremiah chapter 51 and verse 13. Jeremiah had a prophecy about the fall of Babylon, he saw the same thing in Jeremiah 51:13, he says of Babylon, “O you who dwell by many waters, abundant in treasures, Your end has come, the measure of your end.”

In fact, just a little bit of Bible trivia, the very last or latest or most recent Psalm in the Psalter, Psalm 137, is your latest Psalm, or most recent Psalm and it was written by the nation of Israel as they went into the Babylonian captivity under Babylon and this is what Psalm 137:1 says” By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion.” That particular generation had seen the destruction of the temple, the destruction of the majesty of the Solomonic temple, everything that they had known had been destroyed, they had been ripped out of their land and taken 70 miles to the east into what today we call modern day Iraq, the city of Babylon, and all they could do is just sit down and weep. They just couldn’t believe what had happened. No other reaction would be appropriate other than just to sob. And sometimes things like that happen in our lives where things happen, the carpet is ripped out from under us or somebody else, or there’s a mistreatment or there’s a health problem.
And really, you know, when God puts us into those situations to minister to people I don’t know if He’s really telling us to give that person an answer. Job’s counselors had all the answers but all they needed to do was really come alongside Job and just weep with him. And that’s what the nation of Israel did, they just started weeping. And you’ll notice the imagery here, they did it “By the waters of Babylon.” Now “the waters” we’re going to find a description of or a definition of in verse 15, the waters that the woman is seated on represent all the nations of the earth that are intoxicated by Babylon’s influence.

And so we know that this harlot is going to be judged because it says it right here, “I will show you the judgment of the great harlot,” we know that she has been judged in the seventh bowl; what we don’t understand yet and where the angel is helping John with the details is exactly how Babylon is going to fall. See, what we have thus far, just some generic statements about Babylon’s destruction but what are the specifics? What are the mechanics? How is it all going to come to pass? And that is the great shock or the great mystery of this chapter. And this is what the angel is explaining to John that it’s actually going to be God who is going to put His purpose to destroy Babylon into the heart of the beast or the Antichrist and that’s what will bring her demise. More on that later as we continue on through the chapter.

But we’ve seen her introduction; we’ve seen her judgment, and notice here, letter C, her immorality. Notice, if you will, verse 2, “with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.” This entity, Babylon, apparently has had a universal effect on the entire world. I personally find it to be a very good description of the Tower of Babel, built there in the land of Shinar, at one time the earth had one language and when God founded that language everybody took a little bit of that harlot Babylonian system into their own culture. That’s why Babylon, as we’re going to see when we get to verse 5, is called “the mother of harlotry.”
But you notice here that the immorality of Babylon and the immorality of the kings of the earth influenced by Babylon is referred to here as drunkenness, immorality, that’s her impact. And when you study the Bible and you study immorality many times false doctrine is analogized to immorality. After all, we are the bride of Christ, are we not? And when we, as God’s people, leave the teachings of Scripture and we embrace other deities or other gods or other teachings God looks at us as having committed an act of immorality.

James 4:4 says, “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” How does God look at me as a member of His bride when I became intoxicated with the things of the world? God looks at me as if I have just committed an act of immorality because I am the representative as part of the bride; He is the groom. And as these nations come under the sway of Babylon they’re portrayed here as being in a state of intoxication, a state of drunkenness. And we know, do we not, all about intoxication and drunkenness; when someone is drunk they’re not using their logical, rational faculties; they’re under the sway of some other substance, some foreign substance. And that’s what false doctrine is analogized to. You know, there are people all over this world that are marching to the tune of false doctrine. false teaching regardless of the source. And the Bible looks at them as actually in an inebriated drunken state, they can’t think straight because they’re under the influence of something.

This concept of being intoxicated by the nations fits exactly with what the prophet Jeremiah predicted concerning Babylon. He says in Jeremiah 51:7, “Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of the Lord, intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are going mad.” The nations are going insane in this inebriated state because they’re not under the influence of God, they’re under the influence of the Babylonian system. And that is why the judgment of Babylon is long overdue. God has let this concept of Babylon go on so long and its intoxicated so many people, not obscure people, the kings of the earth, and now here judgment awaits. And now her judgment has come in the seventh bowl. The mystery is exactly how God is going to pull this off.

We move away from her introduction, her judgment, her immorality and look at the influence of Babylon. Notice, if you will, chapter 17 and verse 3. “He carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness,” I hope if you’re an under liner you underline that word “wilderness.” “and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.” Now many, many people will tell you that the city of Babylon represented here in the east is really not in the east, it’s another circle in the west and it’s Rome. Babylon equals Rome! So the woman is Rome. And then you say to them, “well, who’s the beast?” Well, the beast is Rome. Okay, so Rome destroys Rome, that doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it.

The woman on the beast is not Rome in the west, it’s Babylon in the east. You say well how do you know that? Because it says Babylon, it doesn’t say Rome. It’s interesting that it says come here into the wilderness, he carried me away in the wilderness. Now let me ask you a question? Is Rome in a wilderness? Is Rome in a desert? I mean, I’ve been to Rome, it’s a beautiful city, but there’s no wilderness, there’s no desert there at all. Well, is Babylon in the east in the wilderness? Yes it is. Isaiah 21:9 says this of Babylon: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon.” And Isaiah 21:1 of Babylon says this: “The oracle concerning the wilderness of the sea. As windstorms in the Negev sweep on, It comes from the wilderness, from a terrifying end.” You’ll notice that according to Isaiah 21:9 and verse 1 that “the wilderness” does not describe Rome; the wilder-ness describes Babylon.
My friend, Mark Hitchcock, in his very good book that I recommend to you, called “The Second Coming of Babylon, makes this statement about the wilderness in Revelation 17:3. “And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw” this vision, John sees, “I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.

One of the things I want us to understand is as you go through Revelation chapter 17, this is where most people go astray, they don’t recognize the fact that there’s two images here. This is not a chapter about the beast, it’s not a chapter about the harlotrous woman named Babylon. It’s a chapter about a woman rides the beast. The woman is image one, the beast is image two. Babylon, the city Babylon, is riding on the beast. You say well who is the beast? I’m glad you asked. The woman, or Babylon, is riding on the beast. Who’s the beast? The beast is the anti-christ and his allies. The beast has seven heads and ten horns.

Now, the seven heads later on in the chapter are going to be given a definition or a description. The ten horns later on in the chapter are going to be given a definition and a description. Be patient with the Bible, let the Bible interpret itself. Those interpretations of the heads and the horns are coming; for now it suffices to say that this beast that she is riding upon is the antichrist and his allies; the antichrist and his kingdom. And this issue of supremacy that the woman is asserting over the beast is an explanation as to why the beast is going to turn on her later on in the chapter, chapter 7, verses 16-17. [Revelation 7:16-17, “They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore; nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat; [17] for the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life; and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.”]

I mean, why does God put it in the heart of the beast to destroy Babylon? It has to do with the prideful way in which the woman is riding the beast. Some way, somehow the ancient city of Babylon seems to get an upper hand even over the antichrist himself. And one of the things you have to understand about the antichrist, Daniel 11:36-37, 2 Thessalonians 2:4, is he desires to be worshipped ABOVE all that is called God.
[Daniel 11:36-37, “Then the king will do as he pleases, and he will exalt and magnify himself above every god and will speak monstrous things against the God of gods; and he will prosper until the indignation is finished, for that which is decreed will be done. [37] He will show no regard for the gods of his fathers or for the desire of women, nor will he show regard for any other god; for he will magnify himself above them all. 2 Thessalonians 2:4, “who opposes and exalts himself above [a]every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, displaying himself as being God.”]

This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I have a very difficult time with the Islamic identification of the antichrist. Islam is in ascendancy and people think well, the antichrist must be Muslim. I don’t doubt the fact that Islam has a dominant role to play in the end times. I did write a book on this whole subject called THE MIDDLE EAST MELTDOWN. [THE MIDDLE EAST MELTDOWN: The Coming Islamic Invasion of Israel by Dr. Andy Woods] If you’re interested come talk to me and I can get you a copy of that.

But that’s not to say that the antichrist must be Muslim for the simple reason that how could a Muslim desire to be worshipped above all that is called God? I know of no Muslim anywhere that would put himself above Allah, and yet that’s what this beast wants to do. And he doesn’t want rivals, he doesn’t want competition, and he doesn’t even want it coming from his own city, Babylon itself, that begins to influence the beast.
And we move into verse 4, the appearance of the woman. Now get the beast out of your mind for just a moment, we’re now talking specifically about the woman. We’re going to get a lot more treatment on the beast later but forget the beast for now; we’ll save the beast for last. How’s that? And let’s focus specifically on this woman. And I want you to see her appearance. This is why I’ve entitled this sermon, The Beautiful Side of Evil. Notice how Babylon is portrayed here, as this harlot. The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality.”

The first thing to understand about this woman is she’s seductive, like you would expect with a harlot or a prostitute. Why would someone be enticed by a harlot or a prostitute? Because there’s something in us, our fallen nature, that would attract us to such a person. She knows how to promote and market her wares, so to speak. And consequently prostitution, as you well know, has become the oldest profession and there’s a reason for its popularity. There’s a reason for internet pornography. There’s a reason for online hookups and all of these things that go on, these entities, these women are appealing, they are attractive, they are seductive. And that’s how this woman appears, the beautiful side of evil.
You see, all that glitters is not necessarily gold. There’s an awful lot in the Bible about the foolishness of people that run into the arms of a prostitute. Read the Book of Proverbs some time. It talks about this over and over again. Proverbs 7:18-23 says this, the prostitute is speaking, “Come, let us drink our fill of love until morning; let us delight ourselves with caresses, [17] For my husband is not at home, he has gone away on a long journey; [20] and he has taken a bag of money with him. At the full moon he will come home. [21] With her many persuasions she entices him; with her flattering lips she seduces him. [22] Suddenly he follows her” watch this, “As an ox goes to the slaughter, or as one in fetters to the discipline of a fool, [23] Until an arrow pierces through his liver; as a bird hastens to the snare, so he does not know that it will cost him his life.”
Now isn’t that interesting the way Satan promotes sin? He doesn’t promote it as sin; he promotes it as excitement, allurement, and what he’s not telling us is the long term consequences associated with that sin. A man, according to the Book of Proverbs who follows a prostitute is like one going off to his own slaughter, like an animal about to be slaughtered. [27] Her house is the way to Sheol,
descending to the chambers of death.”

Proverbs 7:6-7 says, “For at the window of my house I looked out through my lattice, [7] And I saw among the naive, and discerned among the youths a young man lacking in sense,” That is the sitting duck for the prostitute, someone that really hasn’t had enough life experience to understand the consequences of sin; someone who looks past the advertisement of sin and sees it simply as something to indulge himself with. What a fool he is, the Bible says. Satan is so incredibly good at getting our minds fixated on the short term pleasures associated with sin that we can almost give no thought whatsoever to the long term consequences. It goes back to the Garden of Eden, “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eye, and the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate.” Genesis 3:6. She completely forgot about the consequences that God articulated in the prior chapter concerning death. This is the beautiful side of evil.
Matthew 23:27 says, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees and hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which on the outside” just like this harlot, “which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness.” Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:14, “No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.”

