Memory Text: “These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful” (Revelation 17:14, NKJV).
The Bible likens apostasy to harlotry or adultery (James 4:4). Speaking of Israel’s rebellion and unfaithfulness, Ezekiel laments, “You are an adulterous wife, who takes strangers instead of her husband“ (Ezek. 16:32, NKJV).
In Scripture, a church or a spiritual people are often depicted symbolically as a woman or a bride. Mark 2:19-20; Eph. 5:23-27; 2 Cor. 11:2; Isa. 62:5; Hos 2:16-23; Jer. 2:2; 31:31-34; Rev. 19:7-9; Rev. 21:2. The woman, symbolizing a church, can be pure and faithful (Jer. 6:2; Eph. 5:25-27), or it can be unfaithful and impure (Hos. 1:2; James 4:4).
Revelation tells of two women: one clothed with the sun, in Revelation 12, and one dressed in scarlet, in Revelation 17. The woman clothed with the sun, which is in the dazzling glory of Christ, is found in Revelation 12. She is faithful to her true lover, Jesus. She is not defiled with the corruption of false doctrines. We’ve already discussed the women in Revelation 12 in some detail, so this week we will be discussing that other woman, the woman in Revelation 17.
This woman is called “the great whore that sitteth upon many waters.” Rev. 17:1. That she is a whore means she is an apostate church teaching false doctrine, not the pure doctrine of true biblical Christianity. That she “sits on many waters” means that she is embraced by a great many people, in many nations and kingdoms. (The angel tells us this later in the chapter: “The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.” John 17:15).
The kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Rev. 17:2. Obviously, this church has been a politically powerful church, dealing with monarchs, princes, and presidents, as at least an equal and very often as their superior. That she has made many “drunk with the wine of her fornication” means that a great many people have imbibed her false doctrines and been deceived.
John was shown “a woman sitting upon a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.” Rev. 17:3-4. This church is very wealthy, wearing purple and scarlet, the colors of royalty and prostitution, and she is weighed down with gold and precious gems, but her golden cup is full of false teachings.
The beast upon which the woman, this impure church, rides, having ten horns, takes us back to Daniel’s vision in Daniel 7. The fourth beast Daniel was shown had ten horns, and, without question, that beast was Rome. This is very clear from the Book of Daniel, which tells us about four kingdoms. These kingdoms are symbolized by parts of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream in Daniel 2, then by beasts in Daniel chapter seven.
The first kingdom Daniel tells us about is Babylon, which was the head of gold in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan. 2:37, 38) and the lion in Daniel’s vision in chapter 7 (Dan. 7:4). The second kingdom is Medo-Persia, symbolized by the chest and arms of silver (Dan. 2:39), the bear raised on one side in Daniel 7 (Dan. 7:5), and the ram with two horns in Daniel 8 (Dan. 8:1-4; 20).
The third kingdom is Greece during the time of Alexander the Great and his successors, symbolized by the belly and thighs of bronze (Dan. 2:39) the four-winged leopard in Daniel 7 (Dan. 7:6), and the goat with the prominent horn, which is broken off and replaced by four horns in Daniel 8 (Dan 8:5-8; 21-22).
The fourth kingdom is Rome, symbolized by the legs of iron (Dan. 2:40), the terrible beast with iron teeth (Dan. 7:7), and the growing horn of Daniel 8:9-12 (although the vision of the horn in Daniel 8 encompasses Rome in both its pagan and papal phases). This is history long past; prophecy long fulfilled.
This fourth beast in Daniel 7—which prefigures the fourth kingdom, Rome—had ten horns, so when John is shown a beast with ten horns (Rev. 17:3), there is no question about the identity of this beast: it is certainly the Roman Empire. And so when we are shown this unfaithful, impure woman, this impure church teaching false doctrine, riding the beast with ten horns, we know that we are seeing a church that is riding Rome. It has taken its seat in Rome.
What church has its seat in the ancient imperial capitol of the Roman Empire? There is and can be only one answer to that question: the Roman Catholic Church.
“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: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. . . . .This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.”
Peter wrote, “she who is at Babylon, who is likewise chosen, sends you greetings, and so does Mark, my son.” 1 Peter 5:13. Babylon? When Peter wrote that letter, Babylon had not been inhabited for centuries; it was a pile of dirt. Needless to say, there was no Christian church in the literal city of Babylon, and no Christians hailing from there. Paul was referring to Rome, so it would seem that “Babylon” must have been, among the apostles, a code-name for Rome.
John would likely have known that “Babylon” was to be interpreted as Rome, which had inherited Babylon’s mystery religions, by way of Greece and Persia. But so that this interpretation could not be mistaken, John was told that the woman sits on seven hills. Almost everyone, then and now, knows that the city of Rome is situated on seven hills.
We cannot be in any doubt that John was shown that an impure church teaching false doctrines would inherit the seat of the Roman Empire.
John “saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.” In John’s day, pagan Rome persecuted the Christian Church, but with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the woman riding the beast—the impure church teaching false doctrine which we now know was Rome in its “Christian” phase, or papal Rome, the Roman Catholic Church—persecuted the true Christian Church far longer and with much greater severity than did pagan Rome.
Also with the benefit of hindsight, we know something else: Rome’s children, the Protestant denominations that left the Roman church in terms of its organization, did not forsake all of the errors of the mother church. They still cling to two major errors: Sunday sacredness in place of the Bible Sabbath, and the immortality of the soul, or the belief that a disembodied consciousness continues on after death, in place of the Bible doctrine that we sleep unconsciously in the grave until the resurrection. Thus it can be said that not only is the Roman Catholic Church the Great Harlot, she is the mother of a brood of little harlots.
There is always the temptation of “stampeded prophecy,” meaning an interpretation of prophecy that is a response to the current day’s headlines. Today, the threat to Christians and Christianity comes mainly from the secular, atheistic Left, as represented by the Democratic Party in the U.S. and other Leftist and center-left parties around the Western world.
These forces of atheism are pre-figured in prophecy as “Sodom and Egypt.” Rev. 11:8. They first come onto the scene of Christian history during the French Revolution; they crop up again in the Russian Revolution of 1917, and in all the Leftist Utopian regimes since that time, including, again, the Maoist cultural revolution being waged so remorselessly in today’s United States by the Democratic Party and its allies in the permanent government, the “deep state,” the corporate world (Anheuser-Busch, Target, etc.) the U.N. and transnational NGOs etc.
But the woman who rides the beast—the Roman Catholic Church—had already been persecuting true Christianity for 1,260 years—a virtually endless epoch—before atheistic Leftist utopianism came onto the pages of history, some 230 years ago during the French Revolution. Rome’s reign of error and terror lasted for more than a thousand years longer than the utopian Left has even been around.
False, impure religion will always be the long term threat to pure religion.