209 - Babylon: The Final One World Government [B]

Babylon: The Final One World Government. Revelation 17

We shift from the seven bowl judgment which were the focus of the last two chapters to the detailed look at how that come to fruition in the final days. This is typical of the way that John writes and describes these end times. There are the vast sweeping chapters that cover a lot of territory and then he comes back and focuses on one thing. It is very typical of Hebrew writing style. The bowl judgments occur near the end of the Tribulation, the last six, maybe nine months. It certainly seems that things go very rapidly once that first bowl judgment begins to pour out. It culminates in the battle of Armageddon, the great day of God the Almighty, as the armies of the world are called together to the place called Megiddo. It is not just a matter of the military campaign itself that focuses on Jerusalem but along with that in those final days there is the literally earth-shattering event that takes place along with the hail from heaven that falls upon men, each stone weighing about 100lbs. Men continue to blame and to blaspheme God throughout this whole event. What is impressive about all of this is just the implacability of the pagan, the unbeliever who will never trust in God, those who are termed "earth dwellers."

Chapters 17 & 18 shift our focus again to where we get a description of the collapse of the empire, the headquarters of the Antichrist, and it is under the title of the collapse and fall of Babylon the Great. One of the great interpretive problems that we face as we get to chapter 17 is just what is meant by Babylon. Is this talking about a political Babylon in chapter 17 or an economic Babylon and in chapter eighteen focusing on a spiritual Babylon? This was the position taken by many dispensationalists down through the years—Babylon is not to be taken literally but it simply speaks of the political dimension of the world system that unites under the Antichrist, probably in Rome, and that Babylon was just a code word for Rome, and then chapter eighteen just describes the spiritual apostasy, the religious system that unites the world in opposition to God during the Tribulation period. However, the problem with that is that nowhere in the Scripture is the word "Babylon" used in a non-literal sense. It has a symbolic value but it without losing its literal significance. What that means is that when we talk about, for example in American history, George Washington. Just the invoking his name communicates a certain symbolic value about integrity and as a representative of the founding fathers and the founding principles of the country. He has a symbolic value but that doesn't take away from his literal historical reality. So something that is literal and historical can also have a symbolic meaning. It is not an allegorical meaning and it is not spiritualizing the text. When we allegorize and spiritualize we take something in the Scripture and say it really doesn't have any literal historical, actual meaning, it just has a spiritual meaning. So this isn't allegory, it is not spiritualizing the text, Babylon isn't code word for Rome; it is always used in Scripture to refer to the city that was built on the Euphrates river. Unfortunately many expositors of the Word, who are dispensationalists and believe in the literal interpretation of Scripture, sort of hiccup at that point and just start interpreting in a non-literal way. So we have to go back and evaluate some of the evidence of Scripture because the significance of Babylon is profound.   

This ties all of Scripture together. The first major scene of rebellion of the human race as a race takes place at the tower of Babel in Genesis chapter eleven. That become a symbol of the kingdom of man and man's rebellion against God all the way down through history, and it gets defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ at the end of the Tribulation period. So it is tying together all of these loose ends and completing judgments on human rebellion that have been postponed due to God's grace.

Revelation 17:1 ^NASB "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 introduces the next two chapters which are going to focus on how God is going to bring His judgment in time on Babylon itself and on the entire religious-economic-political ^system of the human race that sets itself against God. The seven angels refer directly to the context of the seven angels that poured out the bowls in chapters 15 & 16. There are only two times in Scripture where an angel comes to John and says, "Come, I will show you." One is in this passage and the other is in chapter 21:9 ^NASB "Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, 'Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb'." In chapter 17 it is Come and see the harlot; in chapter 21 it is Come and see the bride. So the contrast there is being brought out by the writer: the church which is presented as being faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ and the great harlot who sits on the waters. This idea of sitting on the waters is a phrase that comes out of the Old Testament that relates to Babylon itself. So from the very beginning the great harlot is described in terms that take us to a literal Babylon. The two key prophecies referring to the destruction of Babylon are found in Isaiah 13 & 14 and in Jeremiah 51. In Jeremiah 51:12, 13 ^NASB "Lift up a signal against the walls of Babylon; Post a strong guard, Station sentries, Place men in ambush! For the LORD has both purposed and performed What He spoke concerning the inhabitants of Babylon. O you who dwell by [Heb. upon] many waters, Abundant in treasures, Your end has come, The measure of your end." But it might be said that Babylon sits out in the middle of the Iraqi desert by the river Euphrates. In the ancient world they had devised  a brilliant plan to irrigate the desert. They had vast canals that radiated out from the city of Babylon, and it was those canals which took water from the Euphrates to be used to water crops and raise all the food for the people in Babylon. Someone standing in the east and looking towards the sun setting in the west and the sun was reflecting of all the water in these canals it looked as if the city actually sat on the water. So this is a historical description that related to Babylon.

