Revelation Class #41

REVELATION #41 – The Fall of Babylon

Last week we talked about Babylon The Great, and noted that my premise is that Babylon The Great is Jerusalem. Specifically, Babylon The Great is by and large the leadership of apostate Israel. That though they knew who God was and though they knew that they were supposed to be following Him, yet they allied themselves with the beast, with the state power, Rome, and with the kings of the world. Now God is pouring out His judgment upon them in this portion of Revelation.

We talked about the seven kings and then the eighth toward the end of the last session and I pointed out that Gentry and actually others earlier in history, saw those kings as the Roman Caesars beginning with Julius. If you begin with Julius as the first Caesar (Gentry points out that Josephus and others spoke as Julius Caesar as the first emperor), then you wind up with the number six being Nero. 17:10 and they are seven kings; … the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while. The seventh was Galba who was only in power seven months. Then, the Roman empire almost seemed to disintegrate because of the chaos surrounding the death of Nero, the burning of Rome, the Christian problem, the Jewish problem, the division of the empire. It almost seemed to disintegrate and so that’s where I think what John is talking about here when he says: 17:8 “The beast that you saw was and is not… is himself also an eighth, and one of the seven and he goes to destruction. Chilton points out that he believes and I think he’s got some good reasons here, I’m not sure agree entirely with him on this, that what’s being spoken of here is the Roman Empire almost seeming to disintegrate. It was, is not and is to come. It will rise again, as it were, and yet notice that John says the eighth, who is one of the seven, he’s also part and parcel with the beast, goes to destruction. So what he’s saying here is that even if the Roman Empire resurrects itself, it is only to go to destruction. That God’s in control and the Christians don’t have to worry. Remember I’m saying this is a letter of comfort to the Christians in the first century. So what’s being talked about here is that Rome will go away eventually.

17:12 “And 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. (13) These have one purpose and they give their power and authority to the beast. (14) These will wage war against the Lamb, 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.” (15) and he said to me, (this is the angel talking to John) “The waters which you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. (16) 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. (17) 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 should be fulfilled. (18) And the woman whom you saw is the great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.”

The ten horns, which are on the beast, which is Rome. So these ten kings then are associated with the Roman Empire. Chilton points out that one of the commentators, a guy by the name of Ferrar who wrote The Early Days of Christianity, said that there were in fact ten countries as it were associated with Rome: Italy, Achaia, Asia, Syria, Egypt, Africa, Spain, Gall, Britain and Germany. These were the ten kings that made up the Roman Empire. They were the provinces or the subordinate kingdoms of the empire. I don’t know that you can be that specific with something like this, maybe you can. But one of the things we need to realize is that this is symbolic (I’ll talk more about that in a couple of minutes). If Revelation is in fact symbolic, what does ten symbolize in Scripture? Completeness or many-ness. The Jews regarded ten as the perfect number. It was the multitude of completeness. It was as good as you could get. So what Chilton points out here is that ten is related to the concept of many-ness, of numerical fullness so that these kings who receive their authority from the beast, indicates that it’s the fullness of the kingdoms that are associated with Rome and that they receive their authority from Rome. He points out that Rome actually had ten imperial provinces, but it’s not really necessary to pin it down that far because it’s talking about the fullness of the kings of the earth who are together with Rome.

Q: I thought you said something about seven being a complete number also.

A: Yes. Ten’s perfection, seven is completeness.

Q: So seven heads and ten horns, that’s pretty complete.

A: Yes, exactly. Perfect completeness. Perfect complete evil, if you will.

Q: Any connection with Daniel 7?

A: In that the beast in Daniel 7 as I recall, the beasts are civil governments, state governments. I’d have to go back and look, it’s been a while since I looked at that. But the idea of the beast is the civil government. The government opposed to Christ. That’s what we see here.

Notice it says in verse 13 These (the ten kings) have one purpose and they give their power and authority to the beast. (They give their authority and power to Rome) (14) These (the kings) will wage war against the Lamb (Christ) So what you see here is an alliance between the Roman government and the subordinate kings that are part of the Roman government and apostate Israel. So you have the apostate church and you have the unbelieving state and who are they allied against? The true Israel. Christ, the Lamb. So what was going on in John’s day is exactly what’s going on today, isn’t it? How do we see this kind of coalition going on today? How do we see the state doing things against God today? Taking prayer out of schools. Taking the ten commandments out of schools. Taking manger scenes off of public property. Exactly the same kind of thing that’s going on. The government wants to destroy any reference to Christ. How do we see the apostate church involved in it? The liberal churches who are compromising and saying ‘yeah, the state government is right.’ In Germany during World War II the liberals in the church allied with Hitler and the Nazi regime to persecute the church. There’s nothing new is there? The same things that were going on in John’s day are going on in our day. It’s been going on through history. Should we be surprised at that then? No. Absolutely not. It’s a different year, different entities, but it’s the same.

