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.