The Jewish Final Solution to the World's Problem - Revelation - The Destruction of Religious Babylon

[0:00] The title for this morning's message is The Destruction of Religious Babylon. I would like you to please turn to Revelation chapter 17.

[0:19] And this morning we'll be looking at chapter 17 verses 1 through 13. 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, 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.

[1:01] 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.

[1:16] 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.

[1:38] And on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.

[1:53] And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly.

[2:06] And the angel said to me, Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.

[2:22] The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction.

[2:34] And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder, when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come.

[2:52] Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.

[3:03] And they are seven kings. Five have fallen. One is, the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must remain a little while.

[3:18] The beast which was and is not is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction.

[3:32] The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom. But they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour.

[3:50] These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast. We have made reference in the past to the fact that only after the name Jerusalem is the most frequently mentioned name in all the Bible being Babylon.

[4:19] These represent protagonists of the highest order. That which has to do with Jerusalem, referring to the city of the great king and the city of our Lord Jesus Christ, where he will ultimately rule and reign, is precisely the counterpart to Babylon, several miles to the east of Jerusalem.

[4:48] The history between these two areas goes all the way back to Genesis. And we have often made mention of the fact that the last book of the Bible, Revelation, is very intimately connected with the book of Genesis.

[5:05] And to just give you a brief example of that, I want you to keep in mind what we are talking about here in chapter 17, which has to do with religious Babylon.

[5:19] It is going to be utterly destroyed. Mystery Babylon refers to the mother of harlots.

[5:30] In other words, this is the mother, Babylon, ancient Babylon, is the mother of all anti-God, aberrant thinking, philosophy, and ideas.

[5:43] And it permeated the whole Middle East at the time. It infected the people of Israel, leading eventually to their captivity in Babylon, of all places, because of their idolatry.

[5:56] And it extends throughout all the world. And it always has from the very beginning, all the way back in the book of Genesis. So, just to give you a little inkling of that, I want you to keep your place in Revelation, and come back for just a moment to Genesis chapter 10, if you would, please.

[6:18] Genesis chapter 10, and we're going to look at the very earliest origins of Babylon. It was actually headed up by a man named Nimrod.

[6:30] And in Genesis 10, where we have the genealogies given of the descendants of Noah, I should like to begin reading with verse 6, because this involves the Hamites, and Nimrod will be a descendant of Ham.

[6:47] He is one of the three sons of Noah, the other two being Shem and Japheth. This is Ham, and he is going to be the progenitor of Nimrod.

[7:00] And Nimrod will be the archenemy of God in this portion of the Word of God. In verse 6, we read, And the sons of Ham were Cush, and Mizraim, and Put, and Canaan.

[7:17] And the sons of Cush were Sheba, and Havilah, and Sabta, and Ramah, and Satechah. And the sons of Ramah were Sheba, and Dedan. Now Cush became the father of Nimrod.

[7:31] He became a mighty one on the earth. This means he became an individual who was extremely influential.

[7:44] He had a lot of power, a lot of clout, and he used it. He affected and influenced whole cultures of people in the Old Testament. And when verse 9 says he was a mighty hunter before the Lord, That doesn't mean that he was an expert bowman, and that he went out and hunted deer for venison, or anything of the kind.

[8:08] This man was a recruiter. And the before the Lord meant before the face of the Lord, or if you will, in your face.

[8:19] He was a man who was given to enlisting and recruiting those who would oppose God and His standards. He became known as a mighty hunter in that he was a mighty recruiter.

[8:35] He enlisted a lot of people in his cause. And he began infiltrating the culture of his day, corrupting it in an unbelievable way.

[8:48] And if you will look at verse 11, we read that from that land, I'm sorry, verse 10, And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, this is what we're talking about, this is ancient Babylon, and Erek and Akkad and Kalna, in the land of Shinar.

[9:09] So the plains, or the land of Shinar, and the land of Babel, or Babylon, and the land of the Chaldeans, are all one and the same.

[9:22] If you will look at 11 and verse 9, Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth, and from there the Lord scattered them abroad, over the face of the whole earth.

[9:37] And then in 1128, if you will, And Haran died in the presence of his father Terah, in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans.

[9:51] So all of these refer to the same geography. Chaldea, the Chaldeans, Babel, or the plain of Shinar. And each and every one of these are very significant in human history.