C: This seems like a little bit greater importance though. This had a little bit more tied into it.

R: Why is that?

C: Because of the destruction of the old covenant.

R: Exactly, because you’re seeing in this the destruction of the old covenant way of doing things, Israel and the temple, and beginning of the new covenant way of doing things, Christ and the church. So yes, there is a difference here.

(14) These will wage war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them,… These are five little words, but extremely important little words: the Lamb will overcome them What we need to understand is exactly what John was telling the Christians in the first century, the Lamb will reign. He is the victor. He has overcome. So, should we as Christians be concerned when the state is trying to wipe Christianity off the face of the earth? That’s a trick question! Yes, we should. It’s a yes and no. We should be concerned but not worried. We should be involved in standing up and saying ‘No this isn’t right.’ But we should be doing it from the perspective of knowing that we’ve already won. We are more than conquerors. The gates of hell will not stand against us. Remember the Greek there says that the gates of hell shall not stand against. They’re not going to stand up against the church. They’re going to fall. What we need to understand is that our battles with the state and with the apostate church, it sometimes seems like we’re overwhelmed. Sometimes it seems like we’re voices standing out in the middle of the forest screaming our heads off and there’s nobody there to hear. The old question about if you’re in the middle of the forest and a tree falls, will it make a sound. By scientific definition, no, because there’s nothing there to hear the sound. But, the point is that it doesn’t matter how alone we feel, God’s already won. So we should be out there doing what He tells us to do – not being concerned, not be anxious or not be fatalistic about they’re going to take over.

C: You wonder how Romanian Christians and these others how they… we sit here pretty comfortably saying ‘yeah, yeah God has won,’ but they’re out there having their children ripped out of there arms. Pastor Rorbrand described how he was taken to jail, his kids were taken away from him. The mother is screaming at the child ‘trust in Jesus, trust in Jesus’ as the child is being dragged down the hallway never to see them again. To me, that’s a way more severe reality of what it means to really believe that Jesus has the victory. When you’re faced with that….

R: Yes, it would be difficult for any of us placed in a terrible situation like that, having our children taken away or our spouses taken away and executed or imprisoned for their faith. Or if we were taken away for our faith or simply because we were a Christian. Simply because we were chosen and it’s easy to say what our reaction should be, but when we look at Scripture it’s very clear, and you’ve heard me use this illustration over and over again: Think about Joseph. What did he do to cause his brothers to sell him into slavery? He was the favorite of his father. He was chosen. It didn’t have anything to do with him, it was just because his father loved him.

C: (inaudible)… some dream the context… his brothers…

R: Yes. He was telling them about the truth of Scripture, wasn’t he? He was telling them about the truth of God’s word and it upset them and they sold him into slavery. Seventeen years as a slave, three years in an Egyptian prison. Yet God raised him up to be the number one man in the world and when his brothers came to him at the end of Genesis, one of my favorite Bible passages, they’re pleading for their lives and he says don’t worry about it. Who am I to be put in God’s place. You meant it for evil – he puts the blame right at their feet – God meant it for good. See if we really, really believe in Jesus Christ, that’s the essence of faith. That no matter what the circumstances, no matter how terrible they are, we have to hold onto Romans 8:28 that God causes all things to happen for good, for those that love Him and are called according to His purpose. Other people mean it for evil and it’s wicked and it’s terrible, but in some way that we don’t understand yet, God meant it for good.

C: I know that theologically in doctrine that’s true and you have to say that. I’m just saying that the stories that I’ve read from Pastor Rorbrand, it’s a more severe reality.

R: Yes. I’m not putting myself up here as a paragon of virtue saying I wouldn’t be concerned or screaming or hollering…

C: I’m just saying it makes me pause before I think ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, Jesus has the victory.’ I’m just saying if I were to face those circumstances I don’t know how I’d fare. The one story the father was chained and being asked secrets about the church and all that and they were torturing and killing his son right before him. That’s how brutal it was.

R: But what if you didn’t know the story of Joseph or the story of Revelation. If you know the Bible, aren’t you better prepared to handle those kinds of circumstances?

C: When you think of Jesus too, Scripture talks about us not even resisting to the point of shedding our own blood as Jesus did. Think about it, we could be suffering even worse than God the Father was when He was separated from His Son.

R: Yes, they were buried in holes in the ground, torn apart, sawed in half.

C: Being that He has that power, God only gives you what you can handle. God would never give you that one….