I’m here to tell you something folks… sin is fun! Sin is enjoyable and you heard it from me and you heard it from this pulpit. But here’s the other part of the equation—the pleasure of sin is very short-lived. The long term consequences hang around a lot longer! Hebrews 11:25, of Moses, it says, “Choosing rather to endure ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.” Yes, there is pleasure in sin but it’s very momentary; it’s very passing. The unwanted pregnancy, the venereal diseases, the guilt, the destroyed relationship, they have a tendency to stick around a lot longer than that one night stand. And this is how Babylon is seducing the nations metaphorically. Her doctrine is so appealing that the nations are under her [can’t understand word]. You’ll notice here that she is adorned in purple and gold. Those are the same colors that we have in chapter 18 verse 16; that’s one of the many reasons why I think chapter 18 and chapter 17 are talking about the same city. Chapter 18 is the more commercial side of the city; chapter 17 is the more religious side of the same city.

Now most of you are Bible readers and commentators will see purple and gold and they’ll go right to Roman Catholicism. Look at the robes of the priests, purple and gold and may I just say to you I wouldn’t look in that direction to figure out what the purple and gold mean; I would study the Book of Daniel. Daniel is the basement, Revelation is the ceiling. And what did the last King of Neo Babylonia do for Daniel, a man named Belteshazzar, when he interpreted, Daniel did, the handwriting on the wall? He was given “a necklace of gold around his neck;” there’s the gold, Daniel 5:7. Any man who reads this inscription and explains its interpretation shall be clothed with purple,” Daniel 5:7, “and a necklace of gold around his neck,” [Daniel 5:7, “The king called aloud to bring in the conjurers, the Chaldeans and the diviners. The king spoke and said to the wise men of Babylon, “Any man who can read this inscription and explain its interpretation to me shall be clothed with purple and have a necklace of gold around his neck, and have authority as third ruler in the kingdom.”]

You’ll see the same thing in Daniel 5:16, Daniel 5:29. [Daniel 5:16, “But I personally have heard about you, that you are able to give interpretations and solve difficult problems. Now if you are able to read the inscription and make its interpretation known to me, you will be clothed with purple and wear a necklace of gold around your neck, and you will have authority as the third ruler in the kingdom.” Daniel 5:29, “ Then Belshazzar gave orders, and they clothed Daniel with purple and put a necklace of gold around his neck, and issued a proclamation concerning him that he now had authority as the third ruler in the kingdom.”]

It’s interesting to me that if we just let the Bible say what it wants to say and we connect the right images together we know exactly who this city is. It’s the identical city that Nebuchadnezzar, at one time, presided over, ancient Babylon in modern day Iraq. Did you notice that this woman is holding a golden cup in her hand? Where does that imagery to back to? It goes back to the Book of Jeremiah, chapter 51 and verse 7; in fact I read this verse a little earlier. Jeremiah, concerning the destruction of Babylon, says, “Babylon has been a golden cup” isn’t that what she’s holding here, “in the hand of the Lord, intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine; therefore the nations are going mad.”
The very cup itself that she’s holding you can find its source in Jeremiah’s prophecy. And you say well wait a minute pastor, didn’t we study the Book of Daniel not too long ago, and you’d be right on that. Didn’t Nebuchadnezzar take the vessels, including cups, with him as he brought the nation of Israel into captivity? And didn’t his descendant, Belshazzar, begin to drink intoxicating beverages out of those very vessels of God from the temple? And isn’t that what brought the handwriting on the wall and the judgment of God in Daniel 5, all precipitated by a cup containing inebriating beverages in Babylon. See how the imagery of Daniel fills in the imagery of the Book of Revelation? Daniel is the basement, the Book of Revelation is the ceiling.

And your average Christian today doesn’t connect these dots; they wander all over the place, all over the Bible trying to make sense out of this. But if you understand that Daniel and Revelation go together and you understand where the golden cup imagery comes from you can see exactly who this woman is, she is the city of Babylon.

So we’ve looked at her introduction, judgment, immorality, influence, appearance, but what about her title? What exactly is on the prostitute’s forehead. Look, if you will, at Revelation 17 and notice, if you will, verse 5, it tells you exactly what’s inscribed on her forehead. “and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” notice, if

Notice what’s on her forehead; it’s “BABYLON THE GREAT.” You say “BABYLON THE GREAT,” I’ve read that somewhere before. And you’re right; it’s in Daniel 4:30, it’s the boast of Nebuchadnezzar when he looked over his empire, Babylon He said in Daniel 4:30 “Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have created by my own hand?” What empire is he talking about? Rome? Rome didn’t exist yet. He’s talking about the ancient city of Babylon.

Now here’s what’s very interesting, as you go through the Bible the name Babylon is used 300 times in the Bible. Guess what it means every single time? It doesn’t mean Rome! It doesn’t mean Jerusalem! It doesn’t mean New York City! It doesn’t mean Washington D. C.! It means Babylon! So since John, at the end of the Bible is summing up why would I all of a sudden, out of the clear blue switch the meaning around, take out my white out and say well, it really doesn’t mean Babylon, I’m going to scratch that out, I’m going to give it the name Rome or some other city.
Is it not true as we have gone through the Book of Revelation that there have been many geographical references to geography. Have we not made the point that all of these places of geography are literal? Every single one of them ! So why would the geographical reference not be understood literally? Now as I mentioned I think in the last sermon on this people say well wait a minute, pastor, it doesn’t say Babylon the Great, it says Mystery Babylon. In their minds they think it means mystical Babylon, symbolic Babylon, metaphorical Babylon, and so they think that gives them a right to change the meaning of the word Babylon.

John Walvoord, one of the greats of the great, says this in his interpretation of chapter 17 verse 5. He says, “The city here according to verse 5 is a mystery, not a literal city.” I’ve given you this quote by S. S. Bruce, and he says, “This title was written on her forehead: Mystery: ‘mystery’ indicates that the name she bears … is not to be understood literally, but allegorically:” watch this now, this guy could be on the United States Supreme Court he’s so skilled at changing the meaning of words. “Babylon the Great is read, but ‘Rome’ is meant. Cf. verses 9, 19).” Babylon the Great is read but Rome is meant. Get the whiteout, cross it out, every time you see the word “Babylon” I want you to rewrite in there the word Rome; that’s how he is believing. In fact, this is the mindset of most scholars concerning this city, Babylon. And they think they can do this because it doesn’t just say “Babylon the Great,” it says “Mystery Babylon the Great.”

And here’s the confusion; you’ll notice that in the KJV, (I think last time I said KGB and people thought I was talking about Russia) you’ll notice that in the KJB and the NIV the word “MYSTERY” is in capital letters. Do you see that? In fact, if you’re following along with me this morning, or this afternoon now, in your NIV study Bible you might be NIV positive for all I know, and you’re reading along, you’re going to say look, it says “Mystery Babylon,” Mystery is capitalized. And after all, we’ve got the King James only movement and they think the King James Version was the version the Apostle Paul used so they think it was divinely inspired, not understanding that it’s a good translation but it’s a human translation. Like any translation it can have errors in it. But they’ll say it says Mystery Babylon. Now look at the bottom of the screen.
Look at the NASB, “… and upon her forehead a name was written, a mystery ‘BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIOSN OF THE EARTH.” See how “mystery is not in capital letters? I mean, there’s obviously no basis for clarity in this, in the body of Christ, if our Bible translations are all saying different things. One group says it means mystical, mystery Babylon. Walvoord and Bruce. Another group, like myself, says no, it doesn’t say mystery Babylon, it says “BABYLON THE GREAT” who happens to be a mystery. That view argues for literal Babylon. So who’s right here? I mean is the KJB or the NIV right, or is the NASB right? So come on pastor, you get paid the big bucks, you tell us what’s going on here. [Laughter]

I believe that in this particular case the NASB is correct. Why is that? Because the title of the city is given five other times in these chapters. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 16:19, Revelation 17:5, Revelation 18:2, Revelation 18:10 and Revelation 18:21 and every other time this city is referred to in these chapters and in the Book of Revelation she is never called MYSTERY BABYLON. She’s always called BABYLON THE GREAT.
.Well then, what does the word “Mystery” mean? Why is it even included. What is a mystery? A mystery is a new truth. A mystery is something veiled now unveiled. That’s how Paul uses the word mystery in his writings like in Colossians 1:26, that is the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations but now has been manifested so his saints. What is the mystery here? Here’s the mystery—you have in the Bible two strands of prophetic truth developing; they’re developing from Genesis to Revelation. You have the coming forth of the Antichrist in his one-world system, a ten nation confederacy, but then you have other passages, like Isaiah 13 and 14, Jeremiah 50 and 51, Zechariah 5, 5-11, which all tell that Babylon is destined to play some sort of prophetic role in the end times.

So you’ve got two trains on the same train track that are about ready to collide with each other. How does this tension get resolved? The answer is chapter 17, the woman rides the beast. The woman, or Babylon, gets supremacy in some sense over the beast, the beast and his allies aren’t going to like that and they are going to turn violently on Babylon and burn her flesh with fire because God has put it in the hearts of the beast and his allies to do this and that’s how Babylon is destroyed. That’s the mystery.

What are we told prior to this? Babylon will fall in the seventh bowl judgment. We’re not told how! How it falls is the mystery; it’s a new truth. It’s never before been unveiled. We’ve got two images here, a woman rides the beast; two strands of prophetic thought in direct conflict with each other and how the whole thing comes to an end is described in chapter 17. If you didn’t have chapter 17 in your Bible you would have no way of understanding how these two prophetic strands of thought are resolved. That’s why John, when he sees this, verse 6, is astonished. He wonders greatly when he sees this because he says to himself aha, this is how the whole conflict is resolved. More on that later. Arthur Pink who I think has it completely correct on this, and I don’t agree with everything Arthur Pink says, but on this he’s dead right. He says, ‘We believe that the English translators have misled many people by printing (on their own authority) the word ‘mystery’ in large capital letters,” that’s why we’re all confused on this, we’ve got Bible verses saying different things, “thus making it appear that this is a part of the woman’s name. This we are assured is a mistake.”

The King James Version has got a lot of great translation in it but not here; it’s misled many, many people here. That mystery is connected with the woman herself and not with her name which is clear from verse 7 where the angel says unto John, verse 7 which we haven’t gotten to yet, “I will tell you the mystery of the woman and” AND of the beast that carries her, [which has the seven heads and the ten horns.”] That’s the mystery, the mystery is my goodness, Babylon seems to be getting the upper hands on the antichrist, how are these two strands of prophetic thought going to be resolved? The mystery is not just the woman, the mystery is the woman riding the beast and how this tension gets fixed. That’s the mystery. That’s the new truth. And that is why there is so much misunderstanding on this.

