Scripture reading: Revelation 17:1-8.

Sermon text: Revelation 17:9-18.

We’ve already discussed one mystery in the book of the Revelation, but when we consider the contents of this book, we must confess that more than one passage mystifies us. Many of these passages will remain mystifying until Our Lord Himself returns from heaven and explains what we need to know.

Today’s passage, however, becomes rather clear when we examine both Scripture and human history. The “woman” in chapter 17 has outlived every ancient civilization and will thrive until the final judgment of humanity. She has exhibited herself in every society, in every age. However, her end is near; her doom is certain. Jesus Himself will end her reign and break her grip on the world.

Following the seven plagues of chapter 16, one of the participating angels approached St. John and offered to show him the “judgment of the great prostitute... on many waters.” This description, along with other clues in the chapter, give us a rather accurate description of her identity.

Throughout the Old Testament, God used the imagery of adultery to describe the idolatry of the Hebrews. In the book of Ezekiel, God used graphic descriptions of Israel’s chasing after other gods. In the book of Hosea, God used Hosea’s marriage to Gomer (possibly a temple prostitute) to describe Israel’s broken relationship with their God and true love. Therefore, we can safely infer the “prostitute” represents a system that includes a false religion.

The term “on many waters” also describes the woman. This false religion does not affect only Israel; by the time of her judgment, the false religion has completely infiltrated the nations of the world. As we’ve seen previously, Jewish Scriptures use the sea to represent the chaotic Gentile nations.

Notice that this system encompasses every level of society and government. The “kings of the earth” have also fallen under her sway. Actually, the description we see in verse 2 tells us that the world’s ruling elite have willingly joined forces with the false religion to exploit her control over humanity. This collaboration between the false religion and the ruling elite have enriched both at the expense of those they purport to serve. In this case, the false religion itself is arrayed in “purple and scarlet” and covered in riches.
We see, then, that the “prostitute” of chapter 17 refers to a universal system that, by this time in history, had completely overcome humanity. We shouldn’t find ourselves surprised, as humans have always sought to worship anything but the true God.

In this chapter, both the woman and the “dwellers of the earth” are described as “drunk:” the woman with the “blood of the saints” and the dwellers of the earth with her “sexual immorality.” Throughout the history of the Church, followers of false religions have actively opposed the testimony of the Gospel, even to the point of bloodshed. Today, we still hear of the martyrdom of believers around the world. Just as bad is the heady feeling of those who had rather worship in a false religion rather than accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the true King of Kings.

Verse 3 tells us the woman actually sits on a “beast” with 7 heads and 10 horns. The angel explains to St. John that the 7 heads represent both 7 “mountains” on which the woman sits as well as 7 “kings,” 5 of which have already fallen by the first century A.D. Who are these kings, and do the mountains give us a clue?

We’ve already seen this terminology in the book. In chapter 13, we saw 7 “heads” referring to the 7 hills of Rome. In this case, not only do the mountains point to Rome; so does the name of the woman. The woman’s name is called a mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” Remember that in both chapter 14 and chapter 16, St. John used the common “safe” term for Rome when he referred to her as “Babylon.” This part of the vision reminds us of the political aspect of the system.

We should notice that the overall effect of this vision left St. John awestruck. Even after everything he had witnessed so far, this is the first time he describes himself as such. The effect of this woman and her seeming control of the earth left an apostle completely speechless!

The angel, however, remained unimpressed. “Why do you marvel?” said the angel. To the angel, a being who had dwelled eternally in the presence of the true God in heaven, saw nothing impressive in this woman. This should remind us of true love. When a man experiences the true love of a godly woman — a love that lasts a lifetime — the false love of infatuation holds no power over him.

The angel then described the woman’s power and her future. It seems that cooperating with the world’s rulers will not guarantee her success or even her existence. Those who live by the political process risk dying by it. Religions who attempt to control their adherents by legislation rather than by true spiritual transformation will find themselves destroyed when the legislators turn against the religion. At some point in the time of tribulation, the 10 “kings” that will rule for a short time will turn on the woman and destroy her. We’ll read the description of her destruction next week in chapter 18.

At this point, we need to address a common belief among Protestants: that the woman in the chapter represents the Roman Catholic Church. This belief is too widespread to ignore.

We must admit the evidence of history: this world system has, at times, corrupted even the Church, as we’ll see in tonight’s sermon and in Wednesday night’s study of the Reformation (Wednesday is Reformation Day). When Rome fell in A.D. 476, the Catholic Church remained the only organization in Western Europe with any ability to carry on the duties of government. However, this responsibility led to the mistaken belief that the Church could usher in the kingdom of God in this world on her own efforts.

