Revelation 17:3-7

The book of Revelation chapter 17, I’m going to read the first seven verses. 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 that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth, or land, have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth or land have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast full of the names of blasphemy having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in person, purple and scarlet color, decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, and made 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 the abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk. and with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. The angel said unto me, wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, of the beast that carryeth her, which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. May God bless to us. is sacred and holy word this morning. Now, we have stated that there are two women that have a prominent role in the Book of Revelation. One, we have the bride of Christ. She is the true church. She’s mentioned in chapter 19. She’s mentioned in chapter 21 through 22, really, more predominantly. But she’s introduced in Chapter 13 to us as the woman clothed with the sun, with the moon, under her feet. And we said the other woman was the great harlot. And here she is listed for us in this passage, and in chapter 18, she’s also spoken of as well. Our downfall is continued there. She is apostate Israel. The bride is carefully protected and preserved, even though there are many martyrs. The harlot is purposely, or purposefully destroyed by God as an enemy of the kingdom of God. Now, we talked last week about the vision of the Great Heart. We started in that section in verses 1 through 7. The judgment. We talked about from verse 1, the judgment of the Great Horde. The reason why the angel, of one of the angels of the vile judgments, portrays this vision for us and explains it, is because this is similar. This is, chapter 16 talked about the destruction of Great Babylon. But chapter 17 gives us more detail. But it provides us with a different view. of things. It’s a new vision. We have more depth and perspective, but we’re really talking about the same issue, the destruction of Jerusalem. She is a harlot or a whore. She’s unfaithful. Now here we have the idea of what we hear in the Old Testament so often Israel played the harlot. Well, here you have it. And she’s called the harlot in this passage of scripture. It’s a symbolic term. Jews almost exclusively of Israel in the Old Testament, and in particular even of Jerusalem, because that’s where the temple was located in the center of worship for Israel. The harlot of Revelation 17 is called, as we see from verse 18, the woman which thou sawst is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth. That particular city is Babylon here, and that is referring to, as we’ve already studied from chapter 11, Israel and Jerusalem in particular. And so we’re talking about the city of Jerusalem being the harlot in particular. But the influence then of the great harlot is mentioned in verses 1 and 2. She sits on many waters. Verse 15 tells us that many waters are many nations. Jerusalem extended its religious influence over a vast area of the Roman Empire and over many people. We mentioned Acts 2. There were 15 nations that were mentioned in Acts 2 that heard the disciples speaking in tongues on the day of Pentecost. So the Jews were coming from all these different nations of the Roman Empire to worship at Jerusalem at the feast. Their synagogues, we said from Acts 1521, were in almost every city of the Roman Empire. So that when Paul and Barnabas went out on the missionary journeys, the first thing they would do in every city they came to is go to the synagogue and speak there. And from there, they’d extend out to the Gentile proselytes who were worshipping with the Jews, and then beyond that to the other people in the various areas in Greece or in Turkey or whatever the case may be. The kings of the earth commit fornication with her. We said that the kings of the earth are the kings of the land, if you would. The kings associated with Israel. And it’s used in this sense, this phrase by Peter, in Acts chapter 4, verses 26 and 27, in direct reference to Herod and Pilate. He quotes from Psalm 2 and verse 1, but the reference he tells us is to Herod and Pilate and so forth. So the kings of the earth joined in with Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord. They participated in in Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord. fornication, they were complicit in the death of Jesus Christ, his apostles, and his people. These kings, in order to pacify the Jews, persecuted the church. We read when Herod found that it pleased the Jews, when he killed James, he took Peter also in the book of Acts. The Jews, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, the Jews, he killed James, he took Peter also. desired to have some type of intimate relationship with these rulers to maintain their power and influence as religious leaders. And so they were willing to cry out, we have no king but Caesar. The inhabitants of land, we read, were also made drunk in verse 2 with the wine of the harlot’s fornication. We said this referred to the apostasy of the religious leaders. Jerusalem, which then led the whole nation into religious and political fornication. The people turned away were turned away from entering into the kingdom of God by the religious leaders and encouraged to pledge their allegiance to the beast, the Caesar and the Roman Empire. And so thus the Messiah is rejected. The people were persuaded to demand that Christ be crucified by the religious leaders, and they readily complied. So this is the first two verses that we have covered. But now we have to continue to look at the vision of the Great Harlot. And the next thing I want to mention here, the third thing, we looked at the judgment in general, verse one, the influence of the great harlot. Heartlet, verses 1 and 2. The place of the Great Harlot is mentioned in verse 3, the very first part of it. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman. I’ll stop there. Now the wilderness in scripture here is the desert. It’s a dry, barren place, and the idea there’s no life. or at least little life that’s there. This symbolically speaks, I believe, of the spiritual state of Jerusalem. That there’s practically no spiritual life there. It is a wilderness. And so this is the indication. What was once the center of true worship on earth, Jerusalem. The place of the place of the world. God’s special presence is completely devoid of all that is godly and spiritually fruitful. So it’s a wasteland. Jerusalem is forsaken by God and by His people. I want you to look with me at Fosea in chapter 2 and verses 2 and 3. We have a statement, there are other places in Jeremiah and other places where this idea of wilderness is mentioned, but this will do for us, this passage. You can look at those other ones up on your own if you want to just look up wilderness and look at some of the prophets and how that term is used. But here’s a good passage for us. Josea, chapter 2, verses 2 and 3. Plead with your mother. He’s speaking here to Ami and Ruhama, and I’ll mention those in a minute when we look at something else. Plead with your mother. mother, where she is not my wife. Neither am I her husband. Let her therefore put away her hoardings out of her sight and her adulteries from between her breast, lest I naked, and set her as in the day that she was born, and make her a wilderness, and set her like a dry land and slayer with thirst. And so we see that God and his judgment upon Israel here tells them that they need to repent here and put away their evil doings, their unfaithfulness, or he’s going to make them like a wilderness, set them in a dry place. And isn’t that what we see in the book of Revelation? So you see the correlation here spiritually what he’s talking about. We have to sort of get by the visual idea. He’s given us a picture of this, but it has a spiritual meaning to it. So the place of the Great Whore is, of course, the wilderness. There’s hardly any spiritual life there in this place. And then we have the riding of the beast, the fourth thing, by the Great Horror. Did anybody have any questions before I move on here? Okay. So he carried me away in the story. spirit into the wilderness, verse three, and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, and I’ll stop there for now. Here is a woman that’s sitting upon a scarlet colored beast. Now you’ll recall that the scarlet colored beast, as we have seen, with the heads and the horns, I won’t go in all the detail, but the heads in the horns of course have to do. with the emperors, the heads. We’ll look at that a little bit later in chapter 17, when we talk about the heads more specifically. And, of course, the horns represent the various provinces and the governors of those provinces. But the scarlet-colored beast is the Roman Empire. Scarlet, we said, perhaps alludes to the blood that she shed. we referenced Revelation chapter 6 and verse 4 with the red horse in the bloodshed that’s associated with it. It’s also interesting that we mentioned in chapter 12, verse 3, that red is also the color of the dragon, because he sheds blood, but it ties the dragon and the beast together. Now, did you notice here that the woman is not the beast? She’s not any part of the beast. She’s not any part of the beast. She’s not. not a horn of the beast, she’s not a head of the beast, but she sits on the beast. She’s carried by the beast. And the beast can destroy her, as later on in this chapter, we’ll see, without it harming the beast. So she’s separate in some way from the beast. The harlot is supported and maintained by the Roman Empire. She rides it. and she uses the beast to accomplish her purposes. The image reminds us of Israel’s past dependence upon Rome so that she could attack Christ and his people. Josephus, in antiquities, says this. All the honors that the Romans and their emperor pay to our nation and of the leagues of mutual assistance, they have made with it. He talks about all these things that the Jews did, had the Romans did for them and helped them. And so the riding of the beast by the great whore here, she’s helped by the beast to accomplish her purposes. The fifth thing here is the attire of the great harlot, as we see from verse four. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, in decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. Now, we often know that harlots will dress in a very showy, flashy, outwardly seductive manner in order to gain the attention of men. Here, the harlot’s garments reflect the Jewish priestly colors of scarlet, purple, and gold. Look with me at the book of Exodus, if you were. chapter 39 verses one to three here we have the holy garments for Aaron the how God told the Israelites to make these garments this israelites. This is the way they were supposed to be made and a blue and purple and scarlet they made cloths of service to do service in the holy place and made the holy garments for Aaron as the Lord commanded Moses. He made the effort of gold, blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen. And they did beat the gold into thin plates and cut it into wires to work it in the blue and in the purple and in the scarlet and in the fine linen with cunning work. So we see a similarity here between the garments, for the high priest and the garment here of the harlot. The gold here is this fine strips that they wove into the cloth of the linen here of the priestly garments. Now, the only thing is not mentioned is the blue, but the other colors are certainly mentioned here. And we read in the book of Revelation that she has not mentioned, She’s decked out with gold and precious stones. And if you read down in verse 39 here of chapter 39 in verses 8 to 13, I won’t read it all, but you have all the precious stones on