You’ll notice that she is not just called “BABYLON THE GREAT,” watch this now, she is called “THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” Now, “MOTHER” is your source; she is this woman, the city of Babylon, the source of all harlotry that has ever come in terms of false doctrine, on planet earth. It’s a lot like saying in John 8:44, it’s a superlative, where Jesus in John 8:44 calls Satan “the” definite article, “father of all lies.” [John 8:44, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”]

Satan is not just a liar, he’s the ultimate liar; he’s the zenith liar, he is the quintessential liar. And that is what is being said here of this woman. She is not just exporting harlotry upon the earth, she’s the source of all of it, all of it comes back to her! All of it is sourced in her. Now question? What city would qualify for that? Would Rome qualify? NO! Rome came into existence long after harlotry was exported everywhere. Rome if anything is a daughter harlot, she’s not the mother harlot. Would Jerusalem qualify? No, Jerusalem came into existence long after this harlotry was spread all over Europe. Jerusalem is not the mother of all harlotry; she absorbed it tragically and she became a daughter.
Folks, there’s only one city that could ever qualify as being THE mother of all harlotry and that’s the city of Babylon for the very simple reason that at Babylon, at the Tower of Babel, in the land of Shinar, there was only one language. So the sin that was taking place there, that we have defined as The Mother Child System, which we got into in previous sermons, was taken from there and it went into the whole world. That’s how you look at the Tower of Babel. It had a global effect, just like taking a rock and tossing a rock into a placid pond and the wake reverberates outward in all directions. That’s what happened at the Tower of Babel, because when God changed the language to languages everybody took a little bit of that system with them into their own culture and ethnicity. And that’s why you could find The Mother Child System scattered all over the world.
When it says here she is “the mother of all harlots” there is only one nation or one city I should say that would qualify, the city of Babylon. Clarence Larking says this: The Tower of Babel was the origin of the nations but the nations weren’t scattered abroad over the earth until Satan had implanted in them the virus of a doctrine that has been the source of every false religion the world has ever known.”

Let’s finish here with her persecution. Verse 6, watch this now: “And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus.” Notice here that the woman is “drunk with the blood of the saints” and not with the church. Did you notice that? The Book of Revelation uses the word “church” nineteen times in chapters and then when John has the futuristic vision the church, or the name ekklesia disappears. It’s not the church that’s being persecuted here, it’s the saints.
Why would that transition be made? Because the church, via the pre-tribulation rapture of the church, is in heaven while all of these things are happening. We’ve talked in depth about that. Folks, I’m not promising an easy life as a Christian; I’m not saying everything in your life is going to go your way and work out. I’m not saying your life won’t be filled with problems and difficulties and setbacks and even persecution itself. But I’ll tell you something, you are totally exempt as a blood bought saint from the wrath of God. And that’s what these judgments represent because they are precipitated by the Lamb in heaven opening the seven sealed scroll.

You’ll notice this woman is drunk with the blood of the saints. Now isn’t that interesting because back in verse 2 she was making everyone else drunk. Well, the reason she was making everyone else drunk is she was drunk herself. 2 Timothy 3:13 says, “But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” Why are people out there deceiving others? Because they’re deceived themselves. Why is this woman causing everyone to fall into an inebriated state? Because she’s inebriated herself. She’s under the influence of false doctrine herself and as the saying goes, “hurt people hurt people.” “Deceived people deceive people.”

So drunkenness, she causes but she, according to verse 6, is in a state of drunkenness herself and it’s describing here the slaughter… the slaughter of Christians or believers living on the earth at the time. Now that again should que up in your mind Babylon, because that’s how Babylon is described in Jeremiah’s prophecies. Jeremiah chapter 51 and verse 49, Jeremiah says, “Babylon must fall because of Israel’s slain, just as the slain in all the earth have fallen because of Babylon.” This shouldn’t be any real guesswork on our part if you know Jeremiah’s prophecies. She’s a persecutor, that’s how Jeremiah, in the Old Testament describes her.

It’s also interesting that over in Revelation 18:24, the same city, this is brought out again. It says, “And in her was found the blood” that’s what she’s drunk with, the blood of the saints. “And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on the earth.” She is a persecutor. Is it not a little interesting that if I’m right on this and this city is going to be built in modern day Iraq, a Muslim country, a Muslim influenced city, it starts to make sense why this particular city is drunk with the blood of the saints.

Is it not true that wherever Islam goes it persecutes God’s people. That’s even happening today, is it not! I mean, on the eve of the rapture, it’s almost like we’re living back in medieval times where we’re seeing modern day crucifixions in those parts of the world. We’re seeing Christians lit on fire and put into cages. We’re seeing Christians put into cages and lowered into bodies of water whereby they’re drowning. I mean, this is what’s happening on the news; this is what’s happening all around us. And it makes completely logical sense to me that if this city arises in an Islamic controlled country that this description of the woman being drunk with the blood of the saints would make sense. I just kind of submit that to you for your consideration.

So what does John do? He wonders, he doesn’t just wonder, he wonders greatly what all of this means. And we will see next week where the angel says don’t wonder any more, I’m going to tell you exactly what all of this means and we’re going to see next Lord’s day that the Bible is its own interpreter.

And so a lot of information is enough for a Sunday morning; a lot of you are saying as visitors what kind of church is this? [Laughter]. Where is the three points and a poem? Well, as we like to say here at Sugar Land Bible Church our middle name is “Bible,” and you’re students of the Bible, we let the Bible speak where it wants to speak. And not only are we students of the Bible but we are proclaimers of the gospel. The gospel we know from the Bible; the gospel means good news. We talked about blood this morning in communion and also in our passage, but the blood of Jesus Christ is so essential because it washes away all sin. The blood has already been shed. The sin debt of the world has been taken care of and consequently the whole world today is savable. Every single human being, man, woman, child, on planet earth as I speak is savable but not saved until they receive what Jesus has done.

That’s the only condition. You can’t work your way unto God, but you have to receive the gift He’s given you, a gift is of no value to you if it’s un-received. But how do you receive a gift from God. It’s always by faith, for the Bible says, “without faith it is” what? “impossible to please God.” Faith means trust, it means reliance on, it means dependency in, you’re not believing that, you’re believing in something. You’re believing in something greater than yourself to reconcile you back to God. And that’s the only way to be reconciled back to God, by believing in the One whom He has sent. So our invitation, and it’s not something you have to raise a hand to do, walk an aisle to do, join a church to do, give money to do, it’s a matter of privacy between you and the Lord where the Lord places you under conviction, and we know that the Spirit does that, John 16:7-11 says that. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness and judgment. And so no doubt people within the sound of my voice are under that conviction, because that’s what the Holy Spirit does. And our exhortation to you is to respond to that convicting ministry by trusting in Christ and Christ alone. It’s something you can do right now even as I’m speaking, within the quietness of your own thoughts and heart and mind. It’s a matter of privacy between you and the Lord, where you trust in His provision for your salvation and the safe keeping of your soul. We exhort you to do that. And if it’s something that you need more explanation on I’m available after the service to talk. Shall we pray.

Father, we’re grateful for this chapter and the things that it reveals to us about the future but even more important than that we’re grateful for the fact that we are secure in You and our future is secure, not because of ourselves but because of what You’ve done for us. We’ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus name, and God’s people said…. Amen!
 

Everlasting Life

Through Faith in Jesus
https://slbc.org/sermon/revelation-055-clash-of-the-titans-part-1/


Transcript​

Andy Woods
The Clash of the Titans (Part 1)
Revelation 17:6b-12 Lesson 55
Good morning everybody. Let’s take our Bibles and open them to the Book of Revelation, chapter 17 and verse 6. The title of our message this morning is The Clash of the Titans. I couldn’t think of a better title than that when you look at the chapter that we’re in. Which is probably one of the most difficult chapters in the Book of Revelation, if not the whole Bible, to understand. So that’s what kind of message we’re going to have today, it’s sort of a thinking cap type message. I mean, all the messages are that way really but this one is REALLY that way!
We’ve been moving through the Book of Revelation and we have seen the chronological approach to the judgments that are coming upon the earth, one of which is bowl number seven, on the far right there, just before the return of Christ. We’ve studied that along with the other bowls. And part of that judgment involved the destruction of a city called Babylon. In chapter 16, verse 19 we read these word: “Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath.” And what happens after you move out of that particular judgment, as you go to the next chapter, chapter 17, verse 1, which say this: “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke to me, saying ‘Come here and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters.’”


So chapter 17 logically flows out of that seventh bowl judgment involving the destruction of Babylon because now what we get in chapters 17 and 18 and even a little bit into chapter 19 is a lot more information on Babylon. Who is Babylon? How is she going to fall? We know that she’s going to fall, that’s very clear from the prior chapter, but what are the details. How is this fall actually going to take place? And that’s what you have in chapter 17, it’s something concerning the fall of Babylon that has never been disclosed anywhere in the Bible thus far; it’s what we would call a mystery or a new truth.


The Book of Revelation does this; there are the chronology is pretty straight forward, believe it or not, but there are about five times in the book when the chronology stops to give us more information on something that’s just happened in the chronology. This has happened four times already in the Book of Revelation, as we have studied, and now we’re into that fifth and final insertion into the chronology, chapter17, verse 1 to chapter 19 verse 16, information that is revealed before Jesus comes back at the end of the seven year tribulation period, specifically focusing on that seventh bowl judgment, specifically referring to the fall or the destruction of Babylon.
Chapter 17 we started last week, we have a vision concerning Babylon, verses 1-6. And then in the second part of verse 6 all the way through the end of the chapter, which I don’t think we’ll get to today, we have the interpretation concerning Babylon. You might remember what we saw in verses 1-6; we saw a woman named Babylon riding the beast. We learned about Babylon’s introduction, judgment, immorality, influence, appearance, title, the persecution that she will bring to God’s people in the last days. And now what follows is an interpretation of that woman riding the beast. Who was the beast? Who was the woman? How did they interact with each other? How does the interaction that they have with each other lead to Babylon’s destruction? That’s the contents of chapter 17.


So as we move into the interpretation of what we saw last week in verses 1-6, we have three things here in that section. Number one, an interpretation is promised to John by an angel. Number two, our letter B, we have a description of the beast and his system, verses 8-14. And then finally we have a description of Babylon or the woman riding the beast and how she falls in verses 15-18. I don’t think a person can really understand the direction that this world is moving in unless they understand this chapter. You know, a lot of people, they look at the headlines and they’re just sort of bewildered, they don’t understand why things are happening, why things are taking place in our country the way that they are. And how different it is when you sort of know how the game is going to end and consequently you can see the headlines through the very things that God said would happen in the end times.


I remember rooting very, very aggressively for one of my athletics teams and I remember going to the game and being on the edge of my seat the whole game, because I really didn’t know who was going to win but my team pulled it out. And I remember going back to my home, I remember watching the exact same game that was recorded earlier and so I knew exactly how things were going to end. And it’s amazing how much calmer I was watching the replay.


So many Christians today are so distracted and so distressed and they’re upset about this person, they’re upset about that person, upset about this cable TV show or that politician over there, of this politician or that guy said this, you know, it goes on and on. Christians are all uptight over this. And yet we know how everything is going to end; we know exactly how it’s going to end. And so we ought to have more of a mindset where we’re watching this as a tape rerun or tape delay rather than someone that’s sitting on the edge of their seats all of the time with sweaty palms. Panic palace really has no place I the life of the Christian because we know the end from the beginning.


So notice if you will verses 6-7 where we have an interpretation is promised to John of this woman riding the beast. Take a look if you could at verse 6, about halfway through the verse. He says, “when I saw her” the woman on the beast, “I wondered greatly.” [Revelation 17:6] So this interaction between the woman named Babylon and the beast is something that perplexes John. He knows that Babylon, the city of Babylon, is going to be destroyed and it’s going to fall; what he doesn’t know is how it’s going to happen. And what does this woman riding the beast have anything to do with the destruction of Babylon?


