Babylon’s Significance in Prophecy

Transcript

GRM 928
1/09/2005
Babylon’s Significance in Prophecy
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

In light of what we talked about in our last study about the European Union and God’s work in bringing together a revived Roman Empire in these days, which in its final form will have ten nations dominated by a single individual, who before all is said and done will himself become world dictator. Someone passed on to me something they took down from the internet that someone who serves in Europe, involved in the political process over there and is also a believer, has put out. Let me read you just some excerpts of what he said. The recently elected fifth Parliament of Europe met on Tuesday, July 1999 in its new glass building. It goes on to talk about what that building cost and what was involved in putting it together. Then he says, the prophetic significance of the European Union has been revealed as the saga unfolds. First the sign which it shows as its symbol was the woman riding the beast. I’ll have something to say about that out of the book of Revelation this morning. This comes from a prophecy in Revelation 17. The depiction of the harlot woman was reproduced on the centenary stamp of the European Union in a huge painting in the Parliament's new building in Brussels and by a huge sculpture outside the new European Union Council of Minister’s office in Brussels.

The new European coinage, the euro, bears the same insignia. Then on this website they do include different pictures of the things just alluded to. Now a massive crystal palace tower officially called the Tower Building houses the fifth Parliament of Europe. It is certainly a building of the space age. The seats of its massive hemicycle or semicircle are designed like the crew seats in the Star Trek space machines. If you know what the crew seats were like, that’s what they’re like. There are 679 of them. When the European Parliament meets it has 679 individuals who sit representing the nations there. These seats are allocated to members. All 679 seats are allocated except one, seat 666. Maybe that has significance, maybe everyone was just afraid to take the seat. It’s interesting they list in this article the last 25 seats, starting with seat 655 through seat 679 and list the individuals by name who are assigned to those seats. You can see that seat 666 is kept vacant. Of course, you’re familiar in Revelation 13:8 that 666 has its significance in light of the coming antichrist whose number will be 666. You must be identified with him in order to have any kind of buying and selling or anything in his kingdom.

Not saying that this seat is a fulfillment of anything, but it is interesting to see things that come together. A number of years ago I was at a conference in Texas and a speaker there was showing on a slide the depiction of what was planned for the euro, with a woman riding the beast. I sit there saying, you know I wonder if this is really true. I mean it’s one thing, people come up with these ideas but maybe we get a little carried away. Now they don’t have any problem with putting it on their coins, making a statue of it; and they say oh yes, we want to be known as the whore on the beast. Don’t know that that’s their desire, but as Revelation 17 says, He has put it in their hearts to fulfill his purpose.

Also, of interest in one of the articles here, it has a picture and then underneath it says this is a European Union poster used to promote European unity. It’s modeled on Peter Bruegel famous 16th century painting, The Tower of Babel. The poster shows the peoples of Europe rebuilding the tower that God destroyed. The statement on the poster is this, “many tongues, one voice.” It just turns around to be the opposite of what God did at the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. There they were all of one voice, one language, and He divided them and scattered them into many languages. Now you have the revived Roman Empire and what does it use as a symbol? The Tower of Babel, because we are going to be people of many languages but speaking with one voice. The desire is the same. All these things. I don’t want to get carried away and make more of what is going on than is going on, but the fact that all these things take place in the context of what is taking place more broadly as we saw with Europe and Israel.

I want to talk about Babylon with you today and something of its significance in biblical prophecy. I think there are important things going on in the world religiously that are moving us in concert with what is happening to Israel, what is happening in the Muslim world and with Russia connected to Ezekiel 38-39, a revival of Europe and the old Roman Empire. We have an apostate church that is mushrooming and even the evangelical church is in danger of losing its distinctiveness, which would mean it’s not an evangelical church any longer. It’s become amalgamated with the world; it just becomes the world with a few believers sprinkled in. But we are moving toward an apostate church that dominates the Western world. Maybe I should say it’s an apostate religious system, because the Babylonian system as we will look at it in a moment is broader than just Western world “Christianity” in its broad sense. Its culminating final form will focus on the Western world and will naturally be what we would call an apostate church.