[10:06] When the writer John talks about Babylon as being the mother of harlots, that is a very, very significant term.

[10:17] I don't know if you recall this or not, but I remember it was a curious expression that Saddam Hussein used when the United States, under George Bush, the senior, the first, was attempting to corral a coalition of nations throughout the Mideast and other parts of the world to join with us in freeing Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

[10:50] And eventually it involves an invasion of American troops and other international forces resulted in deposing Saddam Hussein and taking over the country of Iraq.

[11:04] And one questions today whether or not it was the thing to do. But nevertheless, something that Saddam Hussein was quoted as saying, well, if the United States comes against Iraq militarily, it will be the mother of all battles.

[11:26] Don't know if any of you picked up on that or heard that or not. But when I heard that, it really clicked with me. Because that is an ancient, Mideast kind of an expression. The mother of.

[11:36] In other words, it would be the kind of like the ultimate. And that kind of stuck with me. And here in Revelation chapter 17, Babylon is spoken of as the mother of harlotry.

[11:51] The mother of fornication. The mother of sexual immorality. Now, here's what I really want to labor to get you to understand.

[12:07] This is not about sex at all, per se. And when the word fornication is used, it is intended strictly in a spiritual sense.

[12:20] Although there may be the consequent physical involvement by some of the adherents, yet the main thing that John is getting at here and that needs to be understood is that this adultery is idolatry.

[12:41] And that's something that's difficult for us to pick up on because we tend to think in terms of the physical and we just don't really see the spiritual here. And I'm sure that God is very much aware of that.

[12:54] And this is exactly why in the prophecy of Hosea, one of the minor prophets, he uses a physical relationship between Hosea and his adulterous wife to illustrate the spiritual relationship between the nation of Israel and himself.

[13:15] And all throughout, well, not all throughout, well, yes, pretty much all throughout the Old Testament, the nation of Israel Israel is struggling with idolatry.

[13:26] The one true God has made himself known to the people of Israel, to individuals, even prior to the Egyptian thing, but particularly in connection with Egypt and bringing the children of Israel out of Egypt.

[13:42] God showed himself strong on their behalf time and time again with all kinds of bailouts and miracles that could not be denied. Time and again, he was presented as the one true God.

[14:00] And time and again, they turned their back on him and went, and the Old Testament puts it, went a-whoring after other deities. Who were these other deities?

[14:11] They were not deities of all, at all, of course. They were simply idols that they had established for the purpose of worship, and it falls into the context of what I have mentioned earlier about when Adam and Eve fell, their thinking apparatus fell also.

[14:35] They began reasoning with a warped mind. This is one of the curses imposed upon humanity as a part of the fall. Man reasons and exercises logic and reaches conclusions that are erroneous, and he does so because he has a faulty thinking apparatus.

[14:55] His thinking is skewed. How else would you explain? A man cuts down a tree, and part of the wood he fashions into a deity, and he falls down before it and worships it.

[15:12] And with the rest of that wood from the tree, he throws it in the fire and burns it as fuel. Now, you do see the perfect logic of that, don't you?

[15:25] Well, I rest my case. This is the kind of skewed thinking that human beings are capable of. This is one of man's greatest liabilities, perhaps his greatest liability, and it is this.

[15:37] You cannot reason your way to God because your reasoning is faulty. It is skewed, and there's nothing you can do about that.

[15:48] That is why God does not expect us to reason our way to him. He has provided a remedy for our lack of reasoning ability, and it is called revelation.

[16:02] That's why we have a Bible. It is designed to inform us and offset our skewed tendency in our thinking and reaching wrong conclusions. This is the only place where you get the full scoop, and you get it straight.

[16:18] This is the only place. This is the only place on the planet where you get it. And if you search the encyclopedias or the writings of the wisdom of the world's greatest philosophers, people who had IQs much higher than yours or mine, probably some of them couldn't even be measured, how are you to determine which one of those you're to follow?

[16:42] Because they completely disagree among themselves. Men of equal brilliance and IQ completely disagreeing with each other. Well, which one are you supposed to follow?

[16:53] Well, that's the whole point. None of them. They are to be examined. They are to be noted. They are to be taken into account. And I'm not saying all human wisdom is worthless, but I'm saying it is dependable.

[17:08] This keeps bringing us right back to here. And how many times have you heard me say this? The issue is authority. It always has been. It always will be.