And so he is perplexed and an angel who has been with John this entire time, giving him this Revelation, says something very interesting there in verse 7. “The angel said to him, ‘Why do you wonder?’” That’s a pretty good question, I mean, why does this bother you when you know that God has everything under control. That’s a good question we ought to ask. “The angel said to him, ‘Why do you wonder, I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her which has seven heads and ten horns.” I will reveal to you this mystery


Now you’ll notice in verse 7 what the mystery is. The mystery is not the woman. The mystery is not the beast. The mystery is the woman riding the beast. We’ve already seen in chapter 17 verse 3 that this woman is sitting on a scarlet beast; the beast has seven heads and ten horns. And as I said before that’s exactly what it looks like, because I found that on Google images and Google images wouldn’t be wrong, would it? That’s a pretty careful artist rendition of what it could have looked like, what it probably looked like, and this is what John saw in this vision.
And you’ll notice, it’s very interesting that the mystery is not just the woman named Babylon, and it’s not just the beast, it’s the woman rides the beast. It’s the clash of the titans, as I like to call it, because as you move through God’s Word what you see developing are two parallel prophetic strands of thought. We know that there is an antichrist coming, Daniel 2, Daniel 7, most likely out of the ancient Roman Empire, and those prophecies have been given to us and they’re very clear but at the same time you have another independent stream of prophetic thought; you have a prediction in Isaiah 13 and 14 and Jeremiah 50 and 51 and Zechariah 5:5-11. We’ve looked at all of those verses, of something different that’s described, a restoration of the literal city of Babylon on the Euphrates River.


So this is part of the confusion, people will gravitate towards one stream or prophetic thought or another and they’ll say well is the antichrist coming from a Revived Rome or is he coming from the revived city of Babylon. And people that believe he’s coming from the revived city of Babylon cancel out all of the Rome passages, and people that believe that he’s coming from a revived Rome cancel out all the Babylon passages, when in reality it’s not either/or it’s both/and. Both streams of prophetic thought are a reality and they are coming. But how is it that these two independent streams of prophetic though reach a resolution? That’s the mystery. That’s what Rev 17 is about. How could it be both? Revelation 17 is an answer to that.


Arthur Pink writes, “That mystery is connected with the woman herself and not with her name as is clear from verse 7, the verse we just read, “the angel says unto John, ‘I will tell you the mystery of the Woman, and of the beast which carries her.” [Pink, The Antichrist, pg. 262] The mystery is not just about the woman. The mystery is not just about the beast, it’s about both of them and how these two strands of independent prophetic thought reaps their resolution and how God uses this resolution to fulfill His Word of Babylon’s destruction. We know from the end of chapter 16, with the seventh bowl, that Babylon will be destroyed. How is she destroyed relates to woman’s interaction with the beast and that’s the mystery.
You’ll notice as we move into verse 7 is an interpretation is promised that the Bible is a self-interpreting book. So many people come to sections of Scripture like this and they just let their sanctified imagination run rampant and run wild; all of them are on You Tube saying some of the craziest things I’ve ever heard about anything let alone the Bible. And they’re coming up with very strange interpretations of this and strange interpretations of that and that’s not a practice that we follow here at Sugarland Bible Church. We are patient with the Bible because if you give the Bible enough time either in the immediate context or sometimes somewhere else in the Bible, the Bible will interpret itself.


So we have a vision of a woman riding the beast, verses 1-6a and now we move, 6b to the end of the chapter where we are given an interpretation of that vision. John Walvoord, a great scholar and commentator on the Book of Revelation tells us that the Book of Revelation will do this 26 times; there are 26 times in the book where the book will interpret itself. So let’s be patient with the Bible and let’s let God say what He wants to say.
So we move into the interpretation where the focus now, verses 8 -14, which is likely as far as we’ll get today, is not on the woman riding the beast, the city of Babylon, but it’s about the beast himself and his system. We have a description of the beast, or the coming antichrist, verse 8. On the beast are seven heads and we have a description of what those seven heads mean in verse 9-11, seven heads, and that’s one heck of a dream, isn’t it? A beast with seven heads! What do those seven heads mean? And then if that weren’t difficult enough the beast also has ten horns. Verses 12-14 is a description of those ten horns. What you’re getting is a composite description of the coming antichrist.


So take the woman and put her out of your mind as we move now into verses 8-14; we’re not talking about the woman named Babylon riding the beast. We’re getting into a description of the beast himself. Notice first of all verse 8, the beast.


Verse 8, “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to 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 will come.” You’ll notice first of all that this beast comes out of a place called “the abyss.” Now this is a little bit tricky because based on how we’ve taught that word “abyss” used elsewhere in the Book of Revelation it’s sort of like a place of incarceration. It’s where the angels that sinned in Noah’s day are incarcerated, Revelation 9:1-2, that are released to torture mankind in the fifth trumpet judgment. [Revelation 9:1-2, “Then the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven which had fallen to the earth; and the key of the bottomless pit was given to him. [2] He opened the bottomless pit, and smoke went up out of the pit, like the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke of the pit.”


The abyss also is the place where Satan himself is going to be confined in solitary confinement, you might look at it that way, in Revelation 20 verse 1 and verse 3. [Revelation 20:1, 3, “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.” [3] “and he threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he would not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed; after these things he must be released for a short time.”] It’s sort of a temporary holding tank, if you will, for fallen angels. But I don’t think that’s how John is using the word “abyss” here when he describes the beast coming out of the abyss. It’s the same word but it has a different meaning. Over in Romans 10:7 the abyss is a reference to death. [The beast comes back from death. Romans 10:7 uses the word “abyss,” same word here, in that same way. Paul says in Romans, “Who will descend into the abyss?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).”
Something has taken place and manifested itself in history in verse 8, life from the dead. Now over in Revelation 13:3 it speaks of the beast coming back from the dead. And it says this, “One of the heads of the beast seemed to have had a fatal wound but the fatal wound had been healed. And the whole world was filled with wonder and followed the beast.” Now you’ll notice that the injury that happened to the beast is not to the beast’s head, it’s to “one of the heads of the beast.” And when we were studying that section of Scripture we made the point, and we’re going to continue to make the point, that one of those heads is a representation of a kingdom. And we’ll see a reference to that concerning the seven heads, or seven mountains, down in verses 9 and 10.


And you might recall that when we were in Revelation 13 we were talking about the fact that one of the things that makes the antichrist so appealing to people is he brings back an empire from the dead. He will bring back Rome, we’ll talk about this in just a little bit, from the dead. You know, it’s interesting how many people in world history have sort of prided themselves as dictators, as being the person that brings Rome back to life, ancient Rome. The very empire that crucified Christ bringing that back; many in history have tried and if we’re understanding this correctly and interpreting this correctly the antichrist is the man who will do that. That’s the reference to the ten toes in Daniel 2, the ferocious beast with the ten horns in Daniel 7. It’s sort of an empire arising out of the remains or the ashes or the cultural inheritance of ancient Rome. And when the world sees that life from the dead they’re going to be astonished. When they see a political resurrection and a political miracle of this magnitude they will be astonished and they will follow after the beast.
So is it a political miracle? Yes, but there’s more to it than that. You might recall that when we read Revelation 13:14 sometime back we read these words. “He deceived those who dwell on the earth because of the signs which it was given to him to perform in the presence of the beast telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast” watch this, focusing now on the beast or the coming antichrist, “who had the wound of the sword and has come back to life.” Is there going to be a political awakening? A political revival of ancient Rome? Yes there is. But when you look at this passage here, Revelation 13:14, there’s more to it than that. The antichrist himself will be killed and will die. And he himself will be brought back to life.


Now many, many people will reject this interpretation because they say well, only God can bring back life from death; this can’t be an actual literal resurrection. And it’s very interesting that when you look at that verb “has come to life,” [ ζωή zóé] I’ve got it there in brackets, it’s the identical word used to describe Christ’s resurrection in Revelation 2:8. “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write: The first and the last,” referring to Jesus, “who was dead, and has come to life.” That’s zóé. Now is Christ’s Resurrection literal? Of course it is. So why would the identical verb in Revelation 13:14, relative to the coming beast or the coming antichrist, be interpreted differently?


By the way, did you know you need a resurrection body, anybody drink a lot of coffee this morning to get themselves energized enough to come to church? That’s evidence that you need a resurrection body. It says this concerning the future resurrection body: “They came to life,” that’s all, “and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.” The rest of the dead did not come to life,” that’s ζωή [zóé] again, “did not come to life again until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. Now everybody takes the future resurrection body of the believer literally, zóé, just like they take the resurrection of Jesus literally, so why would the identical verb in Revelation 13:14 be interpreted differently? I’m of the persuasion that the antichrist’s resurrection, people say is it going to be political or is it going to be individual? The answer is yes, it will be both.
Not only is he going to be looked at as the person that brought ancient Rome back to live but somehow in the outworking of Satan’s purposes he will be killed, assassinated, we’re not told how, suffer a wound of fatality to the point of death, and he will come back from the dead just as literally as Jesus Christ Himself came back from the dead. You say well now you’re going to far because if Satan can imitate Christ’s bodily resurrection then how do we know that Christ’s bodily resurrection itself was not satanic? That’s what people say.


The answer to that is right now as I speak there are literally hand cuffs on Satan, he can do an awful lot but he can’t do everything because there is something in the earth called the restrainer. It says there in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7, that the lawless one, or the antichrist can’t just show up because there’s the restraint on him that says “And now you know” Paul says what restrains him now, so that in his time he will be revealed. [7] For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way.”
There is a restrainer on the earth. You say well who’s the restrainer? For a lot of reasons I believe the restrainer is the Holy Spirit, primarily at work through the church. So our little church, Sugarland Bible Church, right now as I speak is holding back the antichrist, because of our mere presence in the world. The Holy Spirit is in us for how long? Forever, and one of these days that restraint will be taken away. How’s it going to be taken away? Through the rapture or the translation of the church. And once that happens the handcuffs come off Satan and he’s able to do what he’s always wanted to do, bring back someone even from the dead.


Satan clearly does not have as much power as God but he has an awful lot of power. And in this time period with the restraint gone and the handcuffs removed he pulls off [A] a political miracle. You know Adolf Hitler was worshipped because he brought back Germany after World War I, moving into the World War II era, he brought back Germany from the brink of economic disaster, the brink of political disaster. And people will worship the Furor because of his ability to do this. Think if someone was able to do this on a global scale and also think if that was coupled by the fact that he had received an actual physical wound that killed him and he physically rose from the dead as well.


You think of a guy like John F. Kennedy, we’ve seen the tapes over and over again as Kennedy assassination and that horrific event that happened there in Dallas. I’ve gone to the museum there that they have set up there to sort of educate and commemorate that entire event. I mean, what if a guy like John F. Kennedy, a young charismatic talented individual had been killed and then all of a sudden he came back from the dead? I would bet you would say such a person would never lose another election ever, coupled with the political miracle of a restoration of ancient Rome, and this is who this beast is. This is who this beast represents. But at the same time don’t put the beast on too high a pedestal because the Bible is very clear that what goes up must come down. You’ll see in verse 8, it’s very clear, it says, “And he goes to his destruction.” [Revelation 17:11, “The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction. NASB]
Evil is going to have its heyday; evil is going to get its way for a season. Evil is going to have a ascendancy but it’s not forever. He too goes to his destruction. Daniel 7:11 says “…the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire.” [Daniel 7:11, “Then I kept looking because of the sound of the boastful words which the horn was speaking; I kept looking until the beast was slain, and its body was destroyed and given to the burning fire.”]