We’re going to start in and look at some things and we’ll see how far we get. Let me read you something I think is ominous yet is a reflection of what is going on more broadly. This came out of a Mormon-owned newspaper, The Desert Morning News. The date was November 15, 2004, so it’s a couple months old. It’s titled Evangelical Preaches at Salt Lake Tabernacle. With evangelicals and Latter-Day Saints sitting together in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Now that just ought to……. wait a minute, go back and read that again. With evangelicals and Latter-Day Saints sitting together in the Salt Lake Tabernacle for “an evening of friendship,” internationally renowned Christian philosopher, Ravi Zacharias, spoke to them He spoke for about 45 minutes. But what many Utahans may remember most distinctly is the sermon that preceded Zacharias’ sermon. That was given by the president of Fuller Seminary, a seminary that still claims to be evangelical, but I question the claim. The president addressed to the capacity crowd of several thousand offering a stunningly candid apology to member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and noting that friendship has not come easily between our communities. He dubbed the evening historic and apologized that evangelicals have often misrepresented the faith and beliefs of the Latter-Day Saints. Let me state it clearly, we evangelicals have sinned against you, he said. This is what the evangelical world is being reduced to? Going to a Mormon tabernacle and apologizing to an assembly of Mormons, that we have sinned against them, we haven’t represented their faith properly. He went on. He noted that the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith’s birthday next December and several scholarly events which are planned to celebrate that event during the year, he said I hope many in the evangelical community will take part in those events. It’s important for evangelicals to take part in celebrating the 200th anniversary of Joseph Smith? Is there a greater apostate? Heretic? Denier of the faith? There may be others as great, but he’s got to be in the top. Started a system that is anti-Christ and anti-God in every way. It’s important that evangelicals celebrate? They should have dragged this president of the seminary out and stoned him on the spot, but there were no believers there to do it, I guess. They were all Mormons.

I know many of you have appreciated Ravi Zacharias’ ministry. I dodomyself, what are you doing here. Certain places become a place where you cast your pearls before swine. I don’t mean that unkindly, but you get into meeting where the whole idea is to promote our friendship and develop bonds, even the presentation of the gospel cannot be properly understood. Can you imagine Paul getting up with the Judaizers and saying I just want to put my hands around these men. I just want to emphasize the friendship we have together. I want to apologize for being too hard on them. Then go on to present the gospel. You say you just wash out the gospel. What does Zacharias say? While he acknowledged that members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints differ in many of their views from historic Christianity, he emphasized much of what they share in reverence for a being both consider the divine Savior of mankind. We’re not talking the same language. I mean do they know what the Mormons say about Jesus Christ, where He came from and why He was here? I mean we both don’t share reverence for a being considered the divine Savior. You deny Him as a Mormon. These kinds of meetings are simply a reflection, this was mailed to me by a fellow pastor weeks ago and some of you have heard about it in other forms as well.

Therparts something happening in the church, even the evangelical world, and I think it is all part of what is going on in the world today. We need to understand that what the Bible says is we are moving in the last days toward an amalgamated kind of religious system that is apostate. I just want to highlight some of these matters and then look at the truth, and if it follows the pattern of my first hour, we’ll have to pick it up next week.

We’ll go back to the book of Genesis chapter 10, just to note Babylon. You can’t turn on the news today and not have a reporter coming to you from somewhere in Iraq, from the land of Shinar, from Babylon. The old city of Babylon, incidentally, was about 50 miles south of modern-day Baghdad. You see the maps and you get an idea of where we are. Babylon comes to the fore beginning in Genesis 10:8, now Cush became the father of Nimrod. He became a mighty one on earth. There you have a mighty, powerful figure in the center of what is the beginning of a satanic alternative to the kingdom that God promises to establish on earth headed by His Son, Jesus Christ—the Babylonian system. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Therefore, it is said to be like Nimrod, a mighty hunter, before the Lord. Now note verse 10, the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erech, Accad, Calneh in the land of Shinar. We talked about the city of Babylon, it was in the land of Shinar. But as often happens, the city that is dominant becomes also used for the land, and we talk about Shinar, you’re talking about Babylon. You talk about Babylon; you are talking about Shinar.

