Revelation 17:1-2

Thank you. I’m glad somebody was thinking this. Chapter 17 of the book of Revelation, beginning with verse 1. I’m going to read through the first six verses as we continue our study here through the verse of the book of Revelation. Some of this we’ve covered in the past, but hopefully we’ll have covered in more detail in this study in the next week or so. Revelation 17, beginning with verse 1, and there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials and talked with me, saying unto me, come hither, I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore, which sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth. have made drunk with the wine of her, have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. 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. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, decked with gold, gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name-written mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. May God bless to us his sacred and holy word this morning. In the book of Revelation, there are two women that are prominent. The first is the woman clothed with the sun. wearing a crown of 12 stars with the moon under her feet. It’s mentioned earlier in this book in Chapter 12. We’ll see a little more about her in toward the end of the book here as well. And then we have the woman here in Chapter 17 sitting on a scarlet-colored beast who was called a great whore. One. is a faithful woman, and one is an unfaithful woman. The woman clothed with the sun represents the Church of Christ. In particular, we said, a portion of that church, the Jewish church, located in the land of Israel, which has to escape, as you remember, in Chapter 12, and flee to the mountains. The Great Hor, however, while clothed, as we’ll see, like a priest of God, is actually a great persecutor of the church. As verse 6 indicates, she’s drunk with the blood of the saints and so forth. The woman of Revelation 12 is carefully protected by God, for she is part of the bride of Christ, which will have the fuller bride, is mentioned in Revelation 19. and 21 and 22 of this book. The Great Horror of Revelation 17 is purposely destroyed by God, as verse 17, indicates to us. God brings about the destruction and fulfillment of His Word. It’s an evil entity which has to be eradicated so that the kingdom of God can, advance and so this is what is presented to us. Now, the vision of the Great Harlot is provided in chapter 17 and verses 1 to 6. And in verse 7 on we have the interpretation of that dream and the angel giving us more information about who she is and what it means. The judgment of the great harlot is mentioned here. The judgment of the great harlot is mentioned here in verse 1. There came one of the seven angels which have the seven vials and talked with me saying unto me, come hither and I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that siteth upon many waters. You recall that we said the final wrath of God’s judgment has been poured out in the vile judgments. In fact, we read in verse 17 of chapter 16. that it is done. It is finished. The great Babylon, verse 19 of chapter 16, has already been punished with the fierceness of divine wrath from this previous prophecy that we have studied. However, and you’ll find this a lot in Revelation, God deems it necessary to take a look at this from a little bit different perspective. give us another angle on this judgment. And that’s what he’s doing here in chapter 17 is he gives us more depth and perception on Babylon’s fault. Now, it is one of the angels who brought one of these vile judgments that’s going to explain this because obviously the vile judgment have to do the same thing. And so he’s going to give us an explanation of this and a new vision to John of the event that we’ve already looked at. It is of enormous importance. And therefore, John and his readers need to fully understand what is being said, what is pictured in this passage. The reigning Christ will show his power and he will crush this power and he will crush this great enemy which has been persecuting his church. The key point is that she is described as a great whore. And that deserves our careful contemplation. That this is how this woman is portrayed. Now, in Scripture, a whore or harlot is used in a symbolic sense, when it’s used that way, like in prophecy many times, it means one who has broken her marriage vow, her marriage covenant, and has been unfaithful. And that’s the idea of being unfaithful. In scripture, the symbolic term, Harlet is almost exclusively used in reference to Israel. read all the Old Testament prophets. And in particular, it is used of Jerusalem because it is the city where God’s temple was, where the worship of God is centered, if you would. And so if it is corrupted, that certainly puts emphasis on the idea of being a horror or a harlot, unfaithful to the true God. Let’s look at a couple of passages of scripture from the Old Testament prophets. We get a feel for this. Isaiah chapter 1, verses 18 to 21, come now. Let us reason together say, if the Lord, though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land. But if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. How is the faithful city become a harlot? It was full of judgment. Righteousness lodged in it, but now murderers. When I established you, Jerusalem, as the place of worship, you were once faithful. But now, how is it? that you will