Revelation 17

Today’s Passage: Revelation 17

The seven bowls have been poured out, the seventh has fallen, and the last thing you were told was that God remembered Babylon the great and gave her the cup of the wine of the fury of His wrath. Now one of those same bowl angels turns to John and offers to show him what that sentence means. Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute. John is carried away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and there she is: a woman in imperial purple and scarlet, glittering with gold and precious stones and pearls, a golden cup in her hand, seated on a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns, a name written across her forehead, and the blood of the saints in her. John says he was utterly amazed at the sight, and the angel asks him why. Then comes the explanation, and it is the strangest explanation in the book, because the angel explains the vision in images that themselves need explaining. Seven heads that are seven mountains and also seven kings. A beast that was, and is not, and is about to come up. Ten horns that are ten kings with one hour of authority. Christians have argued over those details for nineteen centuries and they are arguing still. But two things stand out of that fog with perfect clarity, and they are the two things we will hold on to today. The first is verse fourteen: they will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will triumph over them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings. The second is verse sixteen: the very powers that carry her will turn on her and tear her to pieces. Everything else in this chapter is disputed. Those two are not.

As you read, hold this: The great city rides on powers that were never hers to keep, and the Lamb will overcome them all because He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those who stand with Him are simply the called and chosen and faithful.

Revelation 17:1–4 (BSB)

¹ Then one of the seven angels with the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. ² The kings of the earth were immoral with her, and those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her immorality.” ³ And the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, where I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. ⁴ The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls. She held in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.

Before anything else, understand the picture John is using, because if you mistake the idiom you will misread the whole chapter. The prophets of Israel regularly spoke of a city or a nation that had broken faith with God as a woman who had broken faith with her husband. It is the language of a covenant betrayed, and of a seduction that draws others in. Isaiah used it of Jerusalem herself, which ought to stop anyone who wants to point this chapter safely away from home:

"See how the faithful city has become a harlot! She once was full of justice; righteousness resided within her, but now only murderers!" Isaiah 1:21 (BSB)

That is the tradition John is standing in, and he uses it the way the prophets used it, soberly and with grief. It is not a picture drawn to titillate anyone, and we will not linger over it. What it says is that a great power has broken faith with its Maker and has made a business of drawing the nations into the same betrayal. Look at how she does it. The kings of the earth were immoral with her, which is to say they made their alliances and took their profits and gave her their loyalty. Those who dwell on the earth were intoxicated, which is to say the ordinary population did not resist her, they enjoyed her. That is the terrible thing about the picture. She does not conquer by the sword in this chapter. She conquers by being attractive. Empires have always ruled as much by the wine they pour as by the armies they send, and a world that has drunk deeply is not usually in a position to notice.

Notice, too, where John has to be taken in order to see her properly. Not to a palace, not to a harbor, not to a crowded street. The angel carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness. Out there, with nothing around her to flatter her, stripped of the crowds and the noise and the marble, she can be seen for what she is. That is worth pondering the next time you find yourself dazzled by something. You will never assess a glittering thing accurately while you are standing inside it. And when John does see her, look at what she is sitting on. Not a throne of her own. A beast, and one covered with blasphemous names, the very creature from chapter thirteen with its seven heads and ten horns. All her stability is borrowed. Every bit of that gorgeous dress is worn on the back of something she does not control, and the whole chapter is going to turn on that single fact.

Revelation 17:5–8 (BSB)

⁵ And on her forehead a mysterious name was written: BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. ⁶ I could see that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and witnesses for Jesus. And I was utterly amazed at the sight of her. ⁷ “Why are you so amazed?” said the angel. “I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and ten horns. ⁸ The beast that you saw—it was, and now is no more, but is about to come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. And those who dwell on the earth whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world will marvel when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet will be.

The name is written on her forehead, which is where this book puts allegiance. God’s servants were sealed on the forehead; the beast’s economy required a mark on the forehead; and here a name is written on hers, so that what she belongs to is displayed on the one part of her that everyone sees. And what a name. BABYLON THE GREAT. Hear the boast in it. That is almost word for word what an ancient king said as he looked out over his own achievement:

"the king exclaimed, “Is this not Babylon the Great, which I myself have built as a royal residence by the might of my power and for the glory of my majesty?” While the words were still in the king’s mouth, a voice came from heaven: “It is decreed to you, King Nebuchadnezzar, that the kingdom has departed from you." Daniel 4:30–31 (BSB)

That is the whole story of this chapter told in advance, and it took one sentence. The greatness announces itself, and the voice from heaven is already speaking before the boast is finished. John calls the name a mystery (μυστήριον) mystērion, pronounced moos-TAY-ree-on. Strong's G3466, mystery, hidden secret now disclosed. Mystērion in the New Testament does not mean a riddle for the clever to crack. Our English word carries the flavor of a detective story, something you could work out yourself with enough patience and a pencil. The Greek word means something quite different: a matter that was hidden and could never have been guessed, which God has now chosen to make known. Paul uses it that way constantly, of the gospel itself, of Christ in you, of the joining of Jew and Gentile in one body. The emphasis falls not on the puzzle but on the disclosure. Something was covered; God has drawn back the cloth. That changes how you sit with this chapter. What you are being given here is not an assignment but a revelation, and it will tell you exactly as much as God intends and no more. Where the angel explains, we know. Where the angel stops, we stop, and no amount of cleverness will get us further, because the point was never for us to work it out. Notice, too, what the disclosure actually accomplishes. John is amazed at the woman, and the angel’s first act is to ask him why. He is not offering a puzzle to a curious man. He is deflating a dazzled one. , and the angel offers to tell him the mystery of the woman and the beast, which is the very reason so many readers come to this chapter expecting a decoder ring.