Turn to chapter 11. Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east; they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. They used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said come let us build for ourselves a city, a tower whose top will reach to heaven. Let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. This is an act of rebellion against God. God had commanded them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Their concern is, we don’t want to fill the earth. We want to stay bound together in one place, unified with one worship. God says it won’t happen, and so He comes down. All the earth was of one language. That helped unify them. We experience that today. Especially you go to a foreign country, and you hear someone talking English, you want to get together with them because you are an outsider to everything else that is going on. You don’t even know what people are talking about. God divides them, and His purposes are accomplished.

Verse 9, therefore its name was called Babel because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth. From there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth. But you’ll note here, here is the beginning of satan’s world empire, satan, the god of this world, attempting to establish his empire. God frustrates his purposes. it will always be God’s purposes accomplished, even using the rebellion of satan and the sinfulness of man. This becomes tremendously significant. You know in the Bible the most often mentioned city is Jerusalem. You would probably have gotten that on a Bible test that said name the city that is mentioned most often in the Bible. You’d say it has to be Jerusalem. It’s mentioned over 300 times in the Bible. The second most often mentioned city in the Bible is Babylon. Jerusalem is mentioned more than 300 times, Babylon is mentioned some 280 times. That is an awfully significant city, Babylon. Now I can understand Jerusalem, but Babylon? But you understand Babylon is satan’s alternative. God has determined Jerusalem will be the capital of the world, satan is determined to try to make Babylon the capital of the world. Both religiously, politically and commercially Babylon becomes key.

The Babylonian Empire comes to the fore, early Babylonian Empire gets destroyed by the Assyrians. Then you have the revival of the Babylonian Empire under Nabopilasser and his son, Nebuchadnezzar. We’re familiar most with it because much of our Old Testament talks about it, because the Babylonians are going to carry the southern kingdom of Israel away into captivity. You have a lot of prophetic information given. We don’t have time to go into some of these chapters, but you ought to write down Isaiah 13-14 and Jeremiah 50-51. Those four chapters give you a wealth of information on Babylon and give you a wealth of prophetic information. Now as you go through those chapters sometimes it is hard to sort out what is more immediate and what is more far reaching. What is referring to Babylon as existing under Nebuchadnezzar and his successors, for example, and the ultimate Babylon that has yet to be realized. Don’t even worry about sorting that out at this reading. Just sit down and read through Isaiah 13-14, Jeremiah 50-51 to get the content impressed in your mind and begin to get a sense of what God says about this nation and its significance.

I want to direct your attention to the book of Zechariah, all the way back. We started in the first book of the Bible, first book of the Old Testament. We’re going to the next to the last book of the Old Testament, Zechariah, Malachi, and we’re done with the Old Testament. At the very end of your Old Testament, Zechariah chapter 5. Now it’s important to keep in mind as we read Zechariah, the neo-Babylonian Empire that we identify with Nebuchadnezzar and with Belshazzar and its destruction by the Medo-Persians, quoted in the book of Daniel. It has been done with for some 20 years when Zechariah writes, so Zechariah cannot be writing about the Babylonian Empire that we would identify with Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. That empire has already been destroyed, crushed. The Persians are the dominant world empire. We read Zechariah prophesying about something that is going to happen in Babylon and something that is going to be established in Babylon, something else is going to happen of significance with Babylon.

Look in Zechariah 5:5, then the angel who was speaking with me went out and said to me, lift up now your eyes and see what this is going forth. I said, what is it? He said, this is the ephah. An ephah was a measure, it was about 5 bushels, but here in the picture he sees this measure. Some think of it as a bushel or a can or whatever, but this device is used for a measure. It is an ephah going forth. Again, he said, this is their appearance in all the land. And behold a lead cover was lifted up. So now you have this, I’ll call it a canister, a barrel, and it has a lead cover on it, a heavy lead cover. In other words, you really want to keep in there what’s in there. They lift the lead cover and Zechariah gets to look in, and this is a woman sitting inside the ephah. He looks in and here’s a woman sitting in there. What does that mean? Who is the woman?

