Revelation 17

The great ‘Babylon’ as it is called in Greek—‘Babel’—is brought to remembrance before God. The Lord is reminded of it, just as the Lord remembered Cornelius’ almsgiving. Just as He remembered His holy Covenants with Israel when Mary became pregnant with the Son of God, and just as the murderer on the cross asked Jesus to remember him when He came to His Kingdom.

The spiritual aspect of ‘Babel’ is prostitution; it is having no restraint, doing what everyone else does, being available to do whatever anyone wants. And all the ‘kings of the earth’ behaved in this way. And if the leaders show how to behave by their example, the people follow without thinking.

Who is this ‘scarlet beast’? John will hear more about it soon, in verses 9–12, but one thing is clear immediately- it is the ‘beast’ he saw arising previously, surfacing from the sea (of nations). John sees the ‘woman’, the ‘whore’, sitting on that ‘beast’. That is what the angel, one of the seven angels with the seven ‘bowls’, shows him.

Jeremiah says of Babylon that it was “a gold cup in the Lord’s hand; she made the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore they have now gone mad.” The ‘wine’ that the ‘whore’ holds in her hand contains the elements by which she seduces the nations.

Who is this ‘whore’, the mother of all ‘whores’, the seductress of the ‘beast’, who is bedecked with gold and jewels by the beast? The ‘beast’ is a political power structure, a world imperium, led by the anti-Christ, ‘the man of lawlessness’, ‘the son of destruction/perdition’ as Paul described and introduced him in 2 Thessalonians 2:3

The woman, the whore, is drunk with the blood of true Israel and the true Church. Her bloodthirstiness is not evident at first. She is indeed seductive. She is able to get on very well with the world, with the ‘new thinking’, the new ‘mind-set’ and the new ‘modern ideas’.

The Roman practice of identifying prostitutes is to have them wear a head band bearing the name of the owner. Here John sees the woman riding on the beast with the name of her owner: Babylon. The name is a’ mystery’. It has a hidden meaning; it is the anti-Christ’s ‘capital’.

The amazement (and admiration) of the people in general who see the ‘beast’ rise up, is different to John’s wondering in the previous verse: ”I wondered greatly…“ Their amazement is because of the fact that the ‘beast’ once was, now is not, and yet will come.

Four empires are described in Daniel 2 and 7, plus the ‘fifth’ Kingdom of the Son of Man ”the stone that fills the earth like a mountain”. Daniel mentioned ten horns, three of which are broken off and one comes in place of the three. What are these seven heads and ten horns that John sees – seven heads that are seven mountains and that are seven kings?

We say it is hazardous to attempt to link the seven kings to seven historical Roman Emperors in John’s day—five would then have had to have fallen, one would still be alive at that time, and one who had still to come. Where should you begin to count?

The eighth comes out of the seven. It is formed by the seven. All the achievements and characteristics of all the preceding empires are bunched together in the eighth empire: divine grandeur, despotic authority over life and death, iron legislation, an iron military fist, enormous opulence and prosperity…

The eighth empire is a kingdom of the ten. It is a restored Europe of the ten, or perhaps a worldwide kingdom of ten power blocs with ten world leaders. The Roman Empire of the Emperors came to an end, but it is remaining in existence ‘underground’.