the breastplate of the priest mentioned here. Again, I think connecting this harlot with the priesthood of the Jews. The irony is the sacred office. the priesthood has degenerated into being a prostitute. Unfaithfulness. Instead of serving God, the priesthood is instead of serving the priesthood is instead serving the carnal lust of men. The golden cop is also associated with the temple worship. The harlot has a golden cop in her hand. Josepha says the greatest part of the vessels that were put in them were of silver and gold here, associated with the temple and tabernacle worship. The priesthood was full of murder, immorality, hypocrisy. It appears, maybe on the outside, with all their garments and so forth to be ceremonially clean and godly, but on the inside, it’s defiled with apostasy and fornication. as Jesus indicated in Matthew 23. J.E. Leonard in his book, Come Out of Her My People, which is a briefer commentary on the book of Revelation. Not that I fully recommend that book either. He says this, that the uninitiated, the religious system headquartered in Jerusalem appeared holy and good, exemplified by the beauty of the temple and its ceremonies, but at its center, the religion was corrupt, honoring God with its lips, but with a heart that was far from him. And I think that certainly captures the idea here. So here is the attire of the great harlot. Any questions regarding the attire? Yes. I think an interesting connection in that point is from Ezekiel. 16, where he dresses Israel with ornaments, bracelets, a chain on my neck. Oh, actually, the verse before that was 10 and 11. With badger’s skin, fine linen, and silk. Basically, and he goes on to say that she used the things that he gave her and dressed her in for prostitution. And so that seems to connect together. He gave the priesthood, he gave all, and yea used it, and here they get involved in unfaithful worship and corruption. Yeah. And putting Caesar first and so forth. Yeah, it fits in with it. There are several passages that we could look at, but what was that 16 did you say? Ezekiel 16, yeah. No reference that. 16, I think, is the one where he… Yes, he calls her a harlot. In fact, we’re going to look at that in a moment. So, You might want to hold your place on that passage. I find it interesting. Well, I won’t comment that until we get there, but I think it’s interesting. We’ll look at that. He speaks specifically of Jerusalem. He says the message starts out in the first part of E. Hegel 16 is the Jerusalem. And so it fits right in with what we’re talking about. So the attire of the great harlot. Any other? questions on that or comments? Okay, the title of the Great Harlot is mentioned in verse 5 here of Revelation 17. And upon her forehead was the name written, Mystery Babylon, the Great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth. Ford, in his general commentary on the second half of the New Testament, says this, In the picture of the adulteress, what one may have is a parody of the high priest on the Day of Atonement, wearing the vestments, especially reserved for that occasion, holding the libation offer. However, instead of the sacred name upon his brow, the priest Harlet bears the name Babylon, Mother of Harlet’s and Abominations of the earth. I think he’s heading in a while. the right direction. The identification of this harlot with the religion of Israel, I think, in the high priesthood, is important. It’s significant. Instead of having that golden plate on his turban, on his forehead, so to speak, that says, holiness to the Lord, here we have the corruption mentioned here. Now, let’s look at this what it says here. Mystery. In Scripture, something that is a mystery, is something that’s hidden, and we really can’t know it unless God reveals it to us. And so we see God is going to have to reveal the information and tell us what this is about. And so there’s some kind of mystery associated with it. And it’s true, the true identity is concealed here in this picture, until the angel explains more about it. And we’ll see as we go along. So we need enlightenment by the Holy Spirit to understand the symbol. But it’s called Babylon the Great. It is the great city of Revelation, because verse 18 tells us that it’s the great city. It provides a positive identification. Because we already saw from Chapter 11 of Revelation, that the great city is Jerusalem. So there’s no question about who this is. Abominations, it’s a word that the Bible uses often in reference to false worship. Idol worship, heathom worship, an indication, I think, of what God thinks of Israel’s present worship. That is an abomination to him. Because basically, they’re worshipping the beast. They’ve joined the idol worship, in a sense. They’ve followed along with heathen worship. With Christ’s death, all the sacrifices that are now being offered in the temple are an abomination to the Lord. It’s interesting. If you ever read Isaiah chapter 66 in verse 3, God talks about the sacrifice. It’s like offering swine flesh to God now. Because Christ’s sacrifice put an end to all this. That’s why when he died, the veil of the temple is rent. The way to the Holy of Holies is opened up. We no longer need these animal sacrifices. And so Isaiah, as he looks at, you know, ahead and he sees what’s going to happen. He’s saying, now this is an abominable. This is evil to continue to offer these sacrifices. So this is what God thinks of Israel’s worship. Now, she is also called here the mother of Harlots. Now, when you think about this, what relationship did Rome have with God as a heathen city? None. How can they be a harlot? How can they be unfaithful if they never ever had any connection? How could Rome be a mother that would give birth to other harlots? If she’s the mother of harlot, she must give birth to others that play the harlot. Jerusalem, as we saw, had great spiritual influence, and her apostasy led others astray. Josea portrays Israel as a mother, as we looked at earlier in chapter 1 and 2 there we find, giving birth to children who are cast off by the Lord. Remember, Loroama, no mercy, is the daughter. Loami, not my people, is the son. That’s in chapter 1, verse 6, and also verses. 