Verse 8, then he said, the angel interpreted, this is wickedness. The woman represents wickedness, and he threw her down into the middle of the ephah and cast the lead weight on her opening. The picture is like he opens it so Zechariah can see and as he has the lid off this woman starts to come up and come out and the angel throws her back in and slams the lead cover down again. Not time for the woman to be let loose. Then I lifted up my eyes and looked and there two women were coming out with the wind in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah between the earth and the heavens. Some find significance to this; the stork was an unclean animal in Leviticus 11. We’re not getting into all of that.

Look at verse 10, they pick up this ephah with its lead cover, these two supernatural beings in feminine form, and they carry the ephah and begin to transport it, flying through the air. I said to the angel who was speaking to me, where are they taking the ephah? Verse 11, then he said to me, to build a temple for her in the land of Shinar. Where is Shinar? Babylon. When it is prepared, she will be set there on her own pedestal. Babylon will become the center of wickedness in the world. We’re not talking about past Babylonian empires in Zechariah. Right? Because they’re all past, we’re in the Persian Empire. But we are talking about a yet coming time when the land of Shinar where Babylon is located will become the center of wickedness in the world. Wickedness will be established there. The picture then is from there wickedness will spread throughout the world. Tremendously significant. We get to the close of Old Testament prophecy, what are we reminded of? There will come a time when wickedness centers in the land of Babylon, the land of Shinar where the city of Babylon is located.

You come to the book of Revelation to chapter 14, Revelation chapter 14. What happens in the book of Revelation, to refresh your mind, we have an unfolding, chronological development of future events. We have the appearance of Christ in chapter 1, the message to the churches in chapters 2-3 which deal with the period of time in which you and I are living today. Chapters 4-5 are a throne room scene, then chapter 6 unfolds what will be taking place on earth during the seven years prior to the return of Christ to earth. You have this chronological development take place, the events are sequential, following one after another. You get to chapter 14 you have something of a pause in the developing chronology, because what chapter 14 is going to do is give you an overview of what is going to take place, I think through the last three and half years of the tribulation. Then chapter 15 will pick up when those events do actually take place. Look in Revelation 14:8, and another angel, a second one, followed saying, fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who has made all the nations drink of the wine of the passion of her immorality. So here is prophesying the ultimate and final destruction of the satanic world system that will center in Babylon. Babylon has come to the fore again. Some people say Babylon in the book of Revelation is just a symbolic name. It doesn’t really refer to the city of Babylon, it refers to Jerusalem, or it refers to Rome. That’s a popular one, we’ll mention why that’s not so in a few minutes.

You ought to be aware, the book of Revelation is saturated, there are 400 verses in the book of Revelation and over 200 of them have allusions to the Old Testament. Much of our difficulty in understanding the book of Revelation properly is our ignorance of the Old Testament. You should understand that every time the name Babylon is used in the Old Testament, it is used of the literal place, Babylon. Now you’re going to deal with Babylon in a book that draws the majority of its material from the Old Testament, are you going to say well Babylon is not really Babylon. When did that take place? Babylon is Babylon. In the book of Revelation, you see the development of Daniel’s material regarding the Roman Empire and then the ten nation confederacy as the next to final form of the Roman Empire, and then the antichrist, the little horn of Daniel 7 as the final form of the Roman Empire. It is all just as Daniel in the Old Testament said it would be, literally so. When you have Babylon in Old Testament prophecy and all of the material on Babylon in the Old Testament was talking about the Babylon in the land of Shinar, don’t just go jump off the top of a building hermeneutically. It’s Babylon.

Come to chapter 16, middle of verse 19. We are here at the end of the seven-year tribulation. There is a series of judgments through chapters 6-19 of Revelation, and some would carry it even beyond that, but at least in those chapters. We are at the end, there are seven seals, there are seven trumpets and there are seven bowls. The seventh bowl brings the finality of God’s judgment on an unbelieving world. Well, you’ll note in verse 17, the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air. A loud voice came out of the temple from the throne saying, it is done. That’s the last action. What is in the seventh bowl will bring to a conclusion God’s judgment on sin.

