The Harlot and the Beast: Revelation 17 Unveiled

Well, we're in the book of Revelation chapter 17. We're gonna be looking at

Revelation 17 · chapter mention

verses one through 18 tonight.

And I want y'all to hang on. Remember what we do when we get to a new chapter,

we have like a big overview, okay?

So we look at it, you know, like this big overview part of it as a whole,

and maybe look in other portions of scripture.

And then we begin to dissect it a little bit more in that passage.

So tonight is definitely our big overview.

And we may get a little bit dissecting, but we may just get the overview.

But let's turn to Revelation 17. will be verses 1 through 18 tonight.

And here we go. Here's our adventure. Then one of the seven angels who had the

seven bowls came and spoke to 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.

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.

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.

And on her forehead a name was written, a 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 witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly.

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.

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

And those who dwell on the earth whose names had

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 here is the mind which has wisdom the seven heads are seven

mountains on which the woman sits 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.

The beast which was and is not is himself also an eighth and is one of the seven.

And he goes to destruction.

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.

These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast.

These will wage war against the lamb.

Who's that talking about? Jesus, right?

And the lamb 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.

Wow. And he said to me, the waters with which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples.

Now, this is where he starts describing this and multitudes and nations and

tongues and the ten horns, which you saw and the beast.

These will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked and will eat

her flesh and will burn her up with fire.

Y'all are sitting there like Judd. This is kind of wild, wild writing, right?

For God has put it in their hearts to execute his purpose by having a common

purpose and by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God will be fulfilled.

The woman whom you saw is the great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth.

Father God, we ask that your Holy Spirit will continue to guide tonight,

Lord, and that we receive your word in Jesus' name.

Amen. You know, there's a certain element of truth in Karl Marx's oft-quoted

statement that religion is the opium of the people.

People are incurably religious. Have you noticed?

Because God created them to be worshipers.

God created us all to be worshipers, right? And they will inevitably worship someone or something.

If not the true God, then false gods of their own making. And y'all see that

all over our culture today, right?

I mean, that's how God created us. People are made with that God-shaped vacuum,

if you will, that they are constantly seeking to fill.

And since the fall of man that we've been studying in Sunday school,

since the fall, man's innate longing to know God has been twisted.

It's been perverted, y'all.

And people still seek something to worship, but no longer seek the true God.

You see that all over, right?

In fact, Romans 3.11, anybody happen to know that one?

Romans 3.11, I know you'll know this and as I quoted here, there is none who seeks for God.

I have a question. How many people seek for God?

Not even one, y'all. There's none who does good. No, not even one.

Nobody seeks after God on their

own, right? Because as Jesus declared in John 6, 44, what did he say?

He said, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them or draws him, right?

In other words, just our desire, I was telling this again, reminding our Sunday

school class this morning, just our desire to be here tonight in church is God drawing us, right?

Because in the flesh, apart from Christ, we don't want anything to do with that.

And sadly, man's need for a relationship with God has actually been corrupted

by his love of something else. Do you know what it is?

Sin, right? Sin. You know why we sin?

Because we love it. And apart from Christ and knowing Jesus Christ,

who should be that God the Father, the greater love in our life,

the only way that we're going to have the ability through the power of the Holy

Spirit to say no to sin through his power is our love of sin is replaced by

a greater love for Jesus Christ and what he has done for us.

And so as we look in the scriptures, we find that you know, this need for this

relationship with God, like I said, has been corrupted by our love of sin.

Paul actually wrote in Romans chapter one, verse 21, he said that even though

people knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks,

but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

Don't y'all see that lived out all around us today? Have you ever heard somebody

say, you know, I don't believe there is a God?

If you read Romans chapter one, it is so plain.

God has said that every man knows he exists because he has revealed it to them, right?

So it's not that people don't know there's a God.

They refuse to worship him as God. They choose to worship and serve like the

creation or whatever else, just so long as it's not God, because then they would

have to be accountable to their creator, to God Almighty, right?

