And one of the seven angels, which had the seven bowls, came and spoke with me, saying, Come here, I will shew thee the sentence of the great harlot who sits upon the many waters;
One of the angels who poured out the last bowls of God's wrath now stops to explain who the woman is. Chapter 17 does not bring a new event. It brings an invitation to understand why God judges this figure at all.
The chapter steps out of the running order of the book:
It is necessary to bear in mind, if we have not observed it before, that Revelation 17 does not pursue the chronological course of the prophecy. It is an episode about objects already dealt with, not one of the visions that carry us onward in historic sequence. It looks back at Babylon in her relation to the Beast and the kings, whom we saw last under the Bowls of God's wrath.
Twice the book has announced her fall. It has not yet said who she is:
The fourteenth chapter already announces Babylon as fallen, and the seventh bowl shows God judging her. But we have not yet seen what Babylon is, and we are not to be left in any uncertainty. She has played too large a part in human history, and teaches too important a lesson, to be passed over so briefly.
The guide fits the message, and the word "prostitute" has a history in Scripture:
The seven angels had the last plagues, one of which was in part directed against Babylon. It is by one of these angels therefore that John is taken to witness her judgment. He calls her "the great prostitute who is seated on many waters." Scripture often uses the first part of this figure for those who forsake God for idolatry. It is applied again and again in this sense to Jerusalem and the Jews. So "the great prostitute who is seated on many waters" means a system of idolatry that has spread over vast regions and many nations. Unlike the idolatry of the antichrist, it is not one nation's turning away from God; its area is far wider.
The exact word depends on the relationship behind it:
In the Old Testament, Scripture treats Israel, when she turned away from God, as an adulterous wife. The LORD had brought her as a nation into an established relationship with Himself. The Church is engaged to Christ "as a pure virgin" (2 Cor. 11:2), and the wedding day is still in the future. So Scripture accurately calls the false church, wholly allied with the world, not an adulteress but a prostitute.
Later in the chapter the vision explains its own symbol:
The explanation of the vision (vv. 7-18) tells us what these waters mean: "The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages." Adding "multitudes" to the usual formula for universality marks the mixed character of those under her power. She rules and dominates the nations in religion, as the Beast does in government. Her following is an almost universal one. She herself is a vast religious system. The woman stands for the religious system; the Beast stands for the civil power.
The hardest thing about this figure is recognising her at all:
For she is a mystery. The Babylon of old was the plain and straightforward enemy of the people of God; she is not. She is a riddle, so hard to read that many of God's people in every age have taken her, prostitute as she is, for the pure bride of the Lamb. Yet here, for all ages, the riddle is solved for those who are close enough to God to understand it. And the figure is gaudy enough to attract all eyes to her — and she even seeks to do so.
The same kind of angel later shows John another woman:
From every point of view these two women are set in sharp contrast. The prostitute is subject to Satan. The bride is subject to Christ. It is one of the bowl angels who shows both to the wondering seer. A wilderness (Rev. 17:3) and a great, high mountain (Rev. 21:10) are the respective viewing points... Satan decks the one (Rev. 17:4); God adorns the other (Rev. 19:8). Eternal ruin is the portion of the prostitute; eternal glory the happy lot of the bride.
She is bigger than any one institution:
The principles of Babylon have been at work from earliest times. Its highest development is still future. She is not the papal system alone, but the fusion of parties bearing the Christian name into one vast system of evil... "The great prostitute" is Satan's counterfeit of the true Church. She is also the concentrated expression of every antichristian movement and sect then in existence, held together and controlled by Satan.
- Shown — The chapter breaks the sequence to answer a question the bowls raised. God explains who He is judging before we watch her fall.
- Named — She is a prostitute, not an adulteress, because she was never a wife. She counterfeits a church that is still waiting for its wedding day.
- Seated — The many waters are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. She rules them in religion; the Beast rules them in government.
- Seductive — She is a mystery, and the mystery has worked. In every age believers have mistaken her for the bride of the Lamb.
- Sentenced — The same kind of angel shows her, and later shows the bride. Satan dresses one, and she ends in ruin; God adorns the other, and she ends in glory.
with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication; and they that dwell on the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
Two women appear in the closing chapters of Revelation, and the same angel introduces both. That parallel is the key to reading this verse.
Say the holy city, the new Jerusalem of the later chapter, is the bride, the Lamb's wife — the glorified church. Then the great city of the earlier chapter is naturally the anti-church. It is that corrupt evil body which claims to be the church, puts herself forward with supreme claims, and takes the highest ground in the Lord's name. But there is this fatal brand on her: Babylon seeks the earth; her communion is not with Christ. She courts and lavishes her guilty favours on the kings of the earth.