You’ll note in the middle of verse 19, Babylon the great was remembered before God to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath. Babylon the great was remembered before God. The Babylon you read about in Isaiah 13-14, the Babylon you read about in Jeremiah 50-51, the Babylon we read about in Zechariah 5. You say well I don’t know how Babylon could be so significant. Well don’t forget that it wasn’t so very long ago, in fact I was born before Israel was formally a nation. I know some of you who are young say that doesn’t mean anything, as old as you are. It just means it happened in my lifetime, long as it may be. There would have been more people. Israel is done, they’ve been scattered throughout the world, they can never get back in and take possession of the land of Israel. But nobody questions that now. Babylon will rise with significance. It ought to be interesting. You turn on the news and say you can’t get away from Iraq, everybody wants to know what’s happening to Iraq. Saw a program yesterday, something on the news yesterday and just saw part of it. But they were saying the President’s popularity numbers are down below 50. Why? One of the commentators said there is only one reason—Iraq. Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Would help us if they just kept the biblical name and they kept saying Babylon, Babylon, Babylon. We’d maybe identify it more clearly. Understand when they talk about Iraq, they’re talking about the land of Shinar, they’re talking about Babylon.

It’s been in the news; I was reading a news magazine I picked up this past week. A military man had visited Iraq and he was in Babylon, old Babylon, going through and talking about the bricks. And you know Nebuchadnezzar, they’ve excavated, and he had put his name on all the bricks. You have to make yourself memorable. We do it today, we have Trump Towers and this and that. Well, they put their name in the bricks so you have to take the building down, you can’t just take the sign off. Of course, you know what Saddam Hussein was doing—he was rebuilding Babylon and it had his name in the bricks because he declared himself as the modern day Nebuchadnezzar who would restore Babylon to its glory. We know he’s not so glorious. But Babylon will, he was right in that sense. Babylon will be restored to a wondrous glory and major place in the world.

Here we see her destruction announced twice. You come to chapter 17 and chapter 18; you have the destruction carried out. Now remember Babylon, the god of this world, satan, has arranged his world system to compete with what God has prophesied and promised for this world. He has promised a kingdom, a worldwide kingdom over which His Son will rule. Satan has an alternative plan, Jerusalem will not be the capital of the world as Isaiah said, and all the nations will go up to Jerusalem to honor the King. But Babylon will be the capital of the world and all people will come up to honor the antichrist, his king, and worship satan. You have this competition, conflict of the ages, as Arnold C. Gabelein talked about it, and evangelical Jew and some of his books are still in print and still worthwhile.

Come to chapter 17. This multifaceted system has a religious dimension, a commercial dimension and a political dimension. Chapter 17 deals with the religious dimension. It’s going to unfold in some detail how the Babylonian system gets destroyed and with it the city of Babylon. The religious dimension of Babylon as it exists during the first three and half years will be destroyed in chapter 17. Now that doesn’t mean it’s the end of the Babylonian religious system because the antichrist will rule the last three and a half years of the seven-year tribulation. In that sense the Babylonian system goes on. But that form of the Babylonian system that took place during the first three and a half years, the apostate church of the western world, the revived Roman Empire will be destroyed. Now you have satan’s ultimate apostate system, his resurrected antichrist enthroned, and he alone can be worshipped. That’s the significance, remember, in Revelation chapter 13 where he gets a wound unto death. Then he comes alive, and the world says who can make war with the beast, he’s supernatural and his number is 666. And anyone who does not have his number in their forehead or the back of his hand, the mark of the beast, identifying with him and his number, cannot buy or sell in his kingdom. We think that would be strange, how could that happen. And they had to believe this 300 years ago, 500 years ago, 1000 years. How are you going to control a world like that? Not so amazing now, is it? In fact, our concern today is what? Just the opposite. What about privacy? How do we keep big brother from knowing everything we do, from walking out our door to getting in our car and going someplace. For a while I had Onstar in my truck, it was free. I don’t have it now because it’s not free anymore. You know I was just delighted to be driving down the road, push the button and they would say, good afternoon, Rev. Rugh. I’m in California they say, I have you driving down Ventura Boulevard, you’re coming up at the intersection of such-and-such. What would you like? All of a sudden, I got a creepy feeling. You know I haven’t even said anything, I just pushed the button and they’ve been tracking me, they know where I am. How am I going to hide from them? I’ll fool them, I’ll turn left on this boulevard, not right. Gotcha! They said now you’re going to have to go two further lights up because you made the wrong turn. This is scary, let’s get out and walk, and on it goes. Our problem today is how could you hide from those who are tracking you.

