And that's part of this book. It seems to me the best way to interpret the book is in a literal manner, seeking to understand it in its grammatical and historical context. It is a book of prophecy. It is unique in the New Testament in that sense because it is devoted to prophecy.
The first three chapters deal with letters to seven churches that existed in the early days of the church, but the rest of the book deals with events that are yet to come, as is the case with the seventeenth and eighteenth chapters. Now, as we have noted as we've worked our way through the book, that there are portions of it that seem to advance the chronology of the book. There are portions that are laid out sequentially. We can see this happens, then this happens, then this happens.
Occasionally, there are breaks in that chronological movement. And by the Spirit, John fills in what's happening behind the scenes or gives us a broad stroke picture of the whole book and events that take place in that seven-year period called the tribulation period. Now, that is the case with chapters seventeen and eighteen.
We certainly see the end of the seven-year period in what is said in chapter eighteen, but John seems to step back from the chronological flow of the book and now he's going to tell us about a part of events that are taking place on the earth in the religious and political realm under the title of Babylon. In chapter seventeen, we have what might be termed religious Babylon addressed. And then in chapter eighteen, the political and commercial Babylon addressed.
In one sense, chapter seventeen deals with events that take place within, it would seem, the first three and a half years of the book. Whereas the utter and complete destruction of the political commercial Babylon described in chapter eighteen has to take place toward the end of the whole seven-year period. And so it's in the last three and a half years. One thing that we understand is that religion of a sort will flourish in the first three and a half years of the tribulation period.
It will be encouraged, that shouldn't surprise us, because Satan is a religious being and he seeks to promote religion, man-made religion, religion that is satanic in its origin and which is anti-God in its character and which will ultimately lead men and women away from God to hell forever. Let's begin reading.
It says, Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit, into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.
One is astonished at this sight that he is given by one of the angels. He is taken away in the spirit, which is language similar to what we saw in chapter one. And he is taken to a wilderness where he sees this figure that is described. I have suggested to you that this Babylon the Great that we are going to study tonight is a religious system. It is a religious Babylon. And as we think about that, we need to identify, first of all, who is this religious Babylon.
There have been various identities assigned to it through the years. It might help us to go back and think about the origin of Babylon. Would you go to the book of Genesis to the tenth chapter please? And let's notice where Babel begins. Genesis chapter 10 and verse 8. We are reading here about the sons of Ham, who was one of the sons of Noah. This son's name was Cush in verse 8. He begot Nimrod. He began to be a mighty one in the earth. This is not complimentary language.
It refers to someone who was great for his wickedness, renowned for his evil. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore it is said, like Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. And then it lists other cities as well. And so Babel first is mentioned in the Bible in connection with this man who was very wicked.
Now it comes to our attention again in chapter 11 when it comments about the fact that the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there and they said to one another, come let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They had brick for stone and they had asphalt for mortar and they said, come let us build ourselves a city and a tower, a ziggurat, whose top is in the heavens.
Let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. And so here is man's attempt to find unity in himself and to build a name for himself. And you see here the overflow of Satan's own spirit in mankind. I will make a name for myself. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built and the Lord said, indeed the people are one and they all have one language and this is what they begin to do.
Now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come let us go down and there confuse their language that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them and abroad from there over the face of the earth and they ceased building the city therefore its name is called Babel. Because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
And so now we understand again how Babel got its name and what originated there. The building of this tower was part of a religious system. It was man centered and its attempt was to overthrow God's rule. For man to rule himself upon the earth and be united together in this religious system that was anti-God. Well the dream that Nimrod had as he and the others built this tower will be realized in a sense in the first three and a half years of the tribulation with religious Babylon.
Religious Babylon it seems will be an ecumenical church. You see certain allusions here to the true church of Jesus Christ. This system will be the opposite of the true church. It will be a one world religious system that is held together with certain cohesive force. Now what is it that holds together this religious system that is called here Babylon the Great? Well we look back at the ancient religion of Babylon to help find an answer to that.
John Walvert writing in the Bible Knowledge Commentary has an excellent summary that ties together the ancient Babylonian religion with some of the things that we see on our current scene. He says the Bible is full of information about Babylon as the source of false religion, the record beginning with the building of the Tower of Babel. The name Babel suggests confusion.