[17:19] That's the issue. Man is prepared to accept just about anything and everything else other than what really is authoritative.

[17:30] believe. We talk about the experts. Somebody told me their definition of an expert one time. An ex is a has-been and a spurt is a drip under pressure.

[17:46] That's where most of our experts lead us. And that is just human philosophy and human thinking and it will lead you astray. We keep coming back to this book. And those who reject the authority of God.

[17:59] Listen. those who reject the authority of God will not live and function in a vacuum. They will fill it with something else.

[18:13] And that something else is what this Babylon is all about. It's what it's all about. Babylon has to do with everything that isn't God and isn't true.

[18:32] That's Babylon. Here's where it all began. Here's where all of the aberrant theology began. Here's where all the wrong doctrine began. Here's where all the wrong thinking began.

[18:42] Here's where all the idolatry began. Right here in Babylon. And it is this Babylon that is going to be destroyed.

[18:52] chapter 18, 17 and 18. And we are well on the way to that now. Babylon consists of every false aberrant religion known to man.

[19:09] In the world since that time up to this present time, it is a huge conglomerate of untruth. And it is all anti-God and anti-Christ.

[19:20] But it is by far and the majority. By far the majority. This is where the pre-underance of humanity is.

[19:32] It is not in truth. It is in error. And the only thing that can offset that and counter it is the word of God. So, let me explain a couple of things and we will get into the text promptly.

[19:49] In and out of Babylon, will come every origin of false religion. They manifested themselves in different ways, but all were counter to the truth of God, either satanically inspired or merely man-made.

[20:08] In both the Old Testament and here in Revelation, they are referred to as spiritual adultery. God is capable of being unfaithful to his wife in that they engage with another party in a sexual affair.

[20:36] God is saying, that is exactly what the nation of Israel has done with me. I have been like a husband to Israel.

[20:47] She has been my wife. She was espoused to me and she became unfaithful to me. She became a whore.

[20:58] She became one who was going after other lovers. For instance, Baal, sometimes pronounced Baal, mentioned throughout the Old Testament.

[21:12] Chemosh was the god of the Moabites. Ruth, who was the mother or the grandmother of the Messiah, was a Moabitess.

[21:25] And they worshipped the god Chemosh, who caused their children to pass through the fire. And they would offer babies as human sacrifices. Dagon was the god of the Philistines against whom David did battle on a number of occasions.

[21:44] Goliath was a Philistine. They worshipped the god Dagon. And you'll recall, back in the Old Testament, the Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant and they set it there before their huge statue of Dagon, the fish god, as a trophy.

[22:01] And they were offering the Ark of the Covenant to this statue called Dagon whom they worshipped. And the next morning when the Philistines went to the place of worship, Dagon had fallen over, flat on his face.

[22:23] And they didn't quite know what to make of that. Don't tell me God doesn't have a sense of humor. So they put him back up in his place again. And sure enough, he was fallen over again.

[22:35] All of which was to say that Dagon was no match for the god of the covenant. And other such deities are found throughout the Old Testament. In the time of our Lord in Rome, if you fast forward a few thousand years, what do you find chiefly characteristic of Rome?

[22:55] Polytheism. How many gods did the Romans have? They had a god for every day of the week. They had a god for sunshine. They had a god for love. Had a god for the hunt. Had a god of wealth.

[23:05] God of the sea. God of the sky. God of all these false deities. And the apostle Paul addresses this when he writes to the Corinthians. And he says, all of these people who think that they are worshipping some god.

[23:19] There isn't any god there. They're worshipping demons. And they don't even know it. And let me tell you, there's a lot of that kind of thing going on today.

[23:32] Only we have found ways to sophisticate it. But the end result is the same. They don't even know it. So physical adultery is used to illustrate the reality of spiritual adultery.

[23:46] Babylon is the mother, the source, the origin of all false religions. it is here where mankind, in a corporate way, really got off track.

[24:03] Way back in Genesis. And he has been off track all the way up to the present time. This generation is not one bit better.

[24:16] We are given to all that is contrary to the one true god. And there is even debate as to who that is or how that is to be done.

[24:28] Here in Revelation, Babylon has succeeded in becoming a worldwide religion. And her mantra will be, you're going to love this, inclusivism.

[24:47] Doesn't that sound good? Inclusivism. nobody left behind. Well, I stand corrected.