All right. That’s part of Babylon, but it’s not the part I want to talk about. Chapter 17 we’re going to get religious Babylon destroyed. Now look at verse 1, then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me saying, come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. Remember that woman we saw in Zechariah chapter 5 who was confined in the ephah under the lead lid and was taken to the land of Shinar? She’d been let out; they’ve built a house for her there and now she is in a dominant position. This is the one with whom the kings of the earth committed immorality, those who dwell in the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality. Carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. Oops, seven heads and ten horns, my goodness where did I see that before? Seems like that was in the book of Daniel. In Daniel 7, I saw five beasts that symbolized world empires. Now I see seven because Daniel picked up where he was. He started with Babylon, but there were two empires significant in Israel’s history before Babylon, and that was Egypt and Assyria. Now we begin to unfold. We have seven heads and ten horns. Oh, I saw ten toes in chapter 2 of Daniel and ten horns in chapter 7. The woman is sitting on the scarlet beast. She is in a prominent, dominant, controlling position. Not so hard to understand. Roman Catholicism dominates much of the western world. You have the rapture taking all true believers out of the world and you have a system that even the United States sends a representative to the Vatican. Why? They don’t send me a representative here, an official government representative wanting to talk to me. But you go to the Pope, we’re not going into the details of the revived Roman system in its religious dimension. We’ve done that on other more detailed studies, and you can get the tapes and get into that.

Description of her, who is it? Verse 5. All right we have a woman, maybe Zechariah 5, I don’t know. Well let’s resolve it. Verse 5, on her forehead was a name written, it’s a mystery. A mystery is something you wouldn’t understand without revelation from God. It doesn’t mean oh this is so confusing; it says a mystery. Babylon the Great. Well, there it is. But you say well it means mystery, the mystery is Babylon, that means you can’t understand, it’s not really Babylon, it’s a mystery, it means something else. No. Mystery means something is now being revealed that wasn’t revealed before as fully. The woman has a name on her forehead. Who is she? Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. The woman drunk with the blood of the saints. I mean this false religious system has been guilty of the martyrdom of millions and millions of God’s people. We saw the saints on the altar early in Revelation, the martyrs asking God how long before you avenge our blood? He says, be patient.

Verse 7, John wondered greatly and in verse 7, the angel said to me, why do you wonder? I’ll tell you the mystery of the woman and the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and ten horns. You don’t have to be confused about this; John will explain it all to you. Here it is. The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to destruction. Those who dwell on the earth whose name has not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will wonder when they see the beast, that he was and is not and will come. You say that really helps a lot. I don’t know whether we’re getting more confused or less. Well, if we’d been earlier in Revelation, and we have our prophetic background in the Old Testament, we know that the beast represents both the kingdom and then the final form of the kingdom in the person of the antichrist. We know in chapter 13 of Revelation he receives a death wound and then comes back to life. That parallels what has happened to the empire. Some people think the Roman Empire died. It never died, it didn’t exist as a prominent, but forms of it and elements of it continue down to our very day. Even the European Union recognized that, and I read you material from secular sources about how they held their meetings in certain places to identify themselves with the old Roman Empire.

Here’s the mind that has wisdom. All right now, we all think we have wisdom. Well, here’s the mind that has wisdom, here’s understanding. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. There it is, Babylon is Rome. That’s a very popular view. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. Rome is the city of seven hills, Rome is built on seven hills. The seven heads are seven mountains. Well keep reading. You know what you tell your kids—they read so far and are ready to ………….. We say wait a minute, wait a minute, read the rest of the sentence. You understand we’re still in the same sentence. Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. And there are seven kings. Literally, the seven heads are seven mountains are seven kings. You’ll note the mountains are the kings. We’re not talking about literal dirt hills in Rome. The heads are not literal seven heads sitting on somebody’s shoulders. They are representative of leaders of governmental heads, of kings. In the Old Testament a mountain is used often to represent a kingdom. Here they’re all three used—the heads are mountains are kings. The king is identified with the kingdom. Like we do the same today—we’ll refer to the head of a country as what the country is doing. We talk about Bush going to war. He hasn’t gone anywhere, he’s at the ranch in Texas or the White House in Washington. We say he’s gone to war, we mean our country has gone to war. We speak of the leader and the country that he leads interchangeably. So, the Bible does the same thing, that happens all the time. So, the seven hills, the seven mountains aren’t saying we’re in Rome, some say this has to be Rome. What else could it be on seven……….. Well it’s the seven heads, the mountains are symbols here. They are seven kings