2 Thessalonians 2:8 of the antichrist says, “Whom the LORD Jesus will overthrow with the breathe of His mouth and by the splendor of His coming.”
Revelation 19:20 says the two of them were thrown into the Lake of Fire” the beast and the false prophet, of burning Sulphur.” [Revelation 19:20, “And the beast was seized, and with him the false prophet who performed the signs [ a ] in his presence, by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshiped his image; these two were thrown alive into the lake of fire which burns with [ b ] brimstone.”]


It’s always interesting to me that the Bible is so balanced, revealing the ascendency of evil but at the same time reminding us who exactly is in control. God is in control! Evil gets its heyday but it doesn’t last long. In fact, in our very passage this morning, as hopefully we’ll get to it, his empire of ten contemporaneous kings gets its day in the sun for about an hour. I don’t know if the hour there is a literal sixty minutes but it’s a brief age of time in comparison to the sands of eternity where evil gets its way.


You know, you read through the Psalms, you read through people of God so distressed about the progress of evil and as we watch the news or read the newspapers we can become very distressed about it too. How is it that evil always seems to get the upper hand. They seem to be getting away with everything. And then the Psalmist is reminded of what it’s like against the sands of eternity. How brief evil gets its control or heyday; it’s just but a nanosecond, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to an eternal God.


And so consequently we as Christians with the eternal perspective can walk through this life with its great progress of evil and yet at the same time not lose hope because we are analogizing those things through the lens of God’s eternal Word. I pity the person who seeks to understand these events without the Scripture. How easy it would be to become to come depressed and discouraged and despondent. And if you look there at the end of verse 8 it describes the reaction of the world to this political and individual miracles. It says, “And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life” these would be unbelievers, the only people that have their name in the book of life are bels, Revelation 20:15. I hope your name is there. My name is there because Jesus promised it to me when I trusted in Him, He would write my name in the Book of Life. That’s probably the most important book you could ever have your name in. It says those “whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, who was and is not and will come.”
I hope by this time in the Book of Revelation you’re seeing the fact that all these things Satan is doing once the handcuffs are off is simply an imitation of what Christ already did two thousand years ago. There’s eleven similarities between the program of Satan and the program of God. And I must have been up really late one night because I made a second chart of eleven or ten more similarities between the program of Satan and the program of God. But the reason this looks so real to people when these events happen is because it looks so spiritual. It looks so accurate in terms of the things that happened in the Bible and yet a careful observer will note that these things are but a mere imitation of what God has done.
You know folks, I just want to warn you about something, we are entering a period in history, I believe at the end of the church age and then following the rapture the church it will accelerate where the program of Satan is going to look so real and so spiritual, because he comes as an angel of light, that people are going to think it’s the real thing. People are going to think it’s the real McCoy! And only the person that is steeped in God’s Word from Genesis through Revelation will be able to see the difference. Unbelievers whose names have not been written in the Book of Life are sitting ducks for this. And so are Christians who have not spent the time reading and studying and learning the Word of God. They don’t have a barometer for distinguishing truth from error.


And so there are a lot of things that look spiritual that really have nothing to do with God. The spiritual talk today folks is in! I mean, Oprah Winfrey talks about God, right? And yet she is a leader of what we would call today, I would call it the New Age Movement, she’s probably one of the most influential spiritual leaders on planet earth today… Oprah Winfrey! She is promoting a theology, there’s a lot more going on in her teaching that simply weight loss tips and cooking tips and things like that. She is promoting something. And your average person, millions if not billions of people watching her on a day by day basis, they have no understanding for what’s happening.


And this is how Satan operates; he gets his program as close as it can get to God’s program without it actually being God’s program, but it looks like God’s program. And after all, it makes me feel good, it makes me feel spiritual, it gives me the liver quiver of the day; they even let me use the G word, God, every once in a while. They don’t say a lot about Jesus, you notice that? They talk an awful lot about God, the G word and people think it’s right. And this is the type of thing that we’re seeing here in Revelation 17:8.


Now we move away from the beast and now we get a description of these seven heads, what are those about, on this beast. And notice, if you will, verse 9, “Here is the mind with has wisdom, the seven heads are seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.” We’ll go ahead and do verse 10, “And they are seven kings, five have fallen, one is and the other is yet to come and when he comes he must remain a short while.”
You’ll notice the woman is riding the beast; we’re not focused here on the woman, we’re focused on the beast because it’s the beast that has seven heads. Now as we continue on we learn that this beast having seven heads, watch this now, verse 9, “are seven mountains.” The “seven mountains” as we learn, are seven kings. The seven kings, as we’re going to learn, is another way of saying kingdoms. So it goes heads, interpreted as mountains, interpreted as kings, interpreted as kingdoms, and these entities are not on the woman riding the beast. It’s very important to understand that. They’re on the beast that the woman is riding.


And gosh, I’m afraid to figure out how many people believe this, when people see that they think that’s the seven hills of Rome. Does it say seven hills there? My Bible doesn’t say that, it says “seven mountains.” The Greek word there is oros, there’s a completely different Greek word to describe hills. It doesn’t say seven hills, it says seven mountains, and it also says there in verse 9, “Here is the mind which has wisdom.” In other words, here is a harder thing to grasp or to calculate or to understand. Now the last time we saw that expression, “here is wisdom,” it had to do with the antichrist’s name. Revelation 13:18, “Here is wisdom, let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast for the number is that of a man; his number is six hundred and sixty-six.”


And I’ve tried to explain in ancient languages numbers are associated with letters, but in Hebrew and Greek, it’s a practice called gematria. It’s not practiced that most westerners are familiar with but those in Biblical times knew all about it. And what will happen, I believe, is you will be able to take the antichrist’s name, not his title, his name, and you’ll be able to spell it out in Greek, when he comes. We don’t know who he is. I tried spelling my own name once just to make sure I wasn’t the antichrist and fortunately I was six hundred and sixty-six. But whoever he is will show up and you’ll be able to take his name, spell it out in Greek, attach the right number to the right letter and it will yield the total 666.
And John says, “Here is the mind which has wisdom.” It’s going to take some additional mental steps for this to occur and decipher this; that’s how anybody living on the earth at the time will know exactly who the antichrist is. That’s why the Bible assigns an eternal penalty for those living in that time period of taking his mark because everyone will be without excuse, they will know exactly who he is. But it’s going to require some additional mental work to do that. And what you see in Revelation 17:9-10 is that expression, here is wisdom, or “Here is the mind that calls for wisdom” is used for a second time. So therefore the seven heads or seven mountains is not something very easy to understand; there’s additional mental steps that are required to figure out who these seven heads or seven mountains represent.


And I being that to your attention because people are saying all of the time, “well, that’s the seven hills of Rome.” Everybody understood that Rome is the city that sits on the seven hills. So they would have attached this to Rome. And my response is well how would that require any wisdom to do that calculation? I mean, if it’s that simple, if it’s that easy, why would it say again, Here is the mind which has wisdom.” It’s something that is working just beneath the surface to understand it but it’s not on the surface and it requires a little bit of mental work to figure out who these seven mountains, seven heads, or seven kings actually are.


So for all of these reasons I’ve tried to articulate the seven hills, it doesn’t even say seven hills, is not speaking of Rome. By the way, people are saying Babylon is the city on seven hills, so Babylon equals Rome. We have a little problem here because these heads or mountains or kings are not part of the woman. They’re part of the beast that the woman is riding on.


So can we make sense of this. Notice verse 10, “and they are” speaking now of these seven heads and mountains, “they are seven kings;” look at that, “five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. Now I am completely and totally in favor of literal interpretation of the Bible whenever it’s possible. But there are times in the Bible where the Bible itself will say don’t interpret this literally, right there in the passage, don’t interpret this literally, here’s what it means. You remember Jerusalem, the great city where the Lord was crucified, which mystically is called Sodom in Egypt. It’s the city of Jerusalem but here is another way of interpretation of Sodom in Egypt residing over that city in the last days; Sodom referring to depravity, Egypt referring to bondage. So why can’t I add this additional layer of meaning? Because of the word “mystically.”


And “mystically” doesn’t leave me to my own devices, it tells me what it means. Galatians 4:24, Sarah and Hagar, do you believe in a literal Sarah and Hagar? I do. Their historical instances and stories but Galatians 4:24 says now we’re going to take those literal stories and not de-historicize those stories but we’re going add another layer of meaning. When it says, Galatians 4:24, “This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar.” One woman means freedom, one woman means slavery. One woman means faith, one woman means Law. Why can I attach to those to those two stories an allegorical understanding without de-historicizing those stories? Because the Bible tells me I can do it through the word “allegorically” or the words “allegorically speaking.” If those words were not there I would have no permission to do it. And when I do it I’ve got to pay attention to the interpretation that the Bible itself gives. See that?


So this is what is happening with these seven mountains. They are not meant to be understood as literal seven mountains because verse10 tells us what these mountains represent, “they are seven kings.” So the heads on the beasts are mountains or kings, seven kings total. And here’s what’s interesting; in the Bible, Daniel being the basement, Revelation being the ceiling, the two books have to be understood together, “king” and “kingdom” are used synonymously. Daniel 2:37 aimed at Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel says, “You, O king, are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, [the power, the strength and the glory;]” Later on he says you are the head of gold. [Daniel 2:38, “…. You are the head of gold.”]


It’s like saying today the President of the United States, Donald Trump, did X. And we read that and we say okay, the President did some-thing, that means the President as head of our government involved the United States in his decision. We do this all of the time, we switch from king to kingdom, Trump to White House, to Executive Branch, to authority over the United States. That’s what’s happening here in Daniel 2 verses 37 and 38.


So what am I trying to say? Here is the mind which has listened, the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, they are seven kings, or also we could say they are seven kingdoms. And sometimes in the Bible a mountain, he’s on seven mountains, refers to a kingdom. I don’t have time to give you or read all the verses but jot down Isaiah 2:2, Isaiah 41:15, Babylon, Jeremiah 51:25 is called a destroying mountain. God’s kingdom, Daniel 2:35 and 45 is described as a mountain. So understanding a mountain not just as a king but also as a kingdom fits completely and totally with what the Bible has to say.


[Isaiah 2:2, “Now it will come about that in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord
will be established as the chief of the mountains, and will be raised above the hills; and all the nations will stream to it.” Isaiah 41:15, ““Behold, I have made you a new, sharp threshing sledge with double edges; You will thresh the mountains and pulverize them, and will make the hills like chaff.” Jeremiah 51:25, ““Behold, I am against you, O destroying mountain, who destroys the whole earth,” declares the Lord, “And I will stretch out My hand against you, and roll you down from the crags, and I will make you a burnt out mountain.” Daniel 2:35, “Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were crushed [a]all at the same time and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; and the wind carried them away so that not a trace of them was found. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” Daniel 2:45, “Inasmuch as you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver and the gold, the great God has made known to the king what will take place in the future; so the dream is true and its interpretation is trustworthy.”]
So enough talking, let’s do the BLT which stands for Bottom Line Time. (Not Bacon Lettuce and Tomato). What’s the bottom line? Who are these seven heads or seven mountains, or seven kings, or seven kingdoms not attached to the woman named Babylon but to the beast. They represent seven anti-Semitic kingdoms, the most anti-Jewish kingdoms in the history of Israel. The first was Egypt, that is the kingdom that the nation of Israel was taken into captivity in the days of Moses. The second anti-Semitic kingdom was Assyria, that’s the kingdom that scattered the northern tribes in 722 B.C. The third anti-Semitic kingdom was Babylon; Babylon is where the nation of Israel went into captivity for seventy years.