Later the name was applied to the city of Babylon which itself has a long history dating back to as early as 3,000 years before Christ. One of its famous rulers was Hammurabi. After a period of decline Babylon again rose to great heights under Nebuchadnezzar about 600 years before Christ. Nebuchadnezzar's reign and the subsequent history of Babylon is the background of the book of Daniel as most of you are aware. Babylon was important not only politically but also religiously.
Nimrod who founded Babylon had a wife known as Cimaramis who founded the secret religious rites of the Babylonian mysteries according to accounts outside the Bible. So what he is going to tell us about now here does not come from scripture but from secular historical accounts. Nebuchadnezzar had a son with an alleged miraculous conception who was given the name Tammuz and in effect was a false fulfillment of the promise of the seed of the woman given to Eve.
Various religious practices were observed in connection with this false Babylonian religion including recognition of the mother and child as God and of creating an order of virgins who became religious prostitutes. Tammuz according to the tradition was killed by a wild animal and then restored to life a satanic anticipation and counterfeit of Christ's resurrection. Nebuchadnezzar condemns this false religion repeatedly and he cites Jeremiah 7, Jeremiah 44, Ezekiel 8.
The worship of Baal is related to the worship of Tammuz. Now remember Tammuz is the wife, is the son rather of Cimaramis the wife of Nimrod the founder of Babylon. After the Persians took over Babylon in 539 B.C. they discouraged the continuation of the mystery religions of Babylon. Subsequently the Babylonian cultists moved to Pergamum where one of the seven churches of Asia was located.
Crowns in the shape of a fish head were worn by the chief priests of the Babylonian cult to honor the fish god. The crowns bore the words keeper of the bridge symbolic of the bridge between man and Satan. This handle was adopted by the Roman emperors who used the Latin title Pontifex maximus which means major keeper of the bridge. And the same title was later used by the bishop of Rome. The pope today is often called the Pontifex which comes from Pontifex.
When the teachers of the Babylonian mystery religions later moved from Pergamum to Rome they were influential in paganizing Christianity and were the source of many so called religious rites which have crept into ritualistic churches. Babylon then is the symbol of apostasy and blasphemous substitution of idol worship for the worship of God in Christ. In this passage Babylon comes to its final judgment.
Time does not permit me to quote from W.A. Criswell, a pastor in Dallas, who likewise traces this cult worship of the mother and child right into the Roman church today. And but a few weeks ago we were told that this mother of God was going to appear right here in the state of Minnesota. Alas she didn't show.
But the worship of mother and child, the mother originally named Cimaramus and the child named Tammuz was adopted into the Christian religion as the Christian religion became paganized in the Roman Empire. And so instead of the names Cimaramus and Tammuz you have Mary and Jesus. The worship of the mother and child, in other words, is a cultic kind of worship that did not originate in the Roman Catholic Church.
Its roots go all the way back to Babylon, to this religious Babylon that comes to an end in Revelation Chapter 17. So what is the cohesive force that holds this religious Babylon together? One aspect of it is the worship of the mother and the child. And then if you look at the ancient Babylonian religion you see a good deal of astrology of course. The purpose of the Tower of Babel was astrological, to observe the stars and to use that information in astrology and telling fortunes and in sorcery.
This aspect of the Babylonian religion was prominent down through its history. Astrology is even a central part of many pagan religions. The study of the stars, the movement of heavenly bodies, assigning to them some divine significance as though they have control over the fate of man. For many years archaeologists could not understand what the stones at Stonehenge were all about in Britain where some of our ancestors used to live.
These stones obviously were placed in certain positions for some purpose, but what purpose? And then one day someone stumbled upon the secret, these stones were placed in the positions they were. It was all an astrological chart. And so astrology has been a part of pagan worship from the beginning of time. Astrology is coming back strong today. You would be absolutely amazed how many Christians read astrological charts. Oh, not that they quote take them seriously, it's just fun.
Astrology comes right out of paganism and I'll tell you something, there's power in astrology because it is satanic. Demons use astrology to gain power and influence in the lives of people. I believe that astrology will be another cohesive force holding together this Babylonian religion described in this chapter. And then another strain that I will mention briefly is that of supernatural signs and wonders, miracles.
That was a part of the ancient Babylonian religion and these of course were assigned to deity and to gods in the pantheon, but in fact the miracles were empowered by Satan. He was using these miraculous deeds in order to deceive the thinking and the religious devotion of people and to receive it for himself really. And in the tribulation period when this monstrous religious system begins to come together in an ecumenical movement, there will be signs and wonders.