All right now we’re going to explain it further. There are seven kings, five have fallen. As John writes, five of these kings or kingdoms are past. What are they? The Bible is only concerned with the empires or kingdoms that affect Israel. Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece. Five have fallen, five empires are past. One is. What one is? Rome. The other has not yet come. Okay that will be the seventh because there are seven mountains, seven kings, seven heads. There is another one yet to come as John writes. When he comes, he must remain for a little while. It’s going to be short; it’s only going to be three and a half years. This is the ten-nation confederacy.

Then note, the beast which was and is not himself also an eighth and is one of the seven that goes to destruction. Remember we’re talking about a revived Roman Empire so that sixth empire will have a revival in the seventh and there’s even an eighth dimension. Now Daniel never talked about that. He talked about the little horn, but he didn’t divide it and said, “well you could call this the eighth. But John says under the inspiration of the Spirit it’s the antichrist’s kingdom, the final form of world dictatorship is different enough to be called the eighth even though he’s of the seventh. He goes to destruction. When you get to his end you are at the end of earthly kingdoms.

The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. That’s yet future. Some people say it has to be continuous. No. Remember how prophecy worked through the Old Testament, the first coming of Christ and the second coming of Christ? Isaiah the prophet wrote about the suffering and death and resurrection of the Messiah in Isaiah 53, and he writes about the glorious reign of Christ. How can those things be? Well, there is a gap. Daniel wrote about 70 weeks, 70 seven-year periods are determined for your people and your holy city, Jerusalem. We have 483 years after the 69th week Messiah was cut off. We have a gap in there. The 70th week for Israel yet has to be instituted. That won’t take place until after the rapture of the church. So, we have seven years to go and it’s during those seven years that the ten kings receive their kingdom. That’s why we talk about the European Union, but that’s not the direct fulfillment of these scriptures. But it seems to be clearly laying the groundwork for the fulfillment here, and the final form of the European Union will be ten dominant nations out of which will come one dominant personality.

By the time you get to the middle you know what? All ten are going to agree. This would be better not to be a federation of nations ruling, it would be better to be a dictatorship. Verse 13, these have one purpose, these ten kings. They give their power and authority to the beast, and they all have one common enemy—the people of God. They wage war against the Lamb, Christ, and the Lamb will overcome them. They’re opposed to Christ and there is vast martyrdom because anyone who belongs to Christ has to be killed.

Now we saw the woman sitting on many waters, verse 1 of chapter 17, end of the verse. Now you see what the many waters are, verse 15. The waters which you saw where the harlot sits are peoples, multitudes, nations and tongues. So, this woman from Babylon where wickedness centers controls the world, so to speak, dominates the world. This religious system permeates the world. The ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot and make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn it with fire. We are in the middle of that seven-year period, three and half years along. Do you know what’s going to happen? This 10-nation confederacy now is dominating the world under the oversight of the antichrist, they’re going to decide we don’t need the apostate church. That religious system has helped get us to where we want to be, but we don’t want it anymore. They’re going to turn against it and destroy it because what they’re going to do is decide there is only one form of worship, only one person to be worshipped and the Antichrist takes his seat in the temple of God, showing himself to be God--the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet.

How could all this happen? Divine sovereignty. Verse 17, for God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, by giving their kingdom to the beast until the words of God will be fulfilled. The woman whom you saw is the great city which reigns over the kings of the earth. We destroy the religious dimension of Babylon. We haven’t destroyed Babylon the city, that will come in chapter 18. There it’s not to deal with the fornications and pollutions and killing of the people of God, it’s to deal with the commercial and political dimensions. And when you destroy the city of Babylon, and that’s the focus in chapter 18, you are ready for the return of Christ in chapter 19, and the establishing of His kingdom on earth in chapter 20.