C: Or give you the ability to handle it….

C: One or the other…

C: I think the father in this story went insane.

R: Again, the point is here that it is 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.

(15) and he said to me, Now here’s a point that the pre-millennial people, the people who believe in a literal interpretation of Revelation have a problem. Because he said to me “The waters which you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.” Remember that John saw this vision of the harlot, Babylon The Great, sitting on the back of the beast who is on the waters. If we go back it says 17:1 … I shall show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, and it goes on to say she was sitting on the back of the great beast. So here the angel is saying the waters are not literal waters. They are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. The ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and make her desolate. What do you think John is talking about there? R: About making her desolate? Yeah, about the people and the kings… R: Well…that Rome will rise up against apostate Israel? Yes, exactly.

C: What I was reading was a commentary – also too, often times in Israel when a harlot was disgraced before all the public and in situations … (inaudible) was burned.

R: Right. Chilton points out that they will make her desolate is the same word that is used in Matthew 24:15 and Luke 21:20 where Jesus says when you see the abomination of desolation standing before the temple then flee. And he also points out that the penalty for being an adulterous, a prostitute, in the Old Testament, was to strip them naked in public. In Leviticus 21:9 it says that if the daughter of the priest is caught in adultery, you take her out and burn her.

So who is the harlot? Israel. What’s her relationship with God? She’s not only the daughter of the priest, she’s the wife of God. She’s in an adulterous relationship with the beast, with Rome, and with the rest of the world through Rome and so I think what’s being talked about here is that God is going to bring judgment upon Israel, and He is going to use Rome to bring that judgment upon Israel, her lover. It says 17:17 For God has put it in their hearts (the people’s hearts and the ten kings) to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God should be fulfilled. So what you see here is that in spite of the fact that Israel allied herself with Rome and therefore with the kings of the world, God is going to turn their hearts against her and God is going to use Rome and the kingdoms of the world to destroy Israel. That’s exactly what you see in 70 AD. Remember the Roman army was made up from conscripts from conquered territories, so their armies were literally from all the nations. In fact we read in Josephus that the army was made up of people from nations all over the known world at the time, and they came together under the Roman General Titus under the direction of God, and it was that army that destroyed Israel and the temple.

Q: How did they do that. If you were captured and you didn’t fight, they just killed you?

A: Yes, basically.

Q: So you better fight or they were watching you?

A: Absolutely. They didn’t pull any punches. They didn’t have any Uniform Code of Military Justice. It was fight or die, one way or the other. You either fought the enemy and you died, or if you didn’t fight the enemy the Romans killed you. You had two choices.

I want to read from Chilton here, back up to verse 16: “In the war against Christ, the raging nations turn against the harlot because of her connection with Christ, with the Lamb. The angel portrays this new enmity toward the harlot by four-fold description. The peoples of the empire will hate the harlot and make her desolate, make her naked, will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” We’ve already talked about the desolation and burning with fire. Talking about the bitter hatred Chilton says, “Russell observed that Tacitus speaks of the bitter animosity with which the Arab auxiliaries of Titus were filled against the Jews. We have a fearful proof of the intense hatred felt toward the Jews by the neighboring nations in the wholesale massacres of that unhappy people perpetrated in many great cities just before the outbreak of the war.” This is stuff you’ve never heard of before unless you’ve read this. “The whole Jewish population of Caesarea (Caesarea was a town on the Mediterranean coast) were massacred in one day.” They killed every Jew in town. Chilton goes on “In Syria, every city was divided into two camps – Jews and Syrians. In Scythopolis, upwards of 13,000 Jews were butchered. In Ascalon, Ptolemais and Tyre, similar atrocities took place, but at Alexandria the carnage of the Jewish inhabitants exceeded all the other massacres. The whole Jewish quarter was deluged with blood and 50,000 corpses lay in ghastly heaps in the streets. This is a terrible commentary on the words of the angel interpreter. The ten horns which you saw upon the beast, these shall hate the harlot.”

So you see this coming true during this period of time. Remember that the Jews and the Romans were persecuting the Christians and John is writing saying don’t worry about it, God’s in charge, and these nations that are allied with Rome are going to turn against apostate Israel, the harlot. You see that coming true in history. We don’t have that background. We’ve never been told that, but when you go back and read these other writings and see that 50,000 people were killed, laying in heaps in the street, we don’t even have that kind of stuff going on in the atrocities that we see today, do we? Yet, that’s what was going on during this period of time in history. So God is very, very clear and His word comes true.

(18) “And the woman whom you saw is the great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.” When you read that, you immediately think of Rome. It couldn’t be Israel, it’s got to be Rome, right? Yes, exactly.