The resulting cooperation with the secular rulers of the Middle Ages corrupted the Church beyond Satan’s wildest dreams. For centuries, holy men in the Catholic Church fought to restore the spiritual vitality of the Church, to no avail. Godly men gathered in monasteries and worked in local areas to maintain the faith of those worshiping Christ in spirit and truth, but these efforts rarely reached Rome itself. In 1215, St. Dominic traveled to Rome to win papal approval for an order of preachers (we know them as the Dominicans). While there, it is said that the pope gave Dominic a tour of the Vatican’s treasures. The pope turned to Dominic and placidly said, “no longer can Peter say, ‘silver and gold have I none.’” Dominic is said to have replied, “yes, and no longer can he say, ‘rise up and walk.’”

The temporal power of the Middle Ages, when popes ruled Europe as their own domain, sapped the spirituality of the Church. The Reformation we’ll discuss tonight and Wednesday night did not occur in a vacuum, and Martin Luther was not the only Reformer that saw the need for spiritual renewal. Not until the twentieth century did the Roman Catholic Church fully surrender the illusion of temporal power.

However, we must take care with trying to identify the prostitute specifically with any one organization. We know she will be powerful, rich, haughty, highly influential, and willing to do anything to maintain power until her destruction. For the first few hundred years after Revelation was written, Christians assumed the Roman Empire was the prostitute, for it combined both the cruelty of Rome’s secular power with it idolatrous worship of the emperor. Unfortunately for generations of Christian exegetes, the Roman Empire had the audacity to implode from within, leaving the Church without a prostitute for several hundred years.

In that time, I'm quite certain someone decided that the Muslim empire fit the bill. (North Africa, after all, was Christian for at least 6 centuries before the Christians there were slaughtered and forcibly converted to Islam, a fact the Muslims screaming about the Crusades conveniently forget to mention.) To Russian Christians in the Middle Ages, the Mongol Horde would have looked like the prostitute.

By the 1200's, there was no power that fit the description in Western Europe but the Roman Catholic Church, and as I said earlier, Rome had done plenty to endear herself to the description. The Ottomans were brutal to the Orthodox. Read some of the histories of the Constantinople patriarchate and see how many patriarchs were hanged or otherwise executed by Ottoman rulers simply in fits of temper.

First century Christians, placed in the 21st century, would probably think that Paris in the 1600's, London in the 1800's, and Washington, D.C. in our day would qualify. We, of course, recognize that Paris and London no longer fit the description. Time will tell whether our current political system will stand long enough to play a role in the end times.

Actually, given the fact that Satan is far worse than we give him credit, I dare say that whatever organization arises to fulfill St. John's vision will far exceed any brutality and depravity than anyone can attribute to the Roman Catholic Church. We interpret Scripture by what we know, and the interpretation of the Catholic Church as the prostitute has now been around for roughly 800 years, primarily because the Roman Catholic Church did a fairly good job of looking like the fulfillment over the centuries preceding and immediately after the Reformation. There's a reason why Baptists traditionally advocate separation of Church and State: the Church has never made a good, compassionate State. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus said.

Still, I doubt any of us can really imagine the horror Satan will unleash in the prostitute of Revelation. If you think the Roman Catholic Church was bad in years gone by when it possessed temporal power, try to imagine what Satan will concoct when he has full reign during the Tribulation. I'd rather not think about it, and I'm certainly glad I won't be here to see it.

Given that trying to identify the prostitute is tricky business, is there anything in this chapter that applies to us today?

I see a critical lesson here, one that couldn’t come at a better time for American Christians especially. We cannot rely on temporal power to accomplish spiritual renewal. For too many years, American believers have been deluded into thinking that political power will lead to a godly nation. History tells us that the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages, the Puritans of England and America of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Protestants of the early twentieth centuries believed the same. Our goal in this world is spiritual transformation of every human being, one person at a time, one heart at a time.

On the other hand, we must realize that humans prefer darkness rather than light, as St. John said in his Gospel. Given the choice between accepting the Lordship of Christ and settling for false religions that merely give lip service to godliness, most will always choose the latter. However, as we see in chapters 17 and 18, any false religion will fall one day and leave its adherents comfortless.

Therefore, we have a major lesson for all believers. We must pray, “Thy kingdom come.” However, the kingdom will not come by our political efforts; it will come in the hearts of those we know only through the Holy Spirit. Will you live before them in such a way to lead them to Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior?

If you’ve never believed in Jesus as Lord, know that whatever holds your allegiance today will one day reveal itself as a worthless fraud. Only Jesus Christ will stand the test of time. Confess Him as Lord today and experience the true love of God in your heart and life.