And so, but people know God doesn't believe in atheists, y'all,

because he said it's not so.

He's already showed himself to everybody. He's revealed it through creation,

he says in Romans 1, and he has revealed it himself to them.

He has written his law upon every heart.

When people lie, they know it's wrong to lie.

You don't have to tell them. They know. You know why? Because God has written

his law on their heart. They have a conscience.

Con means with. Science means knowledge. Every time you sin,

you do it with knowledge that it's wrong because you have a conscience.

You know. You know it's wrong to commit adultery. I know it's wrong,

right? Not because somebody had to tell us, because God wrote his law on the heart.

In fact, nobody had to teach me to lie. Did they have to teach you to lie? No.

Even though people knew God, they know God. There's no such thing as an atheist.

God doesn't believe in atheists. And by the way, he doesn't believe in agnostics either.

And so into mankind's spiritual vacuum here, step two, Satan,

right? The father of lies, we've talked about him before, John 8,

44, and his demon host disguised as angels of light.

In 2 Corinthians 11, it talks about those angels of light. Reminds me of an old song, right?

And purveying doctrines of demons as well.

We studied that. We saw that in 1 Timothy 4 in a past message.

But playing on people's religious bent, so to speak, they energize religious deception.

And you remember I said chapter 17 of Revelation here is going to see the final

destruction of that last false religion, right?

False religions, y'all get this tonight, powerful appeal actually comes from

its promise to satisfy man's longing for the spiritual realm.

Without bringing him, get this as key, under God's authority.

Because people are obsessed with that, and they will be in this time,

the supernatural, right?

And so this is a point here, this false religion, the powerful appeal that comes

from the promise to satisfy our longing for the spiritual realm,

but without bringing under God's authority.

And so in their rebellion against the true God here, we're going to see,

And because of their love of sin, fallen men will actually willingly turn to

these damning satanic religions.

But wonderfully, y'all, graciously,

even mercifully, though man no longer seeks God here, guess what?

God still seeks man. Aren't y'all grateful for that?

I mean, it's like sometimes I just want to say, hallelujah, yes,

God is still seeking man.

Even when we don't seek him, he seeks us. Thank God he does,

because if he didn't, not a one of us would go to heaven.

God is just. I don't want y'all to ever forget this tonight.

God is totally just and holy to send everybody in this room to hell for all

eternity because every one of us, including your pastor, deserve to burn in hell forever.

It is only by God's grace and mercy that he sought us and made us his children.

Wow. We don't deserve anything, nothing. The best day, we deserve burning in hell forever.

That's why my good brother in Christ, Dave Ramsey, you ask him how he's doing?

Better than I deserve, right? Because we're always better than we really deserve under God's authority.

In fact, indeed here, it was to seek and to save Jesus's mission to actually

seek and save that which was what?

Lost. Anybody here ever been lost? I still remember.

Anybody ever been like a little fearful being lost in the past?

I mean, I'm talking, I know as kids we probably have, but have you ever had

a little bit of, yeah, sometimes we can get lost big time. There's different reasons why we get lost.

Sometimes we just don't, you know, we don't ask for directions, guys. Okay.

I mean, I'm thinking too, like, or we don't know how to use the maps app on our phone, maybe.

I don't know. But hey, back in the day, especially it was easier to get lost on directions, right?

And when you're in the woods, especially when you're a kid, It should be pretty

easy to get turned around, right?

But sometimes we get lost just on our journeys here and back and forth on the

earth. But think about being lost spiritually, right?

We're dead in our sins. We're lost. We have no clue.

We don't have a compass in our heart and our life, do we?

Other than God did write his law in our heart, but we're dead in our sin.

Apart from Christ, we can't use that.

God is the one who comes and seeks and saves us. And Jesus came into our world, y'all.

Emmanuel, that means God with us. He came to be with us. He wanted to come and rescue us.