8 and 9. And she is condemned for her hoardums and for playing the harlot. As we saw in chapter 2 in verses 2 to 5, we looked at a couple of those verses earlier. Ezekiel, in speaking directly to Jerusalem, now if you look here at the passage in Ezekiel 16, now notice the first three verses here. Again, the word of the Lord came unto me, son of man, caused Jerusalem to know her abominations, and say to her, thus saith the Lord God unto Jerusalem. And now I’ll stop there for now. But you’ll see that he is speaking directly to Jerusalem about her abominations. The language here is helpful to us. She, according to verse 16 of this passage, has played the heart. And thy garments thou didst take and bedecked thy high places with diverse colors and played the harlot thereupon. This is what Keith was referencing, the garments that God gave Israel and all the things that he provided for, they used in a profane way. And so she placed the harlot here. Now you’ll notice in verse 45 of this same chapter, 16, thou art thy mother’s daughter. Here. In verse 55, When thy sister Sodom and her daughter shall return to their former estate, and Samaria and her daughter shall return their former state, then thou and thy daughter shall return to your former state. Okay. Here, whether we talk about the northern kingdom or we talk about the southern kingdom, and he sees them as playing the harlot, being unfaithful to the Lord. But here we have the idea of daughters being connected with Sodom. And remember, Sodom is another name that’s used for Jerusalem. They’re spiritually called Sodom. And Jerusalem is. in Revelation chapter 11 verse 8. We looked at this passage before, and you can look at this passage in more detail for your own interest. But the towns and villages around Jerusalem, the other cities of Judea and so forth, were made harlots also. So not only was Jerusalem corrupted, but their synagogues, follow along with the worship. that was taking place at Jerusalem, and therefore all that Jerusalem produced, wherever it is, they corrupted. And so whether the worship is in Greece, whether it’s in Turkey, whether it’s in Spain, wherever there is a synagogue, it’s following the teaching and ideas. ideas from Jerusalem and thus becomes corrupted. And they are the, so we might call them the daughters or the children or the offspring. So that she’s the mother of all these false areas of worship. Any question about the title given to her here? All right. Let’s, uh, Let’s see if I can get into here and look at the drunkenness of the great whore in verse six. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and I saw her, and I wondered with great admiration. Babylon here is responsible, as chapter 18, verse 24, tells us, for all that were slain upon the earth, or the land, including prophets and apostles and saints. The Roman Empire under Nero persecuted the saints, and Rome was stained with the blood of the people of God and the Colosseum martyrs. We know that. Yet Rome was really more recently the enemy of the church and begun to persecute the church. Throughout the Gospels and throughout Acts, Jerusalem was the main persecutor of the saints. Old Testament, Jerusalem was the main persecutor. Rome was never guilty of killing any of the prophets of the Old Testament. Jerusalem, however, certainly was. All of them, it says in Revelation 1824. Jesus said in Luke 1333, it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. They’re the main murderers of the people of God. The Jewish religiously leadership was often responsible for using their authority to kill the prophets so that Jesus could say, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that kill us the prophets, and stoneest them that are sent unto thee. I don’t have time this morning, but if you look at Luke 11, 47 to 51, Matthew 23, 29, through 36, Jesus said that they are ultimately to blame for all the righteous blood that shed upon. the earth or the land. And he says, it rest upon Jerusalem. And this generation shall not go unpunished because of it. Unless you are willing to resurrect the office of apostle, Babylon then cannot be a future end-time city of which the people of God and John’s day were ignorant. It has to be related to this time frame that we have set out and the scripture indicates. The idea of drunkenness here is overindulgence. Not only does she kill, but she overindulges in it. She goes overboard, you know, in all her efforts. She does the nth degree to kill the apostles and prophets and the people of God and slaughtered them. The excessiveness of her work. Finally, here, the need for an interpreter is mentioned in the last part of verse 6. And then verse 7, he says, I wondered, when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration, and the angel said unto me, wherefore didst thou marvel, I will tell thee the mystery of the woman of the beast that carryeth her with which hath the seven heads and ten horns. John here is taken by surprise by what he sees in this vision. For Babylon here is portrayed as a harlot and he expected to see a city in ruins. Who is this woman? Why is the city portrayed as a harlot here? So he needs an interpreter. And the angel who revealed the vision is prepared to give its meaning. The mystery of the woman and the beast which carries her is made understandable to John in the verses that follow. and that’s what we have to look at. Next is we get to the explanation. We have the picture here. We’ve got the picture painted, and now we’re going to get a little more detail about what this means and how this is explained by the Lord. Any questions then as we close this vision of the harlot? Next time, Lord willing, we’ll look at the mystery of the harlot explained. Yes? Verse 6. you said to look up these verses. I got good. What is Matthew? What is the chapter? Matthew chapter 23 and verses 29 to 36. Anything else?