In Revelation 17:1 we see a series of words that are cognates of each other. "Harlot" is the feminine noun porne [pornh]. In verse 2 we see that she is described as one with whom the kings of the earth committed "fornication," the verb porneo [pornew]. Then the word is repeated again in v. 4, and again in v. 4. Obviously this word group, porne and porneo, is important to understand, and it is important because a lot of people don't understand how this word is used in the Scripture. The main idea has to do with being unfaithful. The core meaning of the word doesn't have to do with physical immorality and neither does it necessarily have to do with spiritual immorality. The core meaning of the word is just to be unfaithful, to betray a trust that has been given to someone.

The phrase "sitting on many waters" was not only a historical term used to describe the city of Babylon but it is also a term that has meaning in light of what we have been reading about this kingdom. The beast came up out of the water in Revelation chapter twelve. In Daniel chapter seven Daniel had his vision of the four beasts that came out of the waters, out of the sea. It is a picture of the oceans that are tumultuous, chaotic, uncontrolled by man, and it represents here the nations of the earth and the fact that they are out from under the control of God and therefore are in chaos, without order and disobedient. So this harlot is going to be a symbolic representation of the kingdom of the Antichrist, and "sitting on many waters" also relates to the fact that she controls or influences many nations, the Gentile nations represented in this imagery of the waters.   

Revelation 17:2 ^NASB "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." We know right away this is not talking about some physical act; it is talking about a spiritual act or about some sort of act of betrayal. The woman represents a system and it is this system that the kings of the earth, the rulers (political and spiritual) have followed after in unfaithfulness to God. Remember God created man for the purpose of ruling over the fish of the sea, the beasts of the filed, the birds of the air, and man rebelled against God. Man was to scatter and multiply and fill the earth, and what happens? Under the leadership of Nimrod they start building cities in the area of the two rivers. The first is Babel, the second in Nineveh. Babel is the capital of the Babylonian empire; Nineveh is the capital of the horrific, evil Assyrian empire, and so this area becomes the center of the rebellion against God. It is signified in Genesis 11 with the creation of a kingdom whose sole purpose is to defy God. That is the act of betrayal, the breaking of the covenant with Noah and they are full of themselves. So we see that the inhabitants of the earth, the earth dwellers, were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. It is using this imagery of a person drinking wine until he just loses inhibitions, control, any sense of right and wrong; and that is the result of imbibing in the thinking of this whole system that has betrayed God and rebelled against Him. This leads to the almost destruction of the human race during the Tribulation period. The core meaning of "fornication" here is betrayal or being unfaithful to a covenant. 

In vv. 1 & 2 we see the angelic invitation. This is an invitation John can't refuse and he has to follow the lead, so when the angel invites him to come himself he must go. In verse 3 he goes with the angel to see the woman who is sitting over the many waters.

Revelation 17:3 ^NASB "And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns." This has the idea of "by means of the Spirit." It is the Holy Spirit who enables all of this to take place because it is the Holy Spirit who has the responsibility of overseeing revelation. When we read this verse it takes us back to other verses we have studied in the past dealing with this description of the final form of the kingdom of man in history. What do we mean by "the kingdom of man"? Starting in Genesis chapter eleven we have rebellious arrogant, rebellious men under the leadership of Nimrod seeking to establish a political kingdom in direct disobedience to God's command. These men are set on defining their lives and their associations and their societies on their own terms apart from what God has prescribed and revealed and mandated. The kingdom of man begins there and it begins to grow. We see the conflict throughout the Old Testament between the kingdom of man and the kingdom of God, it is the conflict between divine viewpoint versus human viewpoint; it is the conflict ultimately between God and Satan. All of these are simply different ways of looking at the angelic conflict and how it is working our in human history.

The description of this beast is that it was full of names of blasphemy—in other words, antagonism to God, dishonoring God, disrespectful of God—and it is described as having seven heads and ten horns. We have seen this same imagery used in passages such as Revelation 12:3 where it describes the dragon, Satan the serpent of old against the plan of God as depicted in the nation of Israel. In 12:3 that dragon is described with the same terminology as having seven heads, ten horns, and on his head were seven diadems. What this depicts is that the real power behind these human kingdoms that make up the one kingdom of the Antichrist is Satan. He is the one pushing the ideas, the agenda, the one who is influencing them, and he is the one who gives his authority to both the Antichrist and the false prophet.

There are four beasts is Revelation. The first beast is described in 13:1-10, and that is the Antichrist. The second beast is called the false prophet—13:11-18. Then we have another beast that the woman rides in chapter seventeen, and it is clear from verse 8 that this beast is the final form of the kingdom of man. The third beast is the beastly depiction of the final form of the kingdom of man that has the characteristics of those four beasts that Daniel saw—the lopsided bear, the leopard with the four heads, the winged lion, and the beast that can't be described. Those four beasts all come together in Revelation 13:1-3 in this final form that is the kingdom ruled by the Antichrist and is empowered by Satan. Dragons show up in different places in different kingdoms as symbols of kingdoms in the ancient world.