And then came Persia, following Babylon, from Persia came a very wicked ruler named Haman, who devised a plot to exterminate the Jews. That didn’t go too well for him, he got hung on his own gallows. You know, it’s interesting, every time that a dictator comes on the scene and tries to wipe out the Jewish people, not only do the Jewish people survive but they end up getting a holiday out of the deal. And in this case Lots or Purim was added to the holidays to commemorate this.


Then came Greece and we know what Antiochus Epiphanes did to the Jews in the intertestamental period in terms of desecrating the temple. That’s where Hanukkah or Feast of Lights comes from. And then would come Rome; Rome was horrific to the Jews, driving them out of the land in A.D. 70. And number seven is this miraculous Rome that comes back to life; this political miracle that the antichrist pulls off, this kingdom arising out of the cultural inheritance of Ancient Rome that we call Rome, phase 2. You’ll notice what it says, John, in the first century, five have fallen. Which five? Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, they’re all in the past when John receives this vision in the first century.
And then he says, “One is,” present tense, which would refer to the empire that was in existence when John was on the earth, ancient Rome. But then he says “One is yet to come.” That would be the Revived Rome of the antichrist during the Tribulation period. Now there’s a very, very interesting verse in Daniel 7:12. By the way, that Revived Rome is the ten toes in the feet of iron and clay in Daniel 2, and it’s the horrific beast with ten horns in Daniel 7. Daniel 7:12 says something that most people just skip right over. It says, “As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but an extension of life was granted to them for an appointed time.”


It’s interesting, Egypt fell but the Egyptian system continued to live in Assyria. Then Babylon came, Egypt and Assyria were the thing of the past but the Egyptian and Assyrian system continued to live in Babylon. And then Persia conquered Babylon and yet Egypt, Assyria and Babylon, their systems continued to live in Persia, the same with Greece, she absorbs everything that was wrong in evil and all of those prior empires. And then Rome came along and any historian will tell you that Rome conquered Greece politically but Greece conquered Rome culturally. The deities of Ancient Greece continued to exist in Rome; the Romans just gave them different titles.


So everything that’s bad keeps getting passed down down the food chain. And by the time we get to a Revived Rome you won’t have a political Egypt, a political Assyria, a political Babylon, a political Persia, a political Greece, political Rome Phase 1 anymore but all of everything that’s evil, everything that’s wrong, everything that’s anti-God will be absorbed into Rome phase 2 or the anti-Christ’s empire. And as best I can tell that is probably the best interpretation of the seven heads or seven mountains, or seven kings, or seven kingdoms that are connected to this beast.
Then you come to verse 11 and I was hoping we would run out of time before we got to verse 11 because verse 11 (to me) is one of the most difficult and strangest verses, not only in the Book of Revelation, perhaps in the entire Bible. And I’m not completely 100% confident in my own understanding of it. But it says there in verse 11, “The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to his destruction.” We had seven, now we’ve got eight. Who’s the eighth? I’m not sure if I know other than perhaps the eighth is the antichrist who is connected to the seven, as I’ve tried to explain, but when he dies and rises again that makes him an eighth and the imagery therefore shifts from kingdom back to king. Is that something worth starting a new church over? Probably not, but I think that’s what it’s talking about when it mentions an eight king, one of the seven, the seven we talked about, but the eighth would be his resurrection from the dead.


You’ll notice also the reminder, verse 11, that he too is going to his destruction. [11] The beast which was and is not, is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction.”] Oh yeah, this is terrible, but the Bible keeps throwing in these little reminders that look, evil is going to get its heyday for a season but don’t get despondent over that beloved, don’t let that ruin your hope. He too (the antichrist) is going to his destruction. God hasn’t lost control of things; do you understand that? I understand that things in your life, when I read the prayer requests, are very severe.


What you have to understand is that needs to be analyzed and contemplated against the light of eternity; that’s how God has designed this book. And that’s why you can walk through valleys in this life and not grow weary, as Isaiah 40:31 says because you keep looking at these things through not your own lens but through the lens God has given us, called His Word.. [Isaiah 40:31, “Yet those who wait for the LORD Will – Bible Gateway Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.”]


If that’s who the seven heads on the beast represent what in the world do we do with the ten horns also on the beast? “And he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads” we did our best at that, and now it gets more complicated and it talks about “ten horns.” Verse 12 tells us who these ten horns are. “The ten horns which you saw” look at this, “are ten kings which have not received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour.” [Revelation 17:12] This would be a ten king confederacy arising contemporaneously or simultaneously with the beast. These are ten horns on the beast that the woman is riding and you’ll notice that these kings aligned with the beast get their day in the sun for an hour. That’s not an awful long period of time.
In John’s writings what you’ll discover is an “hour” many times is not used of a literal sixty minutes, but it’s used of a short age. Jesus says, John 17:1, “Father, the hour has come;” prior to His crucifixion. [John 17:1, “Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You,’”]


1 John 2:18, of false prophets in the last days, says, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.” This is how we know it’s the last hour. It’s an age of time but it’s very brief. And that’s who these kings are, they’re allies of the antichrist. They arise, as verse 12 says, “with” the antichrist. They are the ten toes in Daniel 2. Daniel 2:44, of that ten toed empire, says, “In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever. The return of Christ, the stone cut without human hands, striking the feet of the statue, annihilating these ten toes all at once, obviously must be ten kings in existence with the antichrist at the very moment Jesus returns.


Daniel 7:24 says, “As for the ten horns,” now they’re not ten toes but “ten horns out of this kingdom ten kings will arise; and another will arise after them, and he will be different from the previous ones and will subdue three kings. The ten king confederacy of the antichrist, in alliance with the anti-Christ and together, end of the chapter which we’re not getting to today, they will turn on the woman named Babylon, the city of Babylon which is a description of not that she is destroyed but how she is destroyed, the ten horns of Daniel seven.


Now, for years and years and years and years and years and years and years (I guess I’m not that old) but I was taught that these are the ten nations of Revived Europe. Ever since I became of age as a Christian that’s the interpretation I was given on this; this is all Europe. But if you look at Daniel 7:23 of the ten kings it says, “will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it.” [Daniel 7:23, “Thus he said: ‘The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, which will be different from all the other kingdoms and will devour the whole earth and tread it down and crush it.”]


Dwight Pentecost in his book Things to Come says this final form of world power will have a world-wide influence. So I no longer believe that these are simply the ten kings or nation states of Europe; I think Europe has a lot more than ten now any, doesn’t it, twenty-three, twenty-seven, something like that. I believe that these are ten regions into which planet earth will be divided because there’s image shifting from king to kingdom.


Arnold Fruchtenbaum correctly says, “The stage was seen in both Daniel 2 and the ten codes and in Daniel 7 and the ten horns, but one world government will divide into ten kingdoms that will cover the whole world, not merely Europe. This requires that the ten kings could cover the entire world will cover the entire world not just the territory of Europe. David Hocking says, “The ten horns could represent the nations of the end times or perhaps more likely ten divisions of world government.” Now is that not interesting; that’s the club of Rome, a one-world organization. They produce a [can’t understand word]. They’ve got the world divided up into ten, not nine, not eleven, ten regions. Our particular region there would be the North American Union. Other regions of the world are represented, Europe being just one of the ten regions.]


This concept of using different regions as a stepping stone ultimately into world government, is in the play book of the globalist, you just have to know where to look for it. As early as 1970 at the first birthday this document was released, called The Environmental Handbook, 1970. They say in here, “Nations must be phased out as quickly as possible and replaced with tribal or regional economists economies. Oh, that’s why the United States of America, as I speak, is broiled in a controversy concerning whether our borders are enforceable or not. You see? I mean, why is it that now we have all of this tension in the politics of our day concerning immigration, concerning enforceability of borders, the President of the United States trying to enforce the borders, the rest of the world, the rest of the media telling him it’s somehow wrong to do this. It’s a collision of what the globalists want concerning regions and what traditional Americans, like us, want in terms of a nation state. That’s the battle.


Donald Trump, whether you like him or hate him, is the only politician that spoke directly to that issue. And that may be one of the reasons why his popularity grew and he ascended to the Presidency. I’m not here making political statements, I’m not telling you who to vote for, I’m just explaining to you the realities that we are in are explainable when you understand the tension between what globalists want in terms of regions and what nationalists want. That’s the whole conflict. And it’s very interesting to me that Jean Monet, in his memoirs, the last page in his memoirs, in other words this is what he wrote just before he died. “Jean” or Jean Monet is the architect of the European Union. He’s the one that came up with the idea.


You know what I mean by a region—the European Union is this idea that we’re going to take Europe and regionalize it; we’re going to take the different currency’s amongst the different tiny European states and merge them into a single currency called the Euro. And power, (watch this now) is going to shift from the individual nation states to Brussels. And Brussels is now going to decide how long and how loud your lawnmower engine can be. And the Brits got sick of it and that’s what called Brexit, and this whole outworking of this conflict that we’re seeing in Europe and in the United States is a clash of visions between the globalists and the nationalists. See, if you understand this issue you’ll understand exactly what’s happening. The Bible said that day would come.


Jean Monet says, “The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present. They cannot insure their own progress or control, their own future,” watch, “and the European community itself is only a stage on the way to the organized world of tomorrow.” Jean Monet never intended for the experiment in Europe to stay in Europe. He, from the beginning wanted Europe as a model for the whole world, ten regions, not one!


Here’s a great movement, even in the north, North America. Take the United States, Canada, Mexico and regionalize them, erase the borders between those nations. Oh, that’s why the politicians don’t enforce the borders any more. And to come up with a single currency, like they have in Europe, they have the Euro, we’ll just all ours the Amero, and you’re going to have Kennedy’s all over the world. And they, according to Monet’s own design, the Monet method, by the way, what is the Monet method? You lie to the people. You don’t tell them exactly what you’re going to do; you tell them it’s all about economics and free trade. You never told them that Brussels was going to control how low their lawnmower should be. You never told them that their individual governments are going to be nothing more than debating societies. You didn’t tell them their currency was going to be marked or merged into another currency. That’s the Monet method, everything is promoted in terms of free trade. And Monet himself specifically said, just prior to his death, that Europe is just the beginning.


Henry Kissinger, in his book, The New World Order is very clear on this, the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another. And then here comes Hillary Clinton, she lost the election, I know you guys are very sad about that, we have some trauma dogs out in the parking lot to comfort you for that, [laughter]


What I’m trying to show you, what I’m trying to explain, I’m not here saying yeah for this party, boo for that party, I’m trying to explain why she lost. In a private speech to a Brazilian bank on May 16, 2013 Hillary said, “My dream is for a…” watch this, “hemispheric common market with open trade” (say it isn’t so) “open borders!” Some in the future with energy that is green and sustainable as we get it, power and growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere,” close quote, this secret speech was released as part of the Podesta e-mails attained by WikiLeaks. This was supposed to be a secret speech. It’s amazing how transparent these people become when they’re outside of our borders, speaking to a Brazilian bank.