In conclusion of this, we’ll pick up at this point next week, but come back to chapter 14. Then you need to see something here, it isn’t where I want to pick up and take you in our next study on where God is going with the church today. We see the church is going to climax, church generally, Christendom generally. Not the true believing church, the true believing church is going to be removed at the rapture. But we can expect as we see all these other things going on that there will be a corrupting going on of the church in preparation for it to be the whore on the beast in the first half of the seven-year tribulation. Just like we see Europe pulling together to be prepared to be the 10-nation confederacy during the first three and half years of the 70th week of Daniel.

In chapter 14 we see a prophecy which will be taking place during the last three and half years and then as we come to the culmination of the tribulation. Verse 6, I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, having an eternal gospel to preach to those who live on the earth, to every nation and tribe and tongue and people. Remember Jesus said this gospel of the kingdom must be preached throughout the whole world and then the end shall come? Some people have thought we have to get the gospel on radio so that the whole world can hear the gospel and then Christ can come. I think it is important that we get the gospel out to all people everywhere, but it’s not so Christ can come. God will take care of that at the end of the 70th week of Daniel, when an angel having the eternal gospel. There is only one gospel, there has always been the eternal gospel. What is it? It’s proclaimed to those who live on earth, the people of every tribe and tongue and people and nation--fear God, give Him glory, worship Him, three elements. Fear God, and it means to reverence Him as God, bow before Him, repent of your sin, tremble that you are a vile sinner, He is a holy God. You turn in fear and reverence to trust Him. That involved faith in Christ as down at the end of verse 12 will talk about those who have their faith in Jesus.

Give Him glory. You honor Him, exalt Him because the hour of His judgment has come. Worship Him who made the heaven and the earth, the sea and spring of water. So here is the very brink of the destruction of this world system and the peoples of this world system, and their sentencing to hell which will be described in verses 9-11. The grace of God proclaims the eternal gospel for men and women to be saved. What must they hear? They must fear God, they are sinners, guilty before Him. They must repent and turn from their sin, give Him glory. The hour of His judgment has come if you don’t turn from your sin and honor Him as God which will necessitate your placing your faith in His Son, because he that honors the Father honors the Son. The one who honors the Son honors the Father, and if you don’t honor Christ you don’t honor the Father. You give them glory and you worship Him because He is the sovereign creator of all and is now going to deal with His creation that has rebelled against Him.

Fallen is Babylon the Great. You don’t want to be part of this world system. Just turn to the living God. That will be the message right up to the end, that’s the message today. It’s a message of God’s eternal gospel. You must turn from your sin, place your faith in the Son of God who has loved you and died for you, and thus give God glory and offer Him worship. And there will be deliverance and salvation. We won’t be part of the destruction of satan’s kingdom, but we will be part of the glory of Christ’s kingdom.

You know I said we’re done, and we almost are. Look at chapter 17 verse 1, you have to see the contrast. Verse 1, then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me saying, come here and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters. Note it’s one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls and they say come here and I’ll show you something. Look at chapter 21 verse 9, then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke to me saying, come here and I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb. Two women shown to John by the angel—the whore, the harlot who influenced multitudes of people around the world, doomed to destruction and then the beauty of the bride, associated with the New Jerusalem who is destined for eternal glory.

Let’s pray together. Thank you, Lord, for your abundant grace. Thank you for the eternal gospel that brings salvation to every man, woman and child, who by your grace turns from their sin in fear and trembling before you, a holy and righteous God, to claim by faith the salvation that you offer as a free gift in your Son, Jesus Christ. But for His death, His resurrection, we would be without hope. But Lord in grace you have provided the opportunity for us that fear you and give you glory to worship you. We are thrilled to live in these days as your prophesied plan for creation moves to its appointed climax, and you have put in the hearts of men to do those things which will fulfill your purposes and accomplish our plans. Lord, may we stand bold, may we stand firm and clear with the gospel of Jesus Christ as a light in the midst of darkness as we await the soon return of our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.