Because false religion is so much a part, though, of this fallen world,

it's no surprise here in Revelation 17, as we dive deeper, that it's going to

play a major role in the end times.

You can probably already see that.

During the tribulation here, all the world's diverse false religions will be

reunited, y'all, into one great world religion.

That's hard to imagine today a little bit, maybe, right? But they're going to

all be reunited under one big false religion.

And the ultimate expression of false religion will be an essential element of

Antichrist's final world empire.

And holding together, think about it for a moment, his military,

his economic, and his political structure, only religion can unite the world

in the most compelling way.

Politics economics even

military force are unable to

overcome the world's cultural diversity only religion with its appeal to the

supernatural that i mentioned earlier can transcend actually the physical the

geographical the historical the economic and the cultural barriers to world

unity under this false religion.

Chapter 17, I want y'all to get this quickly. Chapter 17 that we're starting

tonight reveals the spiritual nature of Antichrist's kingdom.

Chapter 18 that we'll get to down the road follows with its material aspects.

God will destroy both of those aspects. We're going to see that of Antichrist's kingdom.

So look at it this way. Chapter 17 and 18 are actually inserted here into the

chronological flow of Revelation, which actually will continue in chapter 19.

The pouring out of the seventh bowl, that was the last thing we studied in chapter

16, is actually followed immediately in time by the return of Jesus to end the

great world battle that we were talking about.

So you're asking, well, what about 17 and 18 here that we're in?

Well, chapter 17 and 18 actually digress to look not at God's specific judgments,

but at what is being judged.

So we've got to get a little digression here in Revelation for a couple of chapters

to see not at the judgments, but what is being judged.

And these two chapters, chapter 17 and 18, they go back to describe actually

the world system that's led by, you guessed it, the unholy trinity, Satan.

Antichrist, and the false prophet before recording its destruction.

Because by the way, it will be destroyed. God will destroy it.

John here in Revelation had already heard harbingers of Babylon's destruction.

And now the details of that destruction, y'all, will be given in really three

remarkable visions here.

And so during the tribulation, people will desperately seek religion because

of what's going to be happening in the world.

I mean, think about it. Somebody help me out. What's been happening in the world?

Think about all the things that have been happening, all the judgments,

everything that, you know, as the hammer blows of God's judgment,

the seal, trumpet, bowl judgments, devastate the earth and terrorize its inhabitants.

People will return in desperation to Antichrist as their Savior.

You know, isn't it funny how God has been so, I say funny, it's just ironic

that he has been so gracious to reach out to people, to try to draw them to repent.

But yet these people are like shaking their fist in God's face,

refusing to repent, even though the judgments have come from him.

And now they're running for this religion, this false religion.

They're running into antichrist's arms basically

and so aided here though

by the false prophet and hordes of deceiving demons

that we've studied antichrist is actually going to establish a worldwide religion

like i said if you look back in that passage we just read babylon the great

the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth how can the future

religious babylon be the mother of all false religion.

Well, I think to comprehend that the Babylonian false religion of this future

empire requires understanding a little bit of Babylon's role as the false religion of the past.

So hang with me just a few moments tonight as we look at this big overview part.

The story of Babylon begins, does anybody know? I'll give you a hint.

It's all the way back in Genesis. Anybody know where it would have been?

The Tower of Babel.

Babylon, right? Babylon. Genesis 11, verses 1 through 9. Listen to it quickly.

Genesis 11:1–9

Now, the whole earth used the same language and the same words.

It came about as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of

Shinar and settled there.

They said to one another, come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly,

and they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar,

they said, come, let us build for ourselves a city and a tower whose top will

reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name.

Otherwise, we'll be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.

The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built,

and the Lord said, behold,

they are one people and they all have the same language

and this is what they begun to do

and now nothing that they purpose which they

purpose to do will be impossible for them come let us capital you father son

holy ghost right let us go down and there confuse their language y'all do know

the tower babel is where all the languages came and god himself scattered the

people all over the globe.