Revelation 17:4 ^NASB "The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and 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." In the history of Protestant interpretation of these passages the woman who rides the beast has too often been depicted as the Roman Catholic church. There's a great book written by Dave Hunt called A Woman Rides the Beast that is great to read. He deals a lot with the whole New Age system and other religious ideas that make up the cosmic system. The only thing he got wrong is that the woman who rides the beast is not the Roman Catholic church, and it is not the pope. But this has a rich tradition in Protestant theology and exposition going to back to the time of the Reformation to identify the Babylon, the end time kingdom as being dominated by the pope, dominated by Rome, dominated by Roman Catholic theology. Elements of Roman Catholic theology may be brought out to be put together with elements from other religious systems in order to create this end-time religious system. One of the things that is seen running through ancient religions, as well as through modern forms of religion, is this whole thread of a mother-child cult.

What we see here in v. 4 is this woman who is a vile representation of the best that human civilization has to offer. She is depicted as being arrayed in purple and scarlet. The dye that was used to create purple and scarlet were made from crushing various sea mollusks, taking the secretions from them and using that to create these dyes. It would take tens of thousands of these mollusks to make a significant amount of dye and therefore the dye was extremely expensive. So the picture here is in the commercial and economic prosperity of the kingdom, that she is arrayed in the most expensive of garments. Everything about her speaks of tremendous wealth and affluence. But that is all there is. She has pursued commercialism and commercial might over against a relationship with God. Once God is taken out of the picture all that is left is a worship of material things. She is depicted this way because she has all of the best that human civilization has to offer but she is pictured as beastly and horrible and drunk; there is nothing attractive about her. Just as kingdoms of the past were pictured as beasts in Daniel chapter seven, and looking at them from the human perspective in Daniel chapter two, we have the kingdoms represented as a great idol composed of all of these fine metals—that is how man looks at his kingdom; as glorious—but God looks at the kingdoms of man as abominations giving themselves to things that have no eternal value whatsoever.

Revelation 17:5 ^NASB "and on her forehead a name {was} written, a mystery, 'BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH'." The idea there is that on her forehead there is this label and what is shows is her essential character. The problem with the KJV and NKJV translators is that they looked at the Greek and saw the word musterion [musthrion] there, which doesn't have an article, and took it as part of the title. But the title for this kingdom is Mystery Babylon. The term "mystery" in Scripture indicates some kind of unrevealed information or knowledge, and so there is something that is unrevealed, something that is knowledge about this kingdom that is not attainable other than through supernatural means. There is something about this kingdom that is a mystery. It has to do with unrevealed doctrine related to this kingdom, and another reason we can support this is because the phrase BABYLON THE GREAT is used three other times in Revelation without "mystery" in front of it—14:8; 16:19; 18:2.

What is so mysterious about Babylon? The word "mystery" has the idea of a previously unknown or unrevealed truth. It is not mystical and it is not spiritual. This is on her forehead which signifies her intrinsic character, and so we can conclude that the unrevealed matter is the intrinsic character of the kingdom of man and that it is really not understood or perceived apart from special revelation. Just think about this. The people that we work with who have no knowledge of anything related to Scripture or spiritual things, and their value systems and what they think makes a nation great, a civilization great, is the complete opposite of what the Scripture says; the things they think make people happy are just the opposite of what the Scripture says. So this is indicating the fact that only through spiritual perception and understanding things through divine viewpoint can we really perceive the evil nature of the kingdoms of man.

She is "the mother of harlots," i.e. all unfaithfulness toward God has its source or root in the kind of thinking that characterized Babel, the founding of Babel under Nimrod. Three verses out of Isaiah, Ezekiel and Jeremiah illustrate how fornication or harlotry is used in the Scripture to express unfaithfulness or betrayal to God. In Isaiah 1:21 there is an indictment of Jerusalem, how the faithful city has become a harlot. ^NASB "How the faithful city has become a harlot, She {who} was full of justice! Righteousness once lodged in her, But now murderers." Having an unjust legal system that has departed from spiritual, biblical absolutes is in violation of the Mosaic covenant and so they have become unfaithful; they had broken the Mosaic covenant. That is the core idea here, communicating the idea of infidelity. Ezekiel 16:28, 29 ^NASB "Moreover, you played the harlot with the Assyrians because you were not satisfied; you played the harlot with them and still were not satisfied. You also multiplied your harlotry with the land of merchants, Chaldea, yet even with this you were not satisfied." Again, this is the idea of being unfaithful to God. Rather than trusting God they trusted in their own efforts, their own peace treaties, their own abilities to handle situations, and so that is represented as harlotry, infidelity, fornication. Jeremiah 3:6 ^NASB "Then the LORD said to me in the days of Josiah the king, "Have you seen what faithless Israel did? She went up on every high hill and under every green tree, and she was a harlot there." This was where they had the worship centers for worshipping the idols, the prosperity gods and goddesses or the fertility religions. Rather than being faithful and trusting in God to provide all of the needs and security and prosperity of Israel they were looking to these other gods and goddesses, other false religious systems in order to have those things established. It is the breaking of the covenant. How did all this begin? Babel begins back in Genesis chapter ten.  

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