[25:01] There will be one left behind. There will be one who will not be included in the inclusivism.

[25:14] Guess who? those no good, rebellious, obstructionist people called Christians.

[25:26] They have their nerve. They think they're better than everybody else. They will not be part of our band.

[25:38] They will not be included in the exclusivism. but who else is included? Everybody. Everybody.

[25:55] The whole world is going to buy into this inclusivism. the only outsiders will be those who belong to the Lamb.

[26:08] And many of them will pay for their rebellion. That's how it will be characterized with their life. They will be martyred.

[26:21] Probably by the tens of thousands throughout the world. That's coming. monotheism was a peculiarity of the Jews alone and even they became entangled in polytheism.

[26:36] Despite the fact that God had revealed himself to the nation of Israel and to leaders of Israel so many times and in so many ways, they still went whoring after other gods.

[26:48] In fact, it was because of their idolatry that God consigned them to captivity. And guess where he's going to send them?

[27:03] To Babylon. How about that? However, I don't know if it's because being in Babylon for 70 years, they got their fill of it and saw what it was really like, but I do know that the nation of Israel was cured of idolatry after that 70-year period of captivity.

[27:23] And when they came back to the land under Zerubbabel and Nehemiah and so on, rebuilt the temple and engaged in corporate worship.

[27:35] And fast forward a few hundred years and the Romans came in. And who were the Romans? They, of course, were idolaters and they had their standard with their image and their idol on it.

[27:48] And it just graded the Jews to no end because the Romans brought their false deities with them. And the Jews, who now were cured of their idolatry and insisted on the worship of the one true God, now they have to put up with all of this idolatrous paraphernalia that the Romans brought in with them and they were powerless to do anything about it.

[28:09] So this thing has been permeating the whole of humanity almost from day one. That's what I want you to understand. this has been going on century after century after century, all the way back to Genesis.

[28:24] It has not been assuaged in any way, shape, or form. And if anything, today it is rapidly on the increase. So, I want to share with you some comments from one of my commentaries, and I have a number that some I respect a great deal more than others.

[28:49] And this is one that I hold in high esteem. It's by Dr. Henry Morris, and I want to share with you some of his comments regarding this Babylon that is mentioned in Revelation 17.

[29:05] Dr. Morris says, This is the reason why every nation and tribe of the past or present except those whose cosmogony is based on Genesis 1 and 2, such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam has a religious system which is fundamentally pantheistic.

[29:25] That is, pantheists believe that the physical universe, rather than the transcendent creator of that universe, is the ultimate reality.

[29:36] In other words, they do not see God as Christians see God. we see God as separate and distinct from his creation.

[29:48] Before there was anything called creation, there was God. And God lives outside of his creation. He is not part of creation and creation is not part of him.

[30:03] And those who believe it is are pantheists. pantheists, and it comes from the word pantheos, which means all, which literally means all God. All is God and God is all.

[30:16] Therefore, you are God and I am God and we are all God and you're into the new age stuff that has become so popular over the last 20 years. polytheistic, that is, believing that this deified cosmos manifests itself locally as various forces and systems of nature, which are personified as gods and goddesses, and have you by any chance picked up on the goddess Gaia today?

[30:46] There are a number of people throughout the world who worship Gaia, G-A-I-A, Gaia, who is the goddess of the world, the goddess of nature, and there are people who are very serious about this.

[31:04] These are some of the same ones who sit around, hold hands when the harmonic convergence is going to take place, and they form a circle and hold hands and everybody goes, down the road just a few miles.

[31:21] Yellow Springs is awash in this stuff. Evolutionary, believing that these personified forces of nature somehow generate higher and higher orders of beings, including man, and in many cases even spirits, animistic, spiritistic, believing that the spirits so generated, including the spirits of dead men and women.

[31:47] Listen, South America is awash in this stuff. Spiritism and animism. to say nothing of Haiti and places in Central America is completely given over to this, whole populations into this.

[32:03] Believing that the spirits so generated, including the spirits of dead men and women, continue to survive and perhaps evolve into still higher beings. Astrological, believing that the highest beings so developed either inhabit or are identical with the starry host of heaven so that these stars control events on earth.

[32:25] And idolatrous, believing that these gods and goddesses or personified forces and systems of nature should be worshipped through images constructed to represent them and which they then possess and energize.