Mr. and Mrs. America may not understand everything there is to know about Bible prophecy; they may not understand or be able to put together and articulate the exact things that we’ve been mentioning here in this sermon, but I know this about Mr. and Mrs. America, they can sense something’s not right. They sense it! It’s just in their gut. Trump is the only one that’s spoke directly to that issue. And that’s why Trump, whether you like him or hate him, is as popular as he is. And so where am I going with this… I don’t even know where I’m going with this. [Laughter]


What I’m trying to say is you start to read the news through the Bible, that’s where I’m going with this. And this is the description that was written two thousand years ago of the antichrist’s kingdom that would be a composite of the seven mountains, which we’ve talked about, and the rise with ten contemporaneous kings, which cover the whole world, or kingdoms, and that’s who this beast represents and it’s that beast that’s going to turn on the world, named Babylon, as we move through this chapter. And that becomes a description of not that Babylon’s fall but how she fell. And it’s all right there in your Bible. And little ole me and little ole you can understand these things just by reading the Word of God and interpreting it correctly. WOW! Part of me just wants to keep on preaching but I interpret numbers literally, [laughter] it’s twelve thirty-six.


Here’s the deal; this world is falling apart; God said it would. And you have a choice, you can either be a citizen of this kingdom, of this world, that’s deteriorating as I speak, or in a nanosecond you can place your faith in Christ and be a citizen of that stone cut without human hands that’s going to crush the kingdoms of this earth and grow till it fills the whole earth. Who do you want to align yourself with at the end of the day? The faltering failing world system or the kingdom of Christ which can never be overthrown? Frankly I’ll take the kingdom of Christ. And you become a citizen of the kingdom of Christ by simply trusting and believing what Jesus did for you. Jesus did it all! Everything that’s necessary to bridge the gap between following humanity and a holy God He already accomplished. And He simply asks for us to trust in Him which, believe me, you get some right now realities, forgiveness of sins, the Holy Spirit, the new nature, that’s all part of the package deal. But there’s more to it than that because you have hope for tomorrow, because all hell could break loose on this earth and it’s going to happen but you know that you’re unshaken by that because you’re receiving one day a kingdom which can never be shaken.


So our exhortation to you at Sugar Land Bible Church is to trust in Christ and Christ alone for you salvation. I usually like to say if you need some questions answered on that I will be available after the service today… well today I’m not available after the service because I’m going to Connecticut, you can pray for me, for a conference Monday and Tuesday at Middletown Bible Church and coming back Wednesday morning in time for Bible study Wednesday night. But you can see the elders about that, as a matter of fact, if you’re an elder at this church can you raise your hand, put it way up there, so these are the people that know, these are the folks you can go talk to if you have confusion about your salvation.
Let’s pray. Father, we’re grateful for You truth, we’re grateful for Your Word, we’re grateful for what it reveals and how it speaks directly into our age and our life. Make us good stewards of these things. We’ll be careful to give you all the praise and the glory. We ask these things in Jesus’s name, and God’s people said…. Amen!
 

Purchased With Blood

Well-Known Member

Transcript​

Andy Woods
The Beautiful Side of Evil
Revelation 17:1-6a Lesson 54

Is it not true as we have gone through the Book of Revelation that there have been many geographical references to geography. Have we not made the point that all of these places of geography are literal? Every single one of them !
This is not correct and of all his points this is the most germane to Mystery Babylon. Revelation 11:8 says of the two witnesses, "And their bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." He is a little too certain here.
 
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Everlasting Life

Through Faith in Jesus
This is not correct and very germane to the topic. Revelation 11:8 says of the two witnesses, "And their bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified." He is a little too certain here.


Well, when he is in this chapter here's what he says about that passage, perhaps the bible translation may have an impact on termonology:

https://slbc.org/sermon/revelation-032-not-by-might-nor-power/

"..........It says, “When they had finished their testimony the beast that has come up out of the abyss will make war with them and will overcome them and will kill them.” [Revelation 11:7] So he is the cause, if you will, of the martyrdom. Well, this is all interesting; where is this going to take place? San Francisco? Washington D.C. You have a very clear answer there in verse 8, notice what it says. “And their dead bodies” killed by the Jews, “will lie in the street of the great city” what city would that be, “which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” Where was Jesus crucified? Jerusalem. You’ll notice that these martyrs have made Jesus their Lord. These are not just people that have believed in the gospel to get their fire insurance paid up, these are people that have submitted to the call of discipleship, following Christ even to the point of martyrdom itself. And the whole thing happens right here in the great city, the city streets of Jerusalem.


Well, Jerusalem is the holy city, right? What can be wrong with Jerusalem? I mean, it’s on all our Christmas cards, right? Look at how Jerusalem is described. By the way, I take every single geographical reference in the Book of Revelation literally. I’ve been trying to compile a list of geography as I’ve gone through the Book of Revelation, I can’t find an allegorical example anywhere of a geographical reference and you note all of them, and in this chart I tried to do that. Maybe that will help you.


I think God means what He says and says what He means. Amen. It’s going to happen in Jerusalem, that’s what’s going to take place. If it’s going to happen to two witnesses it’s not going to be five or ten, it’s going to be two. If it says fire is going to come out of their mouth, I don’t know how that’s going to happen but that’s what’s going to happen. If the beast is going to murder them, possessed by Satan, if I’m understanding this right then that’s what will take place.


What could be wrong with the city of Jerusalem during this time. Their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city… oh-oh, “which is mystically called Sodom and Egypt….” [Revelation 11:8] You say I thought we were supposed to take this literally. You are, unless the text uses the word like “mystically.” Once it uses a word like mystically it’s taking the literal meaning and adding a layer of truth. And you’re not allowed to interpret that layer of truth any way you want, you have to pay attention to the interpretation. It’s very similar to Galatians 4:24 where Paul begins to describe an allegory from two women, Sarah and Hagar. He says in Galatians 4:24, “This is allegorically speaking, for these women are two covenants: one proceeding from Mount Sinai bearing children who are to be slaves; she is Hagar.”

Paul never takes the Sarah and Hagar story and de-historicizes it and pretends like it never happened. The story is true, there were two women, one of them was named Sarah, one was named Hagar but what Paul does as an apostle is he adds to it a layer of understanding. Now I’m not free to do this unless I see words in the Bible, like mystically or allegorically. And even when I see it I can’t just make up any interpretation I want, I have to pay attention to the interpretation that the Holy Spirit has given.

So he talks about this great city, the city of Jerusalem, and then he says let me say what Jerusalem is like during this time period; it’s just like Sodom and it’s just like Egypt. Now within the nation of Israel today the vast majority of them are unbelievers, they don’t believe anything, atheists you might even call them. And what are they like, even though they’re God’s people? They’re just like Sodom, they’ve just invented their own sexuality and did whatever they wanted. There are some within the nation of Israel, a minority, that we call the Orthodox and they are believers, not so much believers in Yeshua, not so much believers in Jesus but believers in the Old Testament Law. And you know what they’re trying to do? They’re trying to put people back under the Law........"
 

SkyRider

Well-Known Member
Yeah, I appreciate you posting that and I've heard similar arguments pushing for the actual city of Babylon, but I can't get onboard with that. I just can,t imagine that Satan would want to waste time on rebuilding that city for just a few short years. And it is an awful location, out in the “wilderness”, not that accessible to merchants and such. Whereas, Rome sits on the Med, is centrally located in Southern Europe, a very prominent and easily accessed location for merchants and shi people to go by and to see the flames of her burning. The word “Mystery” would not be called for if one is describing the ancient city of Iraq. In Daniel's image, the ten toes are the final makeup of the famous statue, and it is the continuation of the Roman Empire. It doesn’t then revert back to Babylon. Same with the woman riding the back of the beast; I see that she gains prominence from riding the coattails of the previous caesars of pagan Rome, then fully establishes herself on the city of seven hills. Sure she has Babylonian dna, but arising like a phoenix out of the ashes of ancient Babylon to be prominent during the Trib?? I can,t buy it.

Time will tell of course, but I'm going to stick with Rome. Dave Hunt did an excellent breakdown on the woman in his book, “A Woman rides the Beast”. I thought that was fantastic and I agree with his take on it being the RCC. If you check out The Berean Call website, they have plenty of articles on there, as well as podcasts where they actually go into greater detail and have updated some of the info about this harlot. Very compelling stuff. I think that there are plenty of indicators in Rev. 17 that points to Romanism as the woman and the past history of the papacy lends a lot of credence of her diabolical past - including her Inquisitions and Crusades - and the myriad of false teachings that have damned many souls. I just can't buy the actual Babylon argument.
 

Purchased With Blood

Well-Known Member
I should also add that by "camp" I mean within the Church in general there is a debate as to which location Mystery Babylon is. I am among those like Dave Hunt who said it was Rome. I am not referring to a camp within the forum, perhaps that was a poor choice of words.
 

Purchased With Blood

Well-Known Member
I'm in it being a literal Babylon, if Israel can be reformed from a baron desert wasteland why not Babylon ?
That's a good question. Babylon does not have any of the same prophecies of its rebirth and regathering into the land as Israel has. The prophecies against her are quite the opposite, and that once it is destroyed by the Medo-Persian Empire, it will be desolate forever. Jeremiah 51 is very instructive here and speaks to the destruction at the hands of the Medes, so we know it is not the same destruction as in Revelation. The whole chapter is about the original Babylon's destruction. Jeremiah 51:19-20 compares Babylon with Israel and says, "The portion of Jacob is not like them; for he is the former of all things: and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: the Lord of hosts is his name. Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms." Furthermore Jeremiah 51:62 says of Babylon, "Then shalt thou say, O Lord, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever."
 
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ShilohRose

Well-Known Member
That's a good question. Babylon does not have any of the same prophecies of its rebirth and regathering into the land as Israel has. The prophecies against her are quite the opposite, and that once it is destroyed by the Medo-Persian Empire, it will be desolate forever. Jeremiah 51 is very instructive here and speaks to the destruction at the hands of the Medes, so we know it is not the same destruction as in Revelation. The whole chapter is about the original Babylon's destruction. Jeremiah 51:19-20 compares Babylon with Israel and says, "The portion of Jacob is not like them; for he is the former of all things: and Israel is the rod of his inheritance: the Lord of hosts is his name. Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms." Furthermore Jeremiah 51:62 says of Babylon, "Then shalt thou say, O Lord, thou hast spoken against this place, to cut it off, that none shall remain in it, neither man nor beast, but that it shall be desolate for ever."
Babylon has never been completely destroyed, and it's being rebuilt in fits and starts even now.
 

Purchased With Blood

Well-Known Member
Babylon has never been completely destroyed, and it's being rebuilt in fits and starts even now.
Thank you, I was just thinking I should research Jeremiah 51 a little more since I want to be thorough and not overconfident. I'm finding that yours is a common objection online. I'm no expert on archeology but am currently watching a video by Christian archeologist Joel Kramer and I defer to him. He is discussing the field work done by Robert Koldewey who mapped the ancient walls of Babylon. According to Joel the prophecies are specifically against the area within the ancient city of Babylon's walls and therefore it is very important to distinguish the area within from the area outside. He says the area within was completely destroyed and laid desolate for many years. Yes, Saddam tried to rebuild but it was very costly and considered a failure and is currently completely uninhabited.
 