Where the ESV says "sexual immorality," older translations read "fornication" — the word these writers use. It is a picture, and the shock lies in who is doing it.
Scripture often uses "fornication" as a symbol. The following are a few instances among many: 2 Chronicles 21:11; Isaiah 23:17; Ezekiel 16:29. It means evil intercourse with the world. Sadly, this has been true of some bearing the name of Christ! The Church is the deeply loved spouse of the absent Christ. She belongs to heaven, not to this dark and corrupt scene at all. Her path should always have been that of a stranger, simply passing through on her way to meet the Bridegroom in glory.
So what is she after — and who drinks with her?
But the woman here is a harlot, in guilty relation with the kings of the earth. Her lure is clearly ambition, the desire of power on earth, the refusal of the cross of Christ — the place of rejection. The wine, the intoxication, of her fornication makes the "dwellers on earth" drunk. These are people who profess much but have their hearts on earthly things. They naturally drink in the poison of her doctrine.
The verse names the rulers first, then everyone else. The order matters.
The harlot first forms a guilty alliance with the kings of the earth — the great political leaders of Christendom. Then she makes "the dwellers on earth" drunk with the wine of her fornication. These are the mass who once claimed the Christian faith and have now abandoned it. Their wickedness is then filled up. Christ, the heavenly calling, and Christianity abandoned, they give themselves up to the short-lived joys of the harlot's cup of wine.
So does everyone caught up with her carry the same blame?
There are different degrees of guilt, but all of it came from being connected with Babylon, closely or loosely.
What does her wine actually do to people?
The word "fornication," as used here, means, we have no doubt, the seducing power of the Roman system in drawing the affections away from Christ, who is the only true object of faith for the heart. The priest comes in between the heart and the blessed Lord. The Bible is hidden. No one knows the mind of God. The people are drunk on her exciting falsehoods, and they worship what they do not know.
So is this past or future? The answer is both — and the final form is bigger than any single church.
The principles of Babylon have been at work from earliest times, but Babylon's highest development is still to come. It is not the papal system alone, but the fusion of parties bearing the Christian name into one vast system of evil.
This is not only a forecast. It is a test.
But should we not ask our own consciences this? Is Roman Catholicism the only form of Christianity that approves union with the world and tries to make it holy? The first Christians were linked with a Christ whom men rejected. Is it so with us? "You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God" (James 4:4). This spiritual harlotry is the great outstanding feature of what is described here: an alliance with the world, its kings and its people, made by something that bears the name of Christ and claims to be His spouse.
- Counterfeit. Revelation sets a bride and a harlot side by side. She claims Christ's name, but her communion is with the earth, not with Him.
- Cause. Her sin is ambition — the desire for power now and the refusal of the cross, the place of rejection.
- Contact. Her "fornication" is evil dealing with the world. She should have passed through it as a stranger.
- Contagion. She allies with the rulers first. Then her wine drugs the crowds: the priest stands between the heart and the Lord, and the Bible stays hidden.
- Conscience. The pattern is not confined to one system. Friendship with the world is the test, and every believer must put the question to themselves.
And he carried me away in spirit to a desert; and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
An angel carries John away to show him the judgment of a great harlot. He sees her seated, riding a beast — so who is she, and what is the beast that carries her?
Where John stands to see this matters as much as what he sees. In another vision an angel shows John the bride of the Lamb. For that sight he takes him somewhere very different.
This point of view is very striking. When the angel showed John the bride of the Lamb, he carried him away "to a great, high mountain" (Rev. 21:10). To get into God's thoughts about the true Church, we must be lifted higher. We must be taken above the mists and clouds of this world into the clear air of His own blessed presence. But the seer was carried "into a wilderness" to see the great prostitute! So the Spirit of God reminds us that everything around her is barren, however great her wealth and splendour. Her grand and showy ceremonies may capture and overawe the senses, but they leave the soul unsatisfied and unfed. Ritual is not Christ, and He alone can satisfy the hunger and thirst of the soul.
The wilderness also explains how John could take in what he saw.
You can only understand it in the wilderness (v. 3), where you see there is not one green blade for the soul... The Spirit led John into the wilderness, and so he could understand it. Only revelation and the power of God can make a "MYSTERY" clear.
The posture carries the meaning. The beast is imperial power, and the woman is riding it.
The beast serves the harlot, and John shows it when he says, "I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast." The action shows the full and complete subjection of the civil power. It is a remarkable sight: the woman rules over this vast imperial and apostate power. She sits on, or beside, the nations and peoples inside the prophetic area (v. 1). She also rules the beast, the leading civil and political power on earth in that day.
Rider and beast are not one thing. They travel together, yet Scripture keeps them apart.
The strange woman is a distinct system from the beast that carries her, Rev. 17. She stands for the religious system, the beast for the political system. They may go hand in hand, yet they are distinct... The world and the professing church have much in common, but Scripture treats them as distinct systems, and God will deal with each of them separately in judgment.
Two details describe the beast itself: its colour, and the writing all over it.
The scarlet colour stands for earthly glory, and only that: the beast's reign has no link with heaven. It is full of names of blasphemy, not merely words. That means it takes titles that belong to God, and taking them is blasphemy. Of these seven heads, only one exists at a time, as we see by the angel's words. The seven are seen together for identification, not because they exist at the same time.
Commentators agree the woman stands for a religious system. They differ on how far it reaches. Some name her directly:
The beast is the revived political system of Rome. The woman is Rome's religious system, plus whatever else she may have gathered into herself before this vision comes true. She has daughters — other bodies that claim to be Christian, and hardly less evil than their mother.
Others point to the arrangement the picture shows:
If the beast means the secular and political power, how do we explain the woman seated on it? What great system do we see seated on the secular power of Europe, and held up by it? Is it not plainly the church power? Is it not the church in alliance with the state, and supported by the state?
The vision is not only prophecy about the future. The principle it names reaches Christians today.
It is important to avoid these principles and forms that lead to ruin... A heathen is not in Babylon. He cannot be there. A Christian may be found there. Whatever connects the world with religion is the principle of Babylon. The spirit of Babylon, the spirit of worldliness, is very slippery ground. That is why God warns us. May God keep us!
- Wilderness — the angel must carry John into a desert to see her. For all her splendour, nothing there feeds the soul.
- Riding — the woman on the beast pictures a religious system steering the political power that carries it.
- Distinct — woman and beast go hand in hand, yet they stay two systems. God judges each one separately.
- Scarlet — the colour marks earthly glory alone. The names of blasphemy mark divine titles the beast takes for itself.
- Warning — anything that joins the world to religion is the principle of Babylon. The call is to avoid it, not just study it.
And the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and had ornaments of gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and the unclean things of her fornication;
John is carried into the wilderness, where a woman sits on a scarlet beast, and now we see what she wears — her colours, her jewels, and the cup she holds out to the world. Every item is splendid, and every item is a warning: the outside is glorious, and what is inside is vile.
The two colours are not chosen for beauty alone. One writer reads them as a claim to rank, and sets this woman's dress against the bride's.
This is not the bride dressed in fine linen, white and clean. It is the showy splendour of the world, meant to attract the flesh. The colours are clearly royal — yes, imperial — so that her claims as a church rest first of all on a claim to supreme rank... But this woman, who wrongly takes that name, seeks nothing but pleasure for the flesh and worldly importance, all that people naturally want and prize on the earth.
Another writer ties the two colours to a double claim.
She is dressed in purple and scarlet, because she claims spiritual as well as earthly authority.
The jewels themselves stand for good things. That is what makes her use of them so serious: she turns them into decoration, and into bait.
She is also decorated with gold, precious stones and pearls. These stand for truths that are truly divine and spiritual. But she uses them only to adorn her outside, and to make the cup of her intoxication more tempting.
The whole picture works by surfaces. The gold goes no deeper than the skin, and one writer says the Pharisee's sin worked the same way.
Elsewhere gold, precious stones and pearls stand for all that is beautiful and of God. Here she is only "decked," or gilded, with them. It is all surface. These things are excellent in themselves, but she twists them to low uses. Her cup is golden too, as anyone can see from the outside, but inside it is full of filth. The Pharisee's sin was like this, as we see in Luke 11:39, but here it reaches its highest pitch of evil.
Two words name what is in the cup, and each has a settled sense in Scripture. One means false worship, the other a rotten life — and the shock is where both are found.
These two evils, idolatry and corruption, mark the last phase of the professing Church on earth. "Abominations" refers to idolatry (2 Kings 23:13; Isa. 44:19; Ezek. 16:36), and "fornication" to gross corruption (Rev. 2:21; Rev. 9:21). Idolatry and the worst forms of wickedness are what this woman is known for. Her cup is full of horrible evils. This is the climax. You might expect such things among pagan nations. But Christendom is now the scene of light, grace and truth, and for it to become the very hotbed and cesspool of all that is filthy and vile in religion is truly astonishing.
She holds the cup herself. One writer weighs what that means, and where it ends.
The golden cup was in the prostitute's hand; she was not herself a golden cup in the Lord's hand. She governed and rode the beast with ten horns. That was her general character for a long time, but not her final one. She became the prey and spoil of the kings who held their power along with the beast.
Set this woman next to the Lamb's wife and the two outfits explain each other. One dress wins the world's applause; God grants the other.
What a contrast! The prostitute dazzled the eyes of the world with scarlet and purple, with gold and precious stones and pearls. The wife is granted a white robe, the mark of God's approval, to wear when Jesus Christ is revealed. The splendour of the prostitute may be "exalted among men," but it is "an abomination in the sight of God." On the other hand, God owns the very deeds that brought down the scorn, the hatred and the persecution of the world, and gives them to adorn the Lamb's wife for ever.
- Gilded claim — Purple and scarlet are royal, even imperial colours: a bid for supreme rank, and a claim to spiritual as well as earthly power.
- Gilded gifts — Gold, jewels and pearls stand for divine and spiritual truths. She only wears them, and good things are put to low uses.
- Gilded cup — Gold on the outside, filthiness inside: the Pharisee's sin at its highest pitch.
- Gilded poison — "Abominations" means idolatry; "fornication" means corruption. The marvel is that this fills Christendom, where you would expect it among pagan nations.
- Gilded and doomed — She holds the cup herself; she is not a cup in the Lord's hand. She ends as the spoil of the kings who shared the beast's power, while the bride's white robe is granted by God.
and upon her forehead a name written, Mystery, great Babylon, the mother of the harlots, and of the abominations of the earth.
John sees a name on the woman's forehead, and the name tells us what she is. Commentators read it as the exposure of a religious system that wears Christ's name yet is false to Him.
The first word of the title has a precise sense in Scripture.
In Scripture the word "Mystery" does not mean something mysterious. As has been said, it "points to something the natural mind of man cannot discover, a secret that needs the distinct and fresh light of God to unravel." Without this revelation, John would never have imagined that a great system would grow up in the Christian world that professes the name of Christ, claims to be the church, and yet becomes completely corrupt.
God had already revealed one mystery: Christ and the church. This woman is the counterfeit of it.
There was a great claim to truth — the enemy's masterpiece of counterfeiting the revealed ways of God. God had revealed the mystery of Christ and the church. Now there is the mystery of this anti-church. It is not the mystery of faith and godliness, but of lawlessness — Babylon the great seated on the beast, the terrible opposite of the church, which is subject to Christ. Here she rules the beast.
The name looks back to the Babylon that once enslaved God's people.
The old Babylon was great and evil. It enslaved God's people long ago, and its doom can never be reversed. Yet its spiritual counterpart, the great Babylon of Revelation, goes far beyond it. In Babylon the Great we see one vast system gathering up all the evils that have wrecked the church in past times. This is the peak. Every evil that has ever troubled the Christian world comes to a focus here. The last days of the church on earth are her worst.
The charge goes past her own unfaithfulness: she has children, and resemblance is the test of kinship.
Every system that copies the ways of the woman and imitates her actions, takes in her doctrines, adopts her forms of worship, and generally borrows from or conforms to the Church of Rome, now or then, counts as her offspring. She is the mother, or source, of every evil religious system.
Commentators name Rome here, but the likeness reaches wider. It shows in what a system does to the heart. Any system "that tends in any measure to lead souls away from Christ, to engage their affections with objects that come between the heart and the Man in the glory, is related to this great parent of spiritual iniquity" (Church History).
The last word of the title is a specific charge, and Scripture fixes its meaning.
She also produces "abominations." Now, "abominations" is a well-known scriptural word for "idols," so Rome is a parent of idolatry. Who does not know it? And yet people are willing to be blinded, to listen to her claims of innocence, and to accept her embrace.
A name on the forehead marks who someone belongs to. Revelation uses the same picture for God's own people.
The terrible name written on the woman's forehead for all to see stands in contrast to the 144,000 in Revelation 14:1, who have the Father's name on their foreheads, and to the saints of the heavenly city in Revelation 22:4, who have the Lamb's name on their foreheads. Great Babylon advertises herself, not the Lord. "Mystery" tells us how she hides her real character: she keeps her victims ignorant of the Word of God and in bondage to mysterious rituals and man-made teachings.
If the name is that public, missing it says something about the reader.
Her name was written on her forehead. A drunken world does not see it, but a believer should not mistake it. We should judge it from outside it. If we are in our right place, in the Spirit, in the wilderness, we will not mistake it. But if we tamper with it, we have lost the sense of it: if we do not see it for what it is, we have drunk some of her wine.
Given such a name, the response Scripture calls for is not repair work.
Babylon means "confusion," and no word could better describe the result. Something that professes the name of Christ has taken up friendship with the world, and the world is at enmity with God. It ends with the outward form of religion used as a cloak to cover "the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life." We are not called to reform it or to overthrow it, but to come out of it, so that we do not share in its sins.
- Mystery — the name begins with a secret only God could reveal: a system that claims to be the church and is corrupt to the core.
- Counterfeit — against the true mystery of Christ and the church stands this anti-church: not subject to Christ, but riding the beast.
- Babylon — the name means confusion. It gathers into one system every evil that ever wrecked the church, and the last days are the worst.
- Mother — her guilt spreads through her children: every system that copies her ways, and idolatry too, since "abominations" means idols.
- Forehead — she advertises her own name where God's people bear the Lamb's. A drunken world misses it, and a believer who cannot read it has already drunk her wine. The call is to come out, not to reform.
And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. And I wondered, seeing her, with great wonder.
John has just seen a woman dressed in purple and scarlet, holding a golden cup; now he sees what she has been drinking. A figure who claims to represent Christ is soaked in the blood of His people. The sight leaves John astonished.
This is not a system with a troubled conscience. It has lost all sense of what it is doing. One writer explains what the picture of drunkenness says about her:
"Drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (v. 6) is a graphic picture of how little she feels. She has no sense of the enormous guilt of her persecution of the true saints of God. Like a wild beast that has tasted blood, she has become the more callous and unrelenting. John, in seeing her, wonders with great wonder. Probably it was hard for him to imagine a woman being so exalted and yet so callous. Who could have imagined beforehand that the professing "church" would take on such a grotesque character?
One writer traces this bloodshed back to the character of Satan himself. He also weighs the names given to her victims:
Then the next thing is murder. Satan is a liar, the "father of lies." He is also a "murderer from the beginning." So in the working of Satan we find first idolatry, and then it leads to murder... This is the time of prosperity to her. She is drunk. There are two marks given of those whose blood she is drunk with... The terms saints and martyrs of Jesus, witnesses for Him, describe them. They are not described as people settling down here on earth.
The word behind "martyrs" carries that same idea of testimony, and it points back to One who bore it perfectly:
The Greek word is μάρτυς, and is very often translated 'witness'. A martyr is one who dies because of the witness he bears... Christ Himself was the faithful and true witness. So the Lord Jesus was the true Martyr, though His death included much more than dying as a martyr — it was atonement.
Why is blood on a religious system more shocking than blood on a pagan one? One writer answers from what religion was given for:
He could well understand a religious system becoming corrupt... But that the woman should be drunk with the blood of the saints was what filled even John's mind with great astonishment. Bad as passion is, it is not the worst thing that the heart of man is capable of. In the deceiving power of false religion, Satan displays his direct power. God gave that very thing for light and blessing, to win the heart and to bring people into fellowship with Himself. The enemy twists it to make a man worse than ever.
Another writer turns the same point against reading the woman as pagan Rome only:
John was banished on Patmos. Why would he wonder that the heathen world persecuted the saints? But that this same Rome, now professing Christianity, should do it — that would be a marvel indeed... Here, just before her judgment, the apostle pronounces her condemnation. She has never repented of murdering God's saints.
So whose hand sheds the blood? One writer separates the hand from the will behind it:
Papal Rome far exceeded pagan Rome in cruelty and bloodshed. She is also far more guilty, because she knew better. She claimed to be the spouse of Christ, and yet murdered at will those redeemed by the blood of the Lamb... What amazed John was not the Beast's persecution (Rev. 13:7), but the woman's — the professed spouse of Christ. Yet it is the Beast, not she, who puts the saints to death. The woman is the power behind.
Suffering that looks forgotten is not forgotten. God keeps the record:
What a day of reckoning is at hand! The sighs and tears of the helpless and the suffering have gone up to God. He records it all in His book, and the tears are in His bottle. Righteous retribution will yet fall. Babylon will be overthrown and judged, to recover herself no more forever.
- Cup — Idolatry comes first, murder follows; the golden cup and the blood belong to the same story.
- Blood — "Drunk" pictures a conscience past feeling: the more she has shed, the less she is troubled by it.
- Witnesses — Her victims are called saints and martyrs of Jesus. A martyr is someone whose testimony costs him his life.
- Wonder — Persecution by pagans would not have amazed John. Persecution by what claims the name of Christ did. What God gave for light, the enemy turns into harm.
- Reckoning — The beast holds the sword, but the woman is the power behind it. God has recorded every tear, and He is about to answer that blood in judgment.