[32:38] And this stuff with the astrological. Astronomy is a legitimate science and it studies the stars and the heavenly bodies and so on. It is a science to be admired and engaged in.

[32:51] Astronomy is not to be confused with astrology. Astrology and astrologists, people who believe your fate is in the stars and the way the, the way the, I can't even think of the term now, the way they converge, whatever your sign is, a Leo, a Scorpio, a Sagittarius or whatever, you read your, you read your, horoscope under that day and then you govern your day according to.

[33:20] Can you believe that there are chief executives who make multi-million dollar salaries a year who will not go to work in the morning without consulting their horoscope?

[33:34] Now, listen, this is what I mean by warped, twisted, skewed thinking. It's all around us. It's everywhere. everywhere. This monstrous system of evolutionary, polytheistic, pantheistic, spiritistic, astrological idolatry has permeated practically every culture in the world in one form or another and it all began, the mother of it, it's right there in southern Iraq, Babylon, and it's going to be rebuilt.

[34:14] Even modern evolutionary scientism is nothing but the same ancient paganism in a more sophisticated garb. All religions and philosophies, except those founded on special creation as revealed in Genesis, worship and serve the creation more than the creator.

[34:35] Romans 1.25. And that's what the whole burden of Romans 1 is all about. And thus, are under God's condemnation. These are they of whom it said, God gave them up, God gave them up, God gave them over.

[34:46] That's what we're talking about. This is the Babylonian thing. They are either humanistic, worshipping men as the highest attainment of the cosmic process, or superhumanistic, worshipping spiritual beings as still higher attainments of evolution than man.

[35:02] And one of the things that the apostle Paul had to deal with when he wrote to the Colossians was the cult that was engaged in the worship of angels. I mean, man just never seems to run out of something else to worship other than the truth.

[35:19] Since they are inexcusable in such an arbitrary rejection of their creator, God has given them up to uncleanness, to vile affections, and to reprobate mind.

[35:30] And we are a culture that is swimming in this stuff today. Thus have all the inhabitants of earth been made drunk with the wine of Babel's primeval fornication, as Nimrod chose Satan rather than God.

[35:55] And one more paragraph. many Bible teachers, and I've seen this in many of the commentaries that I have on my shelves, many Bible teachers have identified this harlot.

[36:09] Who is this woman that John is seeing? It's decked out in scarlet and all of this finery. She is a symbol, but who is it that she is symbolizing?

[36:24] Dr. Moore says, many Bible teachers have identified this harlot not only as spiritual Babylon, but also more explicitly as the Roman Catholic Church, noting that many of the doctrines and sacraments of the Babylonian religion were transmitted to pagan Rome and thence ultimately to papal Rome.

[36:48] Now, there's no disputing that. It's just a matter of history. The most detailed exposition of this teaching can be found in the venerable work by Alexander Hislop entitled The Two Babylons.

[36:59] I have that book, by the way. There is no doubt that many of the doctrines and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the various Orthodox churches and similar ancient churches, are based on tradition rather than Scripture.

[37:15] There are many striking parallels between many of these and the corresponding doctrines and practices of ancient paganism, which can in turn be generally traced back to their origins in Babylon.

[37:29] The old harlot has indeed caused all nations to imbibe her abominable wine, including even Christian nations.

[37:42] But to say that spiritual Babylon is either Rome or the Roman Catholic Church is to grossly underestimate the age-long global impact of this great mystery, Babylon the Great.

[38:00] And let me just inject here that Babylon the Great, the mystery religions, and everything that was fostered there, predates the Roman Catholic Church by hundreds and hundreds of years.

[38:14] It's long before the Roman Catholic Church ever came into existence. This thing was up and running. Babylon is the mother of all the harlots and abominations of the earth.

[38:29] From her have come ancient paganism, Chinese Confucianism, Asian Buddhism, Indian Hinduism, Shamanism, Taoism, Shintoism, Animism, Astrology, Witchcraft, Spiritism, Sikhism, and all the world's vast complex of God's many and Lord's many.

[38:58] The whole smear. And it also includes apostate Protestantism.

[39:08] of more direct concern in 20th century America is the direct descent of modern scientism and evolutionary humanism from this ancient mother of harlots.

[39:25] As noted before, modern evolutionism is in no way scientific, being contradicted by all true facts of science, but is merely a revival of ancient Greek and ultimately Babylonian evolutionary pantheism.