become a harlot. And here it is the city being called a harlot in this passage. Look at chapter 57 of the book of Revelation. Or excuse me, 57 of Isaiah. Let’s look at the first five verses here of chapter 57. The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth to heart, it to heart. And merciful men are taken. away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace. They shall rest in their beds, each one waking, or excuse me, each one walking in his uprightness. But draw near hither, ye sons of the sorcerer, the seed of the adulterer and the whore. Against whom do ye sport yourselves? Against whom make ye a wise? mouth and draw out the tongue. Are you not children of transgression, a seed of falsehood? In flaming yourself with idols under every green tree, saying the children, slaying the children in the valleys under the cliffs of the rocks. Here he calls them the seed of the adulterer and the whore. For they followed false worship. Look at Jeremiah chapter 2, if you would, and 19 to 21. Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backsliding shall reprove thee. Know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord of hosts. You forsaken me. For of all time, I have. have broken thy yoke, burst thy bands, and thou said, I will not transgress, when upon every high hill, and under every green tree thou wondrous, playing the harlot. Yet I had planted thee a noble vine, wholly a right seed. How then art thou turn into the degenerate plant of a strange vine? And to me, you were once faithful, and now You are a harlot. You are worshipping false gods. Look at chapter 3 in verses 1 to 3 with me of Jeremiah. They say if a man put away his wife, she go from him and become another man, shall he return unto her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted? But thou hast played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again to me, said the Lord. Lord. Lift up thine eyes under the high places and see where thou hast not been lain with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as in Arabian in the wilderness, has polluted the land with thy hordoms and with thy wickedness. Therefore, the showers have been with holden. And there hath been no ladder ring. and thou hast a whore’s forehead. Thou refuse us to be ashamed. Here again, the same idea. One more passage, this time from Ezekiel. So you see the three major prophets all give us the same kind of language, all with reference to either the city or the whole nation as being a harlot. Look at chapter 16 of the book of Ezekiel. and verses 13 through 15. And have taken of the king’s seed and made a covenant with him, and have taken an oath of him. He hath also taken an oath of him. He hath, oh, I should be in chapter 16. I’m sorry. 1613. Thus wast thou, decked with gold and silver, and thy raiment was a fine, and thy raiment was a fine, linen and silk and broidered work. Thou didst eat fine flour and honey and oil. And thou wast exceeding beautiful. And thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty, for it was perfect through my comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord. But thou didst trust in thy own beauty and playest the harlot because of thy renown and pour’st out thy fornication on everyone that passed by. And here we have the same thing with regard to Jerusalem and about the unfaithfulness of the Jews here. So in the Old Testament, if you go through it, this is just a sampling. you go through the Old Testament, it is Israel that’s spoken of as the wife of Jehovah. She was unfaithful to the Lord. She pursued other God. She corrupted the worship of God. Rome certainly was never in a covenant relationship with God, in which she could be said to be unfaithful. So that’s one of the reasons Rome does not fit this particular connotation. The harlot city in question is Jerusalem. She is the great whore of the book of Revelation. Now, it’s important to note. There are two other cities that are mentioned with regard to being a harlot in the scriptures. One is Tyre, and the other is Nineveh. Isaiah 23 gives us Tar. Nahum, chapter 3, verse 4 gives us the idea of Nineveh of Nineveh being a harlot. Now the kingdom of Tyre, in the time of David and then his son, Solomon, appears to have shown an interest in the true worship. of God. And they assisted, you recall Tyre, assisted in the building of the temple. They entered into a covenant relationship with David and Solomon. Amos 1.9 says they had forsaken that. You remembered not the brotherly covenant. And that’s one of the things for which they were condemned. So at one time, they were involved, and it seems like maybe more than we are told in the scriptures we sort of just have the brief things about Tar and what they did, and perhaps how they provided timber and things of this nature. But we see that they had some kind of covenant relationship with David and Solomon. Ninevehava, you recall, was converted to the Lord. under Jonah’s preaching. Jonas chapter 3, they repented. Jesus said in the New Testament that the people of Nineveh, because they repented at the prophet Jonah, but they wouldn’t repent when a greater prophet was, his generation wouldn’t repent with a greater prophet, the Lord himself being there, that Jonah’s people that repented, here that the people of Nineveh would stand up in the judgment, the final judgment, and testify against Christ’s generation. You read that in the book of Matthew 12, 41. But later on, we find this city