This is the passage, Genesis 11. And so it says here, it says,

let us go down and confuse our language that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth

and they stopped building the city.

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.

So journeying east after the flood, Noah's descendants actually arrived at the site of Babylon.

And by the way, this is just something to throw out there.

Y'all know originally when God created Adam and Eve, what did they eat originally? Fruit.

Right? And of the shrub, you know, vegetation, right? Vegetarian, right?

But after the flood, that is when God said they could eat meat. after the flood, right?

But their journey east after the flood, Noah's descendants arrived to the side

of Babylon, the land of Shinar.

And in history's first great humanistic effort, if you will,

they decided to build a monument to themselves.

It was right after the flood. To make for themselves, like it said in this passage, a name.

But this act of rebellion, y'all, if you think about it and look at it here,

against God also had religious implications, right?

Like brick towers, like the one they built, is also known as ziggurats, right?

And they were later used in false religions. And they had on their tops the

sign of the zodiac, which was used by pagan priests, by the way, to chart the stars.

And through their observation of the stars, the priests supposedly gained some

type of spiritual insight and knowledge into the future, right?

And so such blatant, I want y'all to miss this here because it ties into Revelation

here and what's going on.

Such blatant, defiant rebellion against God is incredible here on the part of

those to whom the flood was just a really recent event. God had just spared their lives, right?

And in fact, Nimrod, what a name for a child, right?

Nimrod, the apparent leader of the plot here, was Noah's great-grandson.

Genesis actually describes him in chapter 10, verse 9, as a mighty hunter before the Lord.

Hunting season is right upon us, right? Deer hunting season. Anybody a deer hunter?

Just checking. Okay, right there. So this guy was a mighty hunter before the

Lord. That's how he's described in Scripture.

And he notes that the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Achad

and Kalna in the land of Shinar.

From that land he went forth into Assyria and built Nineveh and Robothir and

Calah and Rezin between Nineveh and Calah. That is the great city.

That's in Genesis 10, verses 10 through 12.

Genesis 10:10–12

So in other words, this proud, this arrogant man,

leader Nimrod is actually also, this is something we need to know,

his name may derive from a Hebrew verb as well, meaning actually to rebel.

Isn't that something? To rebel. And it's foreshadowing, who do you think in Revelation?

Antichrist, right? It's a foreshadowing of Antichrist, really.

God's judgmentally here scattered those proud rebels from Babel in Genesis 11,

and they took their false religion, where did they take it? Where did he scatter them, first of all?

All over the world. So where did they take their false religions? All over the world.

And so in spite of the scattering, Babylon remained an idolatrous center of false worship.

And at one point, actually in the city's sordid history, it contained actually

no less than about 180 shrines, y'all, dedicated to the goddess Ishtar.

I mean, it was just amazing of all the blatant idolatry there, right?

Even some of the Israelites were called up in the idolatrous worship of Ishtar,

one of whose titles was actually Queen of Heaven.

Jeremiah actually rebuked the Jewish remnant that had fled to Egypt for the

idolatry that had led to their downfall, by the way.

He actually rebuked them, and instead of repenting, they remained defiant.

And listen to what they say. Talk about the queen of heaven here.

They say, Then all the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices

to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by as a large assembly,

including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt,

responded to Jeremiah saying, listen to what they said, As for the message that

you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we are not going to listen to you.

Well, I mean, but rather, look what they said, rather,

we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths by

burning sacrifices, it says here,

to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offering to her,

just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the

cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

For then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune.

But since we stopped burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out

our drink offerings to her, we have lacked everything and have met our end by the sword and famine.

And, said the women, when we were burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven

and were pouring out drink offerings to her, was it without our husbands that

we made for her sacrificial cakes?

In her image, and poured out drink offerings to her. That's in Jeremiah 44.

So get this tonight, y'all, for just a moment.