[39:41] This current manifestation of Babylon's philosophy has to considerable degree subverted Christian doctrine, not only in the Catholic Church, but in most other Christian sects and denominations.

[39:56] Furthermore, ornate covetousness, the ritualistic sensualism, the hypnotic appeals to the physical senses, the revival of occultism, and other aspects of ancient paganism, in addition to the baleful influences of evolutionism and uniformitarianism, have significantly undermined sound biblical doctrine in many churches of all kinds today.

[40:20] And let me ask you, how many churches and Christian institutions at one time that bore the name, have radically departed from anything Christian or remotely true to the Bible?

[40:49] Some of our leading educational institutions in the United States of America today, where it'll cost you $40,000 to $60,000 a year to send your kid, were once bastions of fidelity, and have since discarded everything biblical, standards, all that goes with it, replacing it with modern science, so-called, and modern learning.

[41:34] And can you not see where this so-called modern science and modern learning has led people in their lifestyles and in the debauchery and in the destruction of human lives?

[41:48] wasn't it Jeremiah who said, my people have committed two great evils.

[42:04] They have rejected me, the source of living water, and they have hewn out for themselves cisterns that can hold no water.

[42:17] that's where academia is today in the United States, with but few exceptions. This is what we're dealing with. Hey, this is Babylon.

[42:31] This is this mother of harlots that is going to get her comeuppance here in this chapter. So let us return, if we may, to Revelation chapter 17.

[42:44] And we are told that the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her. In other words, they've been in bed with her. They've engaged in political, religious alliances with her.

[42:56] This has nothing to do with physical sex. This is institutional sex. This is national sex, if you will, in ways that isn't sex at all, but it is, well, you get the picture.

[43:14] And he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw this woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns.

[43:25] Now, this one has earlier and consistently been identified as the Antichrist. Now, do you see what's happening here? The woman is riding the beast.

[43:39] Do you see the connection? that means she's calling the shots. We say she's in the driver's seat. And it is the Antichrist and his forces that are in compliance with the woman.

[43:57] This is a worldwide religious federation. This is the one world church that is going to be in existence alongside the one world government.

[44:14] And to just give you an idea, because we won't have time to get there, I want you to understand that this one who is in the driver's seat, or in the saddle, if you will, it is this religious woman, this harlot, that is seated in the saddle, and the beast with seven heads and ten horns is what she is riding.

[44:38] She is dominant. And the beast is compliant. But only because he is able to use her.

[44:50] And when he is finished using her, he will turn on her and devour her. And that's later in the same chapter. So let us read on. The woman, verse 4, was clothed in purple and scarlet.

[45:05] These are fineries, garments of fine garments. 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.

[45:25] Now she is decked out in such a way as to be alluring, inviting, tempting. You're to look at this woman with all of the accoutrements and all of the accessories and to be amazed.

[45:43] Wow! Look at that. Isn't she something? Isn't she desirable? Well, nations of the world have gone after her.

[45:55] Upon her forehead, a name was written, a mystery, a secret, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.

[46:08] What does this mean? The mother of? It means point of origin. Point of origin. This is where it began. She's the mother. She has been fat and healthy for thousands of years, and she has grown and increased in everything that the world considers desirable.

[46:30] she is a plush mistress, alluring, tempting, promising, and the world has just gone after her.

[46:44] This is false religion. Millions and millions have gone after her in India. It's called Hinduism. The last I heard, they have 300,000 gods.

[46:59] in Hinduism. Can you imagine that? This is the mother of Buddhism. Millions and millions have lined up behind that.

[47:14] This is the mother of everything that is contrary to it. Listen, this is the mother of communism. Do you realize what the first tenet of communism is?

[47:26] there is no God. So, you throw all of these, we're talking about hundreds of millions of people into the lap of this luxurious lady and they bought into the whole thing.

[47:45] I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints. Oh, these are those who were uncooperative.

[47:58] These are those who have cast their lot with the one true God and they're going to pay the price. And they have been paying the price for centuries. Christians have always been martyred by unbelievers all the way back.

[48:12] In fact, we might even say Cain was the first. Abel was the first. Drunk with the blood of saints and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, and when I saw her, I wondered greatly.

[48:28] And the angel said to me, Why do you wonder? I shall tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go to destruction.