In 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 we are assured that these will be done by Satan and their purpose will be the deceit of men and women, causing people to wonder after this system and eventually to follow the beast. It seems to me that this future apostate system, this Babylonian church, this harlot that we see in chapter 17 is an embracing, a bringing together, an amalgamation if you please of apostate Protestantism, Romanism and a lot of pagan religions.
Paul Lindsay says this religion will be an occultic amalgamation of all the world's religions. Now notice the description of religious Babylon that is given to us here. First in verse 1 she is called a great harlot. This kind of language is always used in the Bible with reference to religious people who are unfaithful to God. It is always called spiritual whoredom or prostitution. It is unfaithfulness to the true and living God.
And here we have a church, a Christian church so to speak, that is unfaithful to Jesus Christ which is apostate. The true church will have been removed from the earth, we believe, by this time, and in its place will thrive suddenly this ecumenical church with all of its unfaithfulness to God. It sits upon many waters, a way of saying that it is over many masses of people.
In verse 2 it tells us that the kings of the earth commit fornication with this religious system and so there is some sort of church-state alliance here. The church is an instrument that is used by leaders to control people. And in verse 2 again it says that the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication so there will be masses of people who will fall in line with this religious system. They will have rejected the truth and will be intoxicated by the lie.
Whenever man turns his back willfully on the truth, he opens himself to every kind of deception. Now what is the relationship of this religious system called the Great Harlot here with Antichrist? Well, John explains it to us in this symbol. He says that this woman was sitting on a scarlet beast and this beast had seven heads and ten horns immediately identifying this beast with that beast we have seen earlier in our study of the book of Revelation.
This is Antichrist and his government, his political system. And this religious system sits on, it rides the political system which is a way of saying that this religious system will take advantage of the political system and the political system will take advantage of the religious system. They will use one another to gain power. We see that the colors of this prostitute are rich colors, royal colors. Her clothing is almost gaudy. There's gold and there are pearls and precious stones.
And she has in her hand a cup again of gold but inside the cup are abominations and filthiness from the fornication, the unfaithfulness of this religious system. And so in the colors and the elaborate clothing we seem again to see imperialism and adulterous religion coming together. This golden cup is the false gospel of religious drunkenness and the false gospel will eventually serve the purpose of Antichrist. Now he says on the forehead of this person, this woman, was a name written.
This seems to go back to a custom of the Roman prostitutes to wear their names in a filet that was across their brows, this gold ornament. And so this figure has across its forehead a name and that name is given to us in verse five. She is called mystery. Probably there's a colon after that, mystery. Just as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ is called a mystery, so this false church adopts a similar kind of name, mystery. Now what does that mean? It's defined, Babel and the great.
The mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. This religious system is the antithesis of everything that might be said about the true church, the bride of Jesus Christ. In what sense is this system the mother of harlots and abominations? It seems to suggest that this religious system is the spring or the source of all the religious systems that pollute the earth. That they all come back to this false system. And she is drunk. She is drunk with the blood of the saints.
She is known for the persecution of the true people of God in the tribulation period. And I think that we can point out accurately that false religion has always persecuted the true saints of God. This beast now that carries this figure is further described to us in verses seventeen and following. It says that this beast was and is not and is about to ascend out of the abyss. It was and is not and yet is to come. This is difficult language to really comprehend.
We don't have time to go into a lot of detail tonight except to point out that there is something about this beast that was and is and still is yet to come. Now assuming that we are with John in the day of the tribulations when this is taking place what we might see here is the revival of the Roman Empire which is on the scene and yet there is some aspect of it that is yet to come regarding this beast.
If you remember what we have learned about the beast is that when he first comes on the scene as this powerful charismatic leader of the European nations he seems to be a fellow of peace and he makes a covenant with Israel and he is an okay guy, very powerful, but on the surface to the masses, the multitudes he looks like the savior.
But there is something about him that is yet to come and that is his true nature is yet to be revealed and it will be with actually the destruction of this religious system and the empowerment of his own when he will be worshiped as God. That is yet to come. This beast is said to have seven heads. In verse 9 we have a word about that. Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.
And so as we think about these seven heads on the beast we are to think of seven mountains. Now some say well this refers to the mountains of Rome. Rome is well known as being the city that is set on seven hills or seven mountains and that may well be true and it may be that Rome will be the headquarters of the beast's empire. Mountains also have an imagery in the Old Testament. They represent kingdoms that arise on the earth.