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SkyRider

Well-Known Member
I think Roman Catholicism represents the final form of Babylonism. Satan already has his counterfeit Christian church sitting on the seven hills of Rome but whose tentacles wrap around the entire Earth. Revelation 17 points squarely at the Vatican with each and every attribute that characterizes the makeup of the Roman Catholic religion. Why would the enemy have to relocate his false church to an out of the way place when the RCC is operating just fine where it is. What would be gained? Why would it have to end up where it started? The term Babylon is representative of false religion and over the centuries, it’s hub has followed the progression of world empires moving from the Middle East to Pergamos - where Satan's seat was said to be - and finally winding up in Rome. Just because the word Babylon is used instead of Roman Catholicism doesn’t negate the fact that the papal system functions and has practices identical to the pagan Babylonian system. The apostle John scribed the last book of the Bible in approx. 90 AD, and at that time, the Roman Catholic religion was unknown, but instead was identified as “Mystery Babylon”, since it would be the final form of that religious system.

There are many prophetic passages that identify players and nations of upcoming significant events by their ancient names. Take for instance just one, in the Ezekiel 38, 39 campaign. Most refer to that invasion as the Gog/Magog war, with a group of nations that will enter Israel in the End Times. Gog, the leader of this force, is an ancient name of eons past, but most surmise that he could be a demonic entity that influences the invading forces, as we don't see any human being operating north of Israel with that name. What about the land of Magog? Does that mean that this campaign cannot get underway until that ancient name is revived and all of Russia - as we suppose that this is where Magog used to be located - must be renamed Magog before that war gets underway? That could be a long way off, or more than likely, won't need to happen because we think we know where that land once was and who the people are called now. Same with Togarmah, Gomer, Put, Cush, Rosh, Mechach, Tubal and Persia - do all of these names have to be applied to these ancient sites and peoples before this prophecy can see its fulfillment? I think the same logic is being applied to the ancient city of Babylon. It has to be functioning and the Babylonian form of religion has to wind up where it started since this is supposedly what scripture demands. What about the young lions of Tarshish? Just who is Tarshish? Spain, Great Britain, someone else? Are the young lions America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Why not use those names? Does Tarshish then need to be resurrected, wherever it was located, in order for the 2600 year old prophecy of Ezekiel to be fulfilled? No, of course not. All of those ancient names were in use probably by the large people groups that initially inhabited them.

Personally, I have no problem identifying Roman Catholicism as Mystery Babylon, and dont't see the need for the original false pagan religion of Babylon having to return to its ancient roots. Rome, the Vatican, the papacy are the final progression and summation of that ancient religion. Just as I have no problem with the names of Magog, Rosh, Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, Togarmah, Put, Cush, Tarshish, and Persia being replaced by modern names and sites to fulfill Ezekiel's 38/39 war. Just because the Bible doesn’t list the modern day equivalent name to the system or the present day peoples, does not hinder the reality of what is represented by each.
 
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Jaybird

Well-Known Member
I think Roman Catholicism represents the final form of Babylonism. Satan already has his counterfeit Christian church sitting on the seven hills of Rome but whose tentacles wrap around the entire Earth. Revelation 17 points squarely at the Vatican with each and every attribute that characterizes the makeup of the Roman Catholic religion. Why would the enemy have to relocate his false church to an out of the way place when the RCC is operating just fine where it is. What would be gained? Why would it have to end up where it started? The term Babylon is representative of false religion and over the centuries, it’s hub has followed the progression of world empires moving from the Middle East to Pergamos - where Satan's seat was said to be - and finally winding up in Rome. Just because the word Babylon is used instead of Roman Catholicism doesn’t negate the fact that the papal system functions and has practices identical to the pagan Babylonian system. The apostle John scribed the last book of the Bible in approx. 90 AD, and at that time, the Roman Catholic religion was unknown, but instead was identified as “Mystery Babylon”, since it would be the final form of that religious system.

There are many prophetic passages that identify players and nations of upcoming significant events by their ancient names. Take for instance just one, in the Ezekiel 38, 39 campaign. Most refer to that invasion as the Gog/Magog war, with a group of nations that will enter Israel in the End Times. Gog, the leader of this force, is an ancient name of eons past, but most surmise that he could be a demonic entity that influences the invading forces, as we don't see any human being operating north of Israel with that name. What about the land of Magog? Does that mean that this campaign cannot get underway until that ancient name is revived and all of Russia - as we suppose that this is where Magog used to be located - must be renamed Magog before that war gets underway? That could be a long way off, or more than likely, won't need to happen because we think we know where that land once was and who the people are called now. Same with Togarmah, Gomer, Put, Cush, Rosh, Mechach, Tubal and Persia - do all of these names have to be applied to these ancient sites and peoples before this prophecy can see its fulfillment? I think the same logic is being applied to the ancient city of Babylon. It has to be functioning and the Babylonian form of religion has to wind up where it started since this is supposedly what scripture demands. What about the young lions of Tarshish? Just who is Tarshish? Spain, Great Britain, someone else? Are the young lions America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand? Why not use those names? Does Tarshish then need to be resurrected, wherever it was located, in order for the 2600 year old prophecy of Ezekiel to be fulfilled? No, of course not. All of those ancient names were in use probably by the large people groups that initially inhabited them.

Personally, I have no problem identifying Roman Catholicism as Mystery Babylon, and dont't see the need for the original false pagan religion of Babylon having to return to its ancient roots. Rome, the Vatican, the papacy are the final progression and summation of that ancient religion. Just as I have no problem with the names of Magog, Rosh, Meshech, Tubal, Gomer, Togarmah, Put, Cush, Tarshish, and Persia being replaced by modern names and sites to fulfill Ezekiel's 38/39 war. Just because the Bible doesn’t list the modern day equivalent name to the system or the present day peoples, does not hinder the reality of what is represented by each.
I had to go back and refresh my memory and read the passages again, but after reading them I agree with you SkyRider. Babylon the Great in this context means the final false religion. Although I have read some commentaries alluding to a physical Babylon (I need to dig into this and understand the context).

Satan has been getting this entity ready for a very long time for the final Tribulation show. Look at what the Pope is doing right now trying to unite the major religions. He is setting the stage for the RCC to lead the final world religion. The RCC is all about power and control and this is their history and their future. They are in the perfect position to exert control as they exist in every country and have the structure to exercise this control. The Pope meets regularly with Heads of State and many countries typically have a diplomatic presence at the Vatican. It sure looks to me that the RCC is the harlot that rides the beast.
 

SkyRider

Well-Known Member
I had to go back and refresh my memory and read the passages again, but after reading them I agree with you SkyRider. Babylon the Great in this context means the final false religion. Although I have read some commentaries alluding to a physical Babylon (I need to dig into this and understand the context).

Satan has been getting this entity ready for a very long time for the final Tribulation show. Look at what the Pope is doing right now trying to unite the major religions. He is setting the stage for the RCC to lead the final world religion. The RCC is all about power and control and this is their history and their future. They are in the perfect position to exert control as they exist in every country and have the structure to exercise this control. The Pope meets regularly with Heads of State and many countries typically have a diplomatic presence at the Vatican. It sure looks to me that the RCC is the harlot that rides the beast.
Good points. I also think that when God puts into the minds of the 10 kings to destroy the woman (shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire) that it will be an all encompassing destruction, not just in Rome. Wherever Roman Catholicism has a false paganistic place of worship - cathedrals, missions, shrines to Mary or the pagan Babylonian Queen of Heaven and any other edifices erected to worship a false Christ in the form of a wafer, no matter where they are located, will all be destroyed. God will not want any remnants of this spiritual whore to remain and pollute the Earth. These 10 kings will have the means to carry out this “eating of her flesh and burning her with fire, since they will be governing in regions all across the globe.

I also tend to think that John was specifically arranged to be the one that the Lord used to show this vision to and scribe the words of this prophecy. Christ, at the cross, picked John to care for his earthly mother. It sort of begs the question of why couldn't the Lord's half brothers be the ones to take care of Mary (Miriam)?

So then, was it any wonder that John marveled at the site of this prophecy? Roman Catholicism, Mystery Babylon, had turned the woman that he had the responsibility of taking care of by the Lord, had turned Mary into things that God's Word says she never was: someone to pray to, practically deified her - well she would have to be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent to hear and answer prayer - is a co-redeemer and co- mediatrix for our salvation, is the Mother of God, was sinless, remained a virgin, was a pagan queen of heaven - all the same characteristics of the ancient paganistic, idolatrous and blasphemous attributes of the Babylon queen of Heaven deity found in the writings of Jeremiah.

Of course John would be amazed. Looked at what they turned her into! And who better to show this prophecy to?
 

Purchased With Blood

Well-Known Member
I think Roman Catholicism represents the final form of Babylonism. Satan already has his counterfeit Christian church sitting on the seven hills of Rome but whose tentacles wrap around the entire Earth. Revelation 17 points squarely at the Vatican with each and every attribute that characterizes the makeup of the Roman Catholic religion. Why would the enemy have to relocate his false church to an out of the way place when the RCC is operating just fine where it is. What would be gained? Why would it have to end up where it started? The term Babylon is representative of false religion and over the centuries, it’s hub has followed the progression of world empires moving from the Middle East to Pergamos - where Satan's seat was said to be - and finally winding up in Rome. Just because the word Babylon is used instead of Roman Catholicism doesn’t negate the fact that the papal system functions and has practices identical to the pagan Babylonian system. The apostle John scribed the last book of the Bible in approx. 90 AD, and at that time, the Roman Catholic religion was unknown, but instead was identified as “Mystery Babylon”, since it would be the final form of that religious system.
There is also a commercial element to Revelation 18 and Rome fits this perfectly. Our modern banking and financial system emerged out of the Middle Ages in places like Genoa, Venice, and Florence and powerful dynastic families have allied themselves with the Vatican ever since, even after spreading out to other financial centers of Europe. The House of Welf sided with the Pope during the Investiture Controversy and their lineage included many German and British monarchs from the 11th to the 21st century. Revelation 18:9 says, "And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning." Being in the center of the Mediterranean, these areas were commercial and naval powers in the Middle Ages, especially Genoa and Venice. Most of the truly wealthy and powerful "elites" of Europe are anonymous to the general public because that's how they want it. These people can rightly be described as "Machiavellian" since Machiavelli served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic. Forbes magazine has called the Vatican Bank the most secret bank in the world.

Additionally, the Bible uses "hill" interchangeably with "mountain" many times with Mt. Zion so we have precedent to do the same. There are too many times to count how often Zion is referred to both as God's holy hill as well as His holy mountain. Mt. Zion is not exactly gigantic like K2.

The similarities between the Babylonian pagan religion and Roman Catholicism are too numerous to type here. Just as John the Baptist was Elijah, as Jesus Himself indicated, Rome is Mystery Babylon, and is a type of its forerunner Babylon of Mesopotamia.
 

SkyRider

Well-Known Member
Also in Daniel chapter 2, he sees when interpreting the dream: Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, and brake them to pieces” Daniel 2:34. The ten toes represent the final stage of the Roman Empire. There is a progression from Babylon, to Medes/Persians, then to Greece, finally to Rome. The 10 toes, then the little horn that rises from this empire, are the final form of human government before Christ sets up His rule and reign in Jerusalem.

I was thinking also about the passage in Revelation 17 where it talks about the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus, which has to include some of the apostles killed by Rome. Well, what about Christ's crucifixion? Obviously, Jesus was the Lamb of God who was slain for the sins of the world. That was the plan from before the foundation of the world was lain. But God had to use some instrumentality to carry out the death of Christ. But does that still mean that Rome gets a free pass? Do they have some retribution coming their way for the murder of the Son of God? Has Rome ever received any kind of cataclysmic event for that crime? Or, is it all part of the plan to put in the minds of the 10 Kings to “eat her flesh and burn her with fire?“
 
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