Q: One thing that comes to mind, is it Rome or is it Jerusalem?

A: Yes, but was Jerusalem ever in a situation where they had a kingdom over the kings of the earth?

R: Christ will establish a kingdom.

A: It has to do with Christ, yes. Christ established a kingdom.

C: If this is symbolic, it could be Jerusalem, but if its more literal, it’s Rome.

C: I don’t remember 100% having a temple, how the Jews were actually… because they worshipped God in the temple and their insolence, something like that isn’t it?

R: How did God first manifest Himself to the world? He made a covenant with Abraham. The word of that covenant was supposed to go out to all the world through the Jews, they were supposed to be witnesses. ‘You are My witnesses’ God says. Instead, they were witnessing the power of the beast. They weren’t witnessing of the power of God, and Chilton points out this covenant idea. Remember that Revelation is in the form of a Suzerain Treaty – having to do with covenental things. He says about verse 18: “The angel now identifies the harlot as the great city which, as we have seen, St. John uses as a term for Jerusalem, where the Lord was crucified. (chapter 11:8; 16:19) Moreover says the angel, this city has a kingdom over all the kings of the earth. It is perhaps this verse more than any other which is confused expositors into supposing against all other evidence that the harlot is Rome. If the city is Jerusalem, how can she be said to wield this kind of world-wide political power? The answer is that Revelation is not a book about politics. It is a book about the covenant. Jerusalem did reign over all the nations. She did possess a kingdom which was above all the kingdoms of the world. She had a covenantal priority over the kingdoms of the earth. Paul says that God came first to the Jews. They’re blessed because they received the world of the covenant first.”

C: And also, if you look back the woman is understood to be Jerusalem. The average person may think Rome, right?

R: Right, and that’s why I thought it was Rome – specifically because of this verse. Because I failed to understand until recently this covenantal priority that’s being talked about.

Q: What about the idea of the woman? The woman is the great city and to me that’s more convincing than anything. When you read about the woman, the woman is the harlot who is prostituting herself to…

A: I’m just saying that people like me who read it cursorily to begin with, and remember I taught this three times so it wasn’t a cursory reading per se, but when you read a verse that says (17:18) the great city reigns over all the kings of the earth, there’s only one city in this part of secular history where that happened, and that was Rome. So therefore, if the city is Rome then obviously the harlot is Rome. Because it says the woman is the great city.

Q: So you believed that the harlot was Rome too.

A: Yes, I believed that the harlot was Rome.

Q: Then who did you think the beast was?

A: Confused. Rome I guess, too. I never really looked at it that closely until just recently. This makes a lot more sense and when you realize the covenantal aspect, that Jerusalem did have a covenantal priority – God came to Israel first and then to the Gentiles – and so Israel’s charter, just like the church’s by the way, is to spread the Good News through all the world, and they failed to do that.

Q: Where does Scripture attest to Israel’s obligation to spread the message of God?

A: Isaiah 43:10 for one. ‘You are My witnesses says YHWH.’ There are many, many other verses. In chapter 43:1 But now thus says the Lord, your creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! He’s talking to Israel. He says in verse 3 For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior; and then in verse 10 You are My witnesses,” declares YHWH, “and My servant whom I have chosen, in order that you may know and believe Me…” The idea of that passage and throughout the Old Testament is that Israel was supposed to be out there telling people about God. Giving the true word, they were the light unto the world, just as the church is the city built upon a hill. We need to hear that message loudly and clearly, that God is very displeased with those who He wants to spread the word, when they don’t do it. Look at what He did to Jerusalem.

Q: Is it fair to say that the emphasis wasn’t as explicit in the Old Testament as it is in the New?

A: No – well, obviously there’s no specific verse like Matthew 28:19 in the Old Testament. Although there are places which relate to that which I can look up later, I don’t recall right off the top of my head. Yes, you see the same focus in the Old Testament, it’s just more explicitly stated in the New Testament.

C: Because they didn’t get it right in the Old Testament, they had to be…

R: Yeah, God had to be much more specific. That’s what you see. The history of redemption is that God gets more and more specific because we’re so dumb.

C: You can see the desolation so much more in chapter 18 with the covenantal relationship with God. Why would everyone still be mourning Rome?

R: We’ll talk more about that but that also has to do with Israel’s position as the initial contact for the covenant and what their responsibility was, and we’ll also see, just to whet your appetite here, that the precipitating event for the Jewish war was that the Jews actually stopped sacrificing in the temple and the pagans, realizing that the temple was a center of God’s focus in the world, went to war because they didn’t want the sacrifices stopped. That’s a mind blower, which we’ll talk about next week.