And you notice it goes on to say in the next verse there are also seven kings or seven kingdoms. It's possible there is a double meaning here in these seven heads that it is an allusion to headquarters for this anti-Christ system which is Rome. And this is John's way of identifying it even for Christians who were living there in the first century who would have recognized this language.
But a second meaning here may be that there is a pattern of historical kingdoms out of which this final empire will come. Those who understand it that way say that the list of kingdoms include five that were, one that was in John's day and one which will be. The five that had been even in John's day were Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece. If you have much knowledge of Old Testament prophecy you know that you have the big five there. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia and Greece.
But they were gone by the end of the first century and Rome was the one that was in that day. It is present tense in the terms of Revelation. And then you have the seventh, the revived Roman Empire, the one that is yet to come. And this beast is numbered then as the eighth. It may be that the seventh king is the revived Roman Empire and the eighth is the beast himself.
Again this language is difficult to understand but it says in verse 11, the beast that was and is not and is himself also the eighth and is of the seven and is going to destruction. You know it's interesting whenever the Bible talks about the Antichrist, always in the context there is a word about his destruction. He is on his way to perdition and that is the case here.
And so we have this religious system that is piggybacking so to speak on this political empire that is being put together by this powerful figure, the Antichrist. This religious system is riding on the back of this empire. The empire not only has seven heads but it has ten horns which represent ten kings of ten nations that will seem to cooperate with Antichrist in his rise to power.
And verse 14 again says, these will make war with the Lamb and the Lamb will overcome them for he is the Lord of lords and king of kings and those who are with him are called, chosen and faithful. And so once again there is a word that this system is doomed. Even as it begins to be organized, as these ten kings come together and Antichrist arises, they are doomed by God already because Jesus Christ the Lamb is also the king of kings and the Lord of lords.
Now let's read verse 16, it says, and the ten horns which you saw and the beast, these will hate the harlot. We have a new piece of information here now. Up to this point this religious system described as the harlot is riding along on the beast. But now we come to understand that this beast hates this harlot. And it says, he will make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. And so there will come a day when the beast will destroy this religious system and put an end to it.
This ecumenical apostate church will be destroyed by God ultimately of course, but the tool that God will use is Antichrist himself, the beast and his system will destroy the church. And that would seem to happen at the midpoint of the tribulation period when Antichrist establishes his own religion and he is to be worshiped as the Messiah.
He says in verse 17, God has put it into their hearts to fulfill his purpose, to be of one mind and to give their kingdom to the beast until the words of God are fulfilled and the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth. The political alliance of Antichrist will be the doom of the super church. And all of this will be accomplished by the purpose of God. And friend, nothing can hinder God's purposes.
Now we have to break at this point because it says chapter 18 and I am not ready to talk about that tonight nor are you ready to listen to it. But chapter 18 really goes on to talk about Babylon and the next time we deal with this we are going to talk about this second aspect of Babylon which is the political and commercial aspect of Babylon. Just as religious Babylon now has been dealt with, so will political commercial Babylon be dealt with only this time more directly by God as we shall see.
I tell you when I read about this and I see other texts in the Bible regarding the apostasy at the end of the age, it doesn't make me afraid. It makes me number one thankful that I am among those that are called and chosen and faithful. Doesn't it make you feel that way? We could be a part of this religious system that is described here. Those of mine and yours are. They are part of this and God in His grace has called us out from that to know Him. We don't have to be afraid.
We can be thankful and we can be sure that our God reigns and that we are a part of that which is true and of Him who is true. As we come to His table tonight, we come to worship Him. We come to partake not of the wine of the blood of the saints, not of a cup that is filled with abomination and filthiness of apostate religion, but has a veneer over it of royalty and gaudy gold and scarlet.
We come to partake of a cup that represents the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ and a bread that represents His body broken for us. How glad that we can be that we come to this table and can fellowship with the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, with the Lamb. I would like for us to sing as we prepare ourselves for this, just a verse or two of number 277 that talks about the true church. The church's one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is His new creation by watering the Word.
From heaven He came and sought her to be His holy bride, not a harlot, a holy bride. With His own blood He bought her and for her life He died. Would you stand with me as we sing and our servers join me here in the front?