[48:48] And those who dwell on the earth will wonder whose name has not been written in the book of life. In other words, these are unbelievers from the foundation of the world.

[49:00] And when they see the beast that he was and is not and will come, and this is the beast, of course, that has to do with the antichrist who will be slain as we will see later, who will be slain and brought back to life.

[49:16] And when he is brought back to life, he will increase in credibility and nations will stand in awe of him and ready to be aligned with him. And here is the mind which has wisdom.

[49:30] The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. This deals with the expanse of the geography involved. This is worldwide.

[49:42] This is huge. This isn't in some corner of the globe. This is all over. This is globalism. And there are seven kings. Five have fallen. They are history. One is, the other has not yet come, and that is the antichrist.

[49:57] And when he comes, he must remain a little while. And the beast which was and is not, is himself also an eight, and I'll try to make these clearer in our next presentation, and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction.

[50:11] And the ten horns, which you saw, are ten kings, which have not yet received a kingdom. These will be those who will be assigned to one-tenth of the geography of the earth, and they will rule and reign over that for the first three and a half years of the tribulation period.

[50:32] These ten kings who will receive the kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour, that is, it will be short-lived. These have but one purpose, and they give their authority and power to the beast.

[50:47] These will wage war against the lamb, and the lamb, of course, being Christ, will overcome them, because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who are with him are the called and chosen and faithful.

[51:03] And he said to me, the waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.

[51:15] And may I just say this, they are multi-continental. They are the whole globe, all of the continents, Asia, Africa, Europe, they're all involved in this.

[51:30] They're all subjects to this. and the ten horns which you saw, earlier we saw those in the chapter, and the beast, these will hate the harlot, because she will have served their purpose and they will turn on her, and will make her desolate and naked, and will eat her flesh, and will burn her up with fire.

[51:57] For God has put it in their hearts to execute this purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God should be fulfilled. And the woman whom you saw is the great city, and this of course is Babylon, is the system which reigns over the kings of the earth.

[52:21] And in the next chapter, 18, we will see commercial political Babylon revived and destroyed. it will be very short-lived.

[52:33] All of these are contributing to the drama of the way this curtain is coming down and the final play out of humanity. This is where it is all headed.

[52:44] And in our next session together, we're going to spend more time on the balance of chapter 17. There is just too much there to take in one setting, and I will do my best to shorten it as much as I can so we'll have some time for Q&A next week, which we do not have time for now.

[53:01] However, anybody who has questions about anything that we've studied this morning, feel free to write out your question. Drop it in the offering box, and I'll be happy to treat next week. This is where everything's headed.

[53:15] It's not pretty, but it is predicted. the only panacea is to stay focused in the only thing that is really reliable, and that is the word that God has been pleased to reveal.

[53:36] It is designed to offset all of this stuff, and it alone informs us about what we have shared with you this morning. it is possible for me to actually verify any of this futuristically because it hasn't happened yet, other than to say the scriptures predict it.

[53:59] But I'll tell you what, I can verify every single solitary word of it historically without any question.

[54:14] That ought to be enough to tell us something about the future, shouldn't it? Would you stand with me, please? Father, these are solemn things that we've been dealing with.

[54:26] These are issues we just soon not even talk about. We don't find them uplifting. We don't find them encouraging. We find them saddening.

[54:40] We see an entire world given over to all of these different things, all of which are anti-God, going back thousands and thousands of years, involving hundreds of millions of precious souls for which Christ died.

[55:04] It's a staggering concept to even consider. Yet, because it is here in your word, we do not feel that we have the right to ignore it, to not deal with it.

[55:20] So, in light of what we have studied, we just pray that you will be pleased to give us perspective, a balance, to maintain a spiritual equilibrium, even in the face of knowing what is coming upon the earth.

[55:42] We who have this precious truth incorporated in the gospel have an opportunity and responsibility for getting it out. We need more ways of doing it.

[55:57] We need better ways. We want to be open and available to them. We see a world that is desperate and dying and doesn't even know it.

[56:08] And we have the antidote. And we trust that the Spirit of God will charge each of us corporately, individually, and corporately as a church for what we can be and what we should be doing to disseminate this glorious gospel of Christ, which is the only thing that can combat all of the error that's out there.

[56:29] And we're grateful that you've been pleased to provide it. Give us wisdom to publish it, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen.