Revelation-Part 38

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The Seventh Bowl: Part Three of Intercalation #1, Judgment of the Great Harlot

In our April 2002 lesson, we learned about “Intercalation #1: Detailed description of Babylon, her past, present, future” in Revelation 17:1–19:10. Babylon plays a large role in Revelation’s description of the Seventh Bowl judgment. In May we considered Part One of that Intercalation, “The Harlot and the Beast” (Rev. 17:1-6a). In June we focused on “The Beast with Heads and Horns” (Rev. 17:6b-14) as Part Two of the Intercalation. This month we would like to look at Revelation 17:15–18 for Part Three of Intercalation #1: “Judgment of the Great Harlot.”

The Harlot’s Control over the World’s Population (17:15)

The subject of discussion in Revelation 17:15 shifts from the beast back to the great harlot who was introduced in 17:1 as sitting on many waters. Specifically, the fifteenth verse furnishes a special explanation of the waters on which the harlot sits. The waters are symbolic of “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.” The picture views the control of her religious system over the lifestyle of the world populations through their voluntary submission to her. These are essentially the same categories of humanity over which the beast exercises his authority, according to Revelation 13:7.

The Harlot’s Demise at the Hands of the Ten Horns and the Beast (17:16)

The ten horns and the beast will eventually turn against the dominant religious system represented by the harlot, as Revelation 17:16 indicates: “and the ten horns which you saw and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolated and naked, and will devour her flesh.” False religion will use its influence on the beast to gain a greatness all her own, but suddenly the charm will disappear and the political system’s attraction for the harlot will turn to hatred. In that future day, Satan’s kingdom will divide against itself, signal­ing that its demise is near. The angel does not reveal to John the immediate cause of hatred for the woman, but the world-city Babylon will become the object of enmity to those whom she formerly controlled.

The ten horns and the beast will strip Babylon of her rich adornment (see 17:4) and former spiritual power over her lovers. Then they will “devour her flesh” the way wild beasts devour corpses. This vividly describes her utter destruction and expresses their extreme vengeance with keen hostility toward the harlot. Ultimately, they will “burn her with fire,” in other words, completely destroy this system of false religion that will have reached its peak in the days just before its destruction.

The Divine Purpose in Using the Ten Horns and the Beast (17:17)

The immediate agents performing this destruction are themselves evil, but the ultimate source of the internal strife in the kingdom of evil will be the sovereign purpose of God. So says Revelation 17:17: “for God has put into their hearts to put into practice His purpose, and to put into practice one purpose and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.” God will prompt the ten kings and the beast to turn against the religious structure which, they will feel, no longer serves a useful purpose for them. For God to use the forces of evil for His purposes of judgment is not unprecedented. He used Babylon to judge Israel in Old Testament times (Jer. 25:9-11). He has also used enemies to destroy one another (see Judg. 7:22; 2 Chron. 20:23; 1 Sam. 14:20; Ezek. 38:21; Hag. 2:2; Zech. 14:14). Sometimes Satan is an instrument in serving a providential purpose. We have already noticed this in Revelation 16:13-14, 16, when Satan sends the spirits of demons to assemble a massive army to a battle scene where God wants them to be. Of course, the ten kings and the beast think they are fulfilling their own plans, but in reality they are blindly carrying out the divine counsel.

The ten kings are in perfect harmony with one another in giving their kingdom to the beast; they have “one purpose.” For them to give their kingdom to the beast for the purpose of making war with the Lamb (see 17:13-14) is obviously sinful. How, then, can God who is absolutely righteous be a party to this sinful activity? This creates a theological problem for us human beings, because that contradicts how we understand the character of God. That creates a tension that is irresolvable for a finite mind. Yet God is always at work in human affairs in ways that often we do not understand (see Isa. 55:9). In the outworking of His plan for this creation, God allowed the existence of evil, but He is not in any sense the author of evil (see James 1:13). He does not put it into the hearts of the ten kings to make war with the Lamb, but to give their kingdom to the beast. He then allows that evil to run its course in bringing this creation to its inevitable end as the kings decide on their own to make war with the Lamb.

The unification of evil forces will continue “until the words of God are fulfilled.” Those words pertain to more than the overthrow of Babylon. They are all the prophecies of last events until the overthrow of the beast, that is, the false Christ. The prophecies will reach their goal as God permits wickedness to continue until the cup of iniquity overflows.

The False Religion’s Firm Grip on the World (17:18)

After the sobering words about the decimation of the harlot and the divinely intentioned unity of the evil forces that destroy her, in the eighteenth and last verse of Revelation 17 the angel identifies the woman as “the great city which has a kingdom over the kings of the earth.” Though nothing directly associates the harlot with Rome, some have identified her that way. Instead of being limited to Rome, she is the whole anti-Christian religious system of the future that will be bent on seducing the world’s population away from true Christian­ity. Various Old Testament allusions to Babylon in Revelation 17–18 indicate her tie to a certain geographical location on the Euphrates River, but her primary function is not politi­cal. It is religious. She represents an ideology associated with the political institution of the beast.

Her “kingdom over all the kings of the earth” also excludes a reference to Jerusalem. Jerusalem cannot fit the picture of this final Babylon. Nor can the harlot be an ideal city without geographical location. She is rather a real city at a certain spot on the earth’s sur­face. She must be Babylon on the Euphrates, a city of the future that will become the focal point for a religious system staunchly opposed to the truth of Christianity.

It staggers our imagination to think that world civilization will degenerate to this low level in the future. An anti-Christian religion that dominates the whole of the world’s population will itself be destroyed by an equally evil coalition of political rulers who will then control the world exclusively. Even more astonishing is Scripture’s acknowledgment that this is all a part of God’s sovereign plan for the world. In our limited understanding, we ask, “Why?” Yet in our assurance that God does all things well, we rest in His superior wisdom and know that eventually righteousness and truth will prevail. We will see this victory as our study of Revelation continues. On a much smaller scale, in our own personal lives, we are prone to ask God “Why?” when we experience reversals of one type or another. Thank the Lord, we can rest in the fact that His ways are not our ways and His ways are always best.

Note: For more details about the fate of the great harlot under the seventh-bowl judg­ment, see my discussion in Revelation 8–22 (Moody Press, 1995), pages 303-310. To order this volume, you may contact Grace Books International at (800) GRACE15 or [http://www.gbibooks.com/ www.gbibooks.com.

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