The Last Days
​Revelation 17:1-6

 Lesson 64- Babylon Revealed

lesson_64-_rev_17_1-6_babylon_revealed_notes.pdf
File Size:	2085 kb
File Type:	pdf

Download File

---

---

PREVIOUS LESSON 63 ← GO TO → NEXT LESSON 65

​Lesson 64 | 05/17/26 ​
Revelation 17:1-6 | Mystery Babylon

We have spent the last couple of lessons building a foundation to understand this Mystery Babylon and her final judgement and destruction. Babylon is the spiritual force of darkness underlying the evil of this world. There was at one time a physical kingdom called Babylon, ruled by Nebuchadnezzar, and before him was Nimrod, who established the city of Babel. But its roots of deception and the seduction of men extend all the way back to the garden of Eden and reach far forward even to our time today. So here in Revelation, Babylon is spiritual Babylon. The same fallen angels and demons that were manipulating men at the tower of Babel, are still controlling the kingdom of darkness through men. But there is final judgement coming on this darkness. Chapters 17-18 detail this final judgement... the death and destruction of the gods of this world, the principalities and powers ruling the nations and the judgement on anyone who will merge with her.
Revelation 17:1)
Chapter 17 is another interlude that is not in chronological order. These are two chapters that fill in more details about the events of the 7-Year Tribulation and the force behind the system of darkness. After John sees the 7th Bowl Judgement pour out on the world, one of the angels takes him back in time to the beginning of the Tribulation.

• “Many waters” is defined in verse 15 as the peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues that the great harlot is controlling.
  • She sits in global authority and even reigns over the Ten Kings of the earth, v.18

Revelation 17:2)
The kings of the earth and all the earth-dwellers have merged with her

• They have committed spiritual fornication
  • They are in bed with her
  • drunk from the wine of her fornications
    • verse 4, drinking from her cup of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication
      • idolatry, the worship of demons
      • intoxicated with her pleasure and lust

Revelation 17:3)
John is carried away in the Spirit, back to the beginning of the Tribulation

• The 7th Bowl happens in the last few days of the 7-Year Tribulation.
  • Now John is carried back in time to the start as God fills us in on the details of the judgement of this great harlot
• Into the wilderness- a place of destitution, dry, withered up spiritually.
  • Revelation 12:6- The woman (Israel) flees into the wilderness
  • I believe this wilderness John is taken to is Jerusalem, Isaiah 64:10- Your holy cities are a wilderness, Zion is a wilderness, Jerusalem a desolation.
• Woman (the great harlot) sitting on a scarlet beast (antichrist)
  • Beast- full of names of blasphemy, 7 heads, 10 horns... same description in Rev 13:1

Revelation 17:4)
Woman arrayed with two colors:

• purple = royalty to seduce kings
• scarlet = depicting the color of sin, Isaiah 1:18
  • the beast was also seen in this color scarlet
  • perfect tense- having been clothed... past tense but still continuing
• adorned in luxury to deceive
  • gold, precious stones, pearls, and having a golden cup
  • “adorned with gold”- Gr. goldened with gold - κεχρυσωμένη χρυσῷ
    • Clothed to seduce, impress and allure
    • 2 Cor 11:14- Satan transforms himself into an angel of light
• Cup of Abominations
  • Cup filled with the abominations and unclean things of her whoring
    • The worship of false gods- idolatry- spiritual fornication
  • The golden cup invites the world to drink of her abominations
    • The earth dwellers have taken the cup and are drunk
  • What is the means of seduction?
    • Entertainment, science, philosophy, pious false religion, self righteousness
    • Now the world is flocking after AI technology
      • The ease and seduction and dependence on technology
      • Reliance on man rather than reliance on God
    • This is all wrapped up in the filthiness of her whoring with the world
      • This will be further elaborated on in chapter 18 and the schemes of “trading” with men

Revelation 17:5)
On her forehead a name:

• Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of the abominations of the earth (world system)
  • Mystery = something once concealed but now revealed
  • John is being permitted to see the true character of this woman
    • This is Jesus revealing this mystery to us so that we are not deceived

Revelation 17:6)
John sees something else that is shocking

• The woman is drunk with the blood of the saints, τῶν ἁγίων, the holy ones, and with the blood of the martyrs (witnesses) of Jesus.
  • The system of darkness has always attacked God’s Righteous saints. That is not what is shocking. Rather is the vessels the enemy uses to persecute God’s people...
    • the religious leaders, Matt 23:25-39; John 16:1-4.
    • The persecution is coming from within. We spoke much about this in the last lesson
  • In this age of the Church, there is one group that stands out above all the others who have killed more Christians than any other organization in the last 2,000 years... the Roman Catholic Church.
    • Foxes Book of Martyrs is a 3-volume set that displays thousands of Christian martyrs during the 16th c. Reformation.
      • John Foxe gives a summary of the Inquisitions in which he alludes to that millions have been killed at the hand of the Catholic Church.

Foxe's Summary of the Inquisition
​Of the multitudes who perished by the Inquisition throughout the world, no authentic record is now discoverable, but wherever popery had power, there was the tribunal. ... The numbers burned in effigy, or condemned to penance, punishments generally equivalent to exile, confiscation, and taint of blood, to all ruin but the mere loss of worthless life, amounted to three hundred and nine thousand. But the crowds who perished in dungeons of torture, of confinement, and of broken hearts, the millions of dependent lives made utterly helpless, or hurried to the grave by the death of the victims, are beyond all register; or recorded only before HIM, who has sworn that “He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword.”
         Such was the Inquisition. In the thirteenth century, the popedom was at the summit of mortal dominion; it was independent of all kingdoms; it ruled with a rank of influence never before or since possessed by a human scepter; it was the acknowledged sovereign of body and soul; to all earthly intents its power was immeasurable for good or evil. It might have spread literature, peace, freedom, and Christianity to the ends of Europe, or the world. But its nature was hostile; its fuller triumph only disclosed its fuller evil; and, to the shame of human reason, and the terror and suffering of human virtue, Rome, in the hour of its consummate grandeur, teemed with the monstrous and horrid birth of the INQUISITION! Foxe, J. (2000). Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson

• But even this doesn’t scratch the surface of the 10’s of millions of Christians who have been killed through the hand of the Papacy from 606ad through 19th century.
  • David Plaisted estimates between 50-100 million deaths at the hand of the Papacy in his book, Estimates of the Number Killed by the Papacy in the Middle Ages and Later, 2006
    • Papal Power... invoked the Crusades, the Inquisition around the world from the 12th – 19th century, forbidding the Bible to be read in the common language, and the oppression of the Truth ultimately thrust the world into the Dark Ages
    • This is Spiritual Babylon that was, and still is, at work through the Roman Catholic Church
• This is the mystery being revealed
  • The kingdoms of men being seduced and deceived by fallen angels and demons

The remainder of the chapter begins revealing the vessels that Spiritual Babylon has used to try to destroy God’s people, but the Lamb is victorious...
 
Revelation 17:14- These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.

PREVIOUS LESSON 63 ← GO TO → NEXT LESSON 65