If we wrap this up for tonight, God, through Jeremiah, pronounced judgment on

those Jews for their stubborn, defiant adherence to this Ishtar cult,

this false worship, right?

And so we hear about this in the Word. It says, Jeremiah said to all the people,

to the men and to the women, even to all the people who were giving him such an answer saying,

as for the smoking sacrifices that you burned in the cities of Judah and in

the streets of Jerusalem, you and your forefathers, your kings and your princes

and the peoples of the land, it says, did not the Lord remember them and did

not all this come into his mind?

So the Lord was no longer able to endure it.

In other words, y'all, God had had enough because of your evil deeds,

he said, because of the abominations which you have committed,

thus your land has become ruined, an object of horror and a curse without an

inhabitant as it is this day,

because you have burned sacrifices and have sinned against the Lord and not

obeyed the voice of the Lord or walked in his law, his statutes or his testimonies.

Therefore, this calamity has befallen you as it has this day.

He said to all the people, including all the women, he said,

hear the word of the Lord.

All Judah who are in the land of Egypt, thus says the Lord of hosts,

the God of Israel, as follows, as for you and your wives, you have spoken with

your mouths and fulfilled it with your hands,

saying we will certainly perform our vows that we have vowed to burn sacrifices

to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her.

Go ahead and confirm your vows and certainly perform your vows.

Nevertheless, hear the word of the Lord, all Judah who are living in the land of Egypt.

Behold, I have sworn by my great name, says the Lord.

Never shall my name be invoked again by the mouth of any man of Judah in all

the land of Egypt, saying, as the Lord lives, behold, I am watching over them

for harm and not for good.

And all the men of Judah who are in the land of Egypt, will meet their end by

the sword and by famine until they are completely gone.

So why are these people, think about it for a minute, why are these people under

all this oppression, so to speak, that they claim they're under and why they're

sacrificing to the queen of heaven?

Why are they really in the shape they're in?

Because of their sin. Because they refused to worship and give praise to the one true God, right?

You know, it's how easy, y'all, How easy is it for us when things go really

bad or something happens?

Sometimes when things go good, it's so easy to forget God because things are

going so good. It's like, oh yeah, we got it all made in the shade.

Things go bad. Who's the first person we point the finger at? God, right?

And in reality, y'all, most of the time, as we all know, we live in a fallen world.

Things go bad because of our sin, right? In general, that's why we all die.

That's why we all have disease.

But God loved us enough. He didn't keep it that way, right? He made a way.

But also, a lot of times, I don't know about y'all, but the things in my life

that I found at least a fair amount of the time that go bad are because Judd actually sinned.

I mean, come on, y'all. because we made choices that had consequences, right?

And so easily we tend to blame God. And here, Ezekiel, also here in this passage,

he refers to the worship of Ishtar, of Tammuz.

Then he brought, he says, me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord's house,

which was toward the north, and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.

And throughout history, you know, then Babylon has been an important center.

That's the point, a false religion.

And in the end times that we're looking at in Revelation 17,

this is this overview, right?

We're looking at this. False religion

is going to come back to where it started. I want y'all to get that.

The devil who deceived the people all the way back in Genesis 11 at the Tower

of Babel and from there launched false religion all over the whole earth will

deceive the world once again.

But I want y'all to know this too. Here's the hope. This is the final time,

and this is where the final world religion that's depicted here in this passage,

and we're going to dive deeper into it down the road,

is depicted as a harlot, which you probably already know is we're not talking

about a prostitute for real, but this is talking about people who have committed

spiritual adultery, so to speak.

And I'll explain that more and how that differs from Israel when we talk about

spiritual adultery and all that in the future.

But the final world religion here depicted as a harlot is the theme of this

vision of John, which records the exposure of the harlot,

the explanation of the harlot that we're going to see in the coming weeks,

and the extermination of the harlot.

The next time we get together on this, we'll look at the exposure of the harlot

in this passage as we deep dive deeper into the passage. So.