turning away from the Lord, and thus Nahum talks about the destruction. It comes, what Jonah says comes, but it comes later, then they get a reprieve. But when they turned away from the Lord, judgment did come. And thus, both of these cities can rightly then be called a prophet because they were unfaithful to what they once had connection with the Lord about. They had some kind of association with the true worship of God and turned away from it. So in Scripture, you as a nation or a city are only called a harlot if you once had a relationship to the Lord but a band. the worship of Jehovah. So the judgment of the Great Horde. We see the influence of the Great Hore in verses 1 and 2. Now, we read verse 1, but let me add on verse 2 here, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of our fornication. Now, verse 1, us that she sits here upon many waters. Jerusalem extended its religious influence over a vast area and many people. For verse 15 tells us that he set them to me the waters which thou saw us where the woman sitteth are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues and tongues. In other words, this has nothing to do with geographical location. In Acts 2, do you remember how it describes all the nations that had sent people to the Feast of Pentecost from all over the Roman Empire? It was like 15 nations that are listed who heard the apostles speaking in their own language. Even though it was a, it was a foreign language to the Jews. They knew the language of their area, and they could hear it in their own language from that part of the country or area. Whether it would Babylon or Syria or Cyprus or Asia Minor or Egypt or Greece or Italy, wherever they were from, they heard the Word of God. So they had all come to Jerusalem to worship. In Jerusalem, you see, was the spiritual capital. All these people from all these different areas across the Roman Empire were worshipping at Jerusalem because the Jews were in all these places. So there was sort of like an empire within the Roman Empire, an empire over which Jerusalem had power and influence. Throughout the world there was an allegiance that was foremost given to Jerusalem by these Jews. Remember what Jesus said in condemning the Pharisees in Matthew 2315, woe unto you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you can pass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, you make him twofold more the child of hell than yourself. You go across the Mediterranean Sea. You go through many, lands in order to make some new proselyte for you. For this reason, you’ll recall that the Jews spread their religion, even in a corrupted form at this point, throughout the entire known world, the Roman Empire at that time. So whenever Paul and his companions, wherever they went, they go into a city, what do they do? What’s the first thing to do? They go to the synagogue because there is a synagogue there. And the Jews and their proselytes are gathered in these synagogues for worship. In Acts 15, when the church is going to send out a message to all the churches of the Gentiles, that they do not need to be circumcised in order to be saved. You recall that one of the things that was mentioned with regard to this matter about the law, Well, do they need information about the law is the question. Well, what did they say? What did the Apostle say? For Moses of old time hath in every city, them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day. In every city, in every city of the Roman Empire. So we have all this influence. And so over all these people, Jerusalem sat, had power over them. So it’s in this sense. In the idea of great influence, Jerusalem sat on many waters. She ruled over people’s multitudes and even nations in that sense. So she sits on many waters. Any questions? That’s far. All right. The kings of the earth commit fornication with her. Verse 2. Well, an argument could be made that the kings of the earth here refer to all the nations, because sometimes that phrase is used that way, which were the objects of Jerusalem’s affections and her international commerce. I don’t think that’s the meaning here. The kings of the earth, I think, should be understood as the kings of the land, just as the next phrase here, the inhabitants of the earth should be taken as the inhabitants. of the lane. In other words, the kings of Israel, Judea, or the Palestine area. This very phrase is used in a restricted sense by Peter. In Acts chapter 4, verses 26 and 27, we looked at it in the past. He refers that phrase from Psalm 2, with the kings of the earth. He refers that phrase to Herod and Pilate. So that very phrase, the kings of the earth from the Psalms, he refers it in an inspired interpretation given by the Holy Spirit to Herod and Pontus Pilate. So the kings of the land joined with Israel’s fornication or unfaithfulness to the Lord. We know how often the Roman officials were complainsful. implicit in the death of Christ or his disciples, or the killing of his people. Because of Jerusalem’s greatness, because of their tremendous influence throughout the Roman Empire, the Roman rulers in the land, sought to appease the Jewish religious leaders. In order to please the Jews, to keep them pacified, if you would. They joined with them in persecuting the Church of Christ. The Sadducees, who were the controlling faction really in the priesthood of the Jews, were quite willing to work hand and glove with the Roman rulers pushing them to do their dirty work. To crucify Christ, killed or imprisoned the apostles, allow the Jewish leaders to put Christians to death and so forth. We read in several passages. Scripture, this is the case. Let’s look at Matthew 27, verses 11 to 26. 27, beginning with verse 11. And Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying, art thou the king of the Jews? And Jesus said, on him thou sayest. And when he was accused, of the chief priest and elders, he answered nothing. Then said, Pilate, unto him, Hearest thou not, how many things they witness against thee, and he answered him to never a word, insomuch that the governor marveled greatly. Now, at the feast, the governor was wont to release to release unto the people a prisoner whom they would, and they had then a notable prisoner called Varabas. Therefore, when they were, they were gathered together, Pilate said unto them, whom will ye that I release unto you, Baravis, or Jesus, which is called Christ, for he knew that for envy they had delivered him. When he was set down on the judgment seat, his wife sent unto him, saying, have nothing to do with that just man, for I have suffered many things this day in a dream because of him. But the chief priest and elders persuaded the Malded, that they should ask Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor answered and said unto them, whether of the twain will ye that I release unto you, they said Barabbas. Pilots said under them, what shall I do then with Jesus, which is called Christ? And they all say on them, let him be crucified. The governor said, why? What evil hath he done? They cried out the saying, let him be crucified. When Pilots saw that he could prevail nothing, but rather a tumult was made, took water, washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person, see ye to it. Then they answered all the people and said his blood be upon us on our children. Then released he Barabbas under them, and when he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified. You’ll notice, even though he didn’t want to crucify Christ, he did so to pacify the Jews. He did so because of their influence, and they might cause a rebellion, and so he decided to give into them. And we find us repeatedly in Scripture. Look at Acts chapter 12, for example, in verses 1 to 4. I’m just going to pick out a couple of examples, and then you can weigh that for yourself. Now about that time, here the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. Because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. Then were the days of unleavened bread. And when he had apprehended him, he put him into prison and delivered him to four quarter quadrants of soldiers to keep him intending after Easter to really that should be the Passover to bring him forth to the people. And so here they did it. You know, Herod did this to please the Jews. Look at chapter 24 and verse 27 of Acts, also. So here we have Festus. But after two years, Porchius, Festus came in Felix’s room, and Felix, willing to show the Jews of pleasure, left Paul bound. You see how much influence they had, how complicit these kings of the earth were, and how they were used by the Jews and the power the Jews had in some ways over them. When the promise As bridegroom arrived, Jerusalem was already fornicating with Caesar, already unfaithful, willing to proclaim we have no king but Caesar, as we already read, Matthew 27. Rejecting Christ’s kingship, the chief priest and the religious leaders desired intimate relations with the kings of the earth, with the ruling Roman power. to maintain their power and influence the land. So they worked with the Roman rulers in order that they may maintain their position. They were always fearful, I could lose their position, and so they worked with the Roman rulers as much as they could. So the kings of the earth commit fornication with her. They’re complicit in her unfaithfulness. They’re involved in it because they wanted to please the Jews. We also read the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. The apostasy of Jerusalem, in other words, the city itself, particularly the religious leadership of the city, led to the whole nation being in religious fornication. In other words, they let astray the whole nation of the Jews by their wickedness. The Jewish leadership did all they could to hinder the Jewish people from entering the kingdom of God, you remember, and embracing Christ. So they were kept in a spiritual stupor. They were made drunk by the intoxicating, the all-influential religious leadership so that the Messiah was rejected. And we see. the tremendous influence they had. The people complied with the religious leaders, maligning and discrediting Jesus Christ, and Jesus, as you recall, was accused all sorts of evil by the leadership, that he was an agent of Satan, that he was a religious imposter, that he was doing his miracles by demonic power, that he was speaking against Moses and God’s law and that he was opposing the tradition of the elders and the people were persuaded to demand that Jesus Christ be crucified by the religious leaders and they readily complied, which we read in Matthew 27. So we see the influence of the great harlot. She sits on many waters. the kings of the earth commit fornication with her and the inhabitants of the land are made drunk with the wine of her fornication. I think I want to stop at this point. Do you have any questions and as we look at this? Any questions about today?