And now the thing that makes this vision unbearable, and it must not be hurried. I could see that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and witnesses for Jesus. All that gold and purple, and underneath it the killing of God’s people. The finery is paid for. Somebody’s son, somebody’s mother, somebody’s neighbor who would not say the word the city required. John had buried friends. He knew names. And he says he was utterly amazed, which is a strange reaction until you feel it, and then it is the only honest one: the sheer scale of the thing, the beauty of it, the fact that the world thinks she is magnificent while heaven can see what is in her. The angel’s question is gentle but it is a correction. Why are you so amazed? Do not be. You have not seen anything new. And do not be impressed either, because impressiveness is her whole method.

Then the riddle of the beast, which reads like the tolling of a bell: it was, and now is no more, but is about to come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction. Was, and is not, and yet will be. Four times in this chapter that phrase turns over, and the last word of it is always the same. It goes to its destruction. Whatever the beast is, John never lets the sentence end anywhere else. And the people who marvel at it are named exactly as they were four chapters ago, those whose names were not written in the Book of Life from the foundation of the world. Read that line the way a frightened believer needs to read it. The register of the redeemed was filled in before the world had a foundation, and the marveling crowd is not made up of people who tried to get in and failed. If you belong to the Lamb, your name went down before there was a sea for any beast to rise from, and no glittering thing you are looking at right now has the power to strike it out.

Revelation 17:9–13 (BSB)

⁹ This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. ¹⁰ There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. But when he does come, he must remain for only a little while. ¹¹ The beast that was, and now is not, is an eighth king, who belongs to the other seven and is going into destruction. ¹² The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but will receive one hour of authority as kings along with the beast. ¹³ These kings have one purpose: to yield their power and authority to the beast.

Here is the passage that has consumed more ink than any other in the chapter, and here is where this study will speak plainly about what it will and will not do. This calls for a mind with wisdom, John says, exactly as he said four chapters ago about the number. Then seven mountains, then seven kings, five fallen, one reigning, one still to come, and an eighth who is somehow one of the seven. Christians who love Scripture have read this in three broad ways, and you should know them, fairly stated. Some read it of the imperial power of John’s own century, counting the emperors and hearing the city on seven hills. Some read it of a final world order still ahead, a last consolidation of human power before the end. Some read it as the portrait of a recurring pattern, the shape that any human order takes when it sets itself up against God and seduces the nations by wealth and force, appearing again and again in history and due to appear once more. Careful readers often blend them. Scripture does not settle it, this study will not settle it, and it will not attach the name of any city, nation, empire, church body, political system or economic order, ancient or modern, to the woman or the beast that carries her. Nor will it name a date, ever. Anyone who tells you he has done so with certainty has told you more than John did.

What we can do, and what most readers skip past in the rush, is take seriously everything the passage says outright. Start with the counting itself. Five have fallen. Whatever else that means, it means these powers keep falling. There is a graveyard behind this woman full of the kings she used to sit on, and she is still sitting, still confident, still assuming the next one will hold. Then look at the tenure of the one who is still to come: he must remain for only a little while. And look at the ten horns: they will receive one hour of authority. One hour. That is not a timetable, it is a proportion, and it is the same proportion the whole book keeps insisting on. Every hostile power in Revelation gets a measured, stamped, expiring term, and John will not let you read a single one of them without the clock in the frame. And then verse thirteen, which is the most quietly devastating line in the section: These kings have one purpose: to yield their power and authority to the beast. They are called kings, and the one thing they unanimously do with their kingship is give it away. That is what such alliances always come to. Nobody in this arrangement ends up more free than when he started. They hand over the very thing that made them worth recruiting, and they do it gladly, and they call it strength.

Revelation 17:14–18 (BSB)

¹⁴ They will make war against the Lamb, and the Lamb will triumph over them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and He will be accompanied by His called and chosen and faithful ones.” ¹⁵ Then the angel said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute was seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. ¹⁶ And the ten horns and the beast that you saw will hate the prostitute. They will leave her desolate and naked, and they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire. ¹⁷ For God has put it into their hearts to carry out His purpose by uniting to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled. ¹⁸ And the woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.”

Now stop, because everything in this chapter has been leading here and this one verse is worth the whole day. Ten kings and a beast, an alliance of every power the earth can raise, unite for war, and the enemy they choose is a Lamb. Feel the absurdity of that on purpose. Not a warrior, not an army, not a fortress. The word John uses all through this book is the little word for a lamb, and it is always the Lamb who was slain, still bearing the marks of it. Against that, the kings of the earth marshal everything they have. And the outcome is given before the battle is described, in six words: and the Lamb will triumph (νικάω) nikaō, pronounced nee-KAH-oh. Strong's G3528, to conquer, overcome, prevail. Nikaō means to conquer, to prevail, to come out of a contest on top, and it is one of the load-bearing words of this book. John has used it in every letter to the seven churches, where the promises are given to the one who overcomes, and he used it of the saints in chapter twelve, who overcame the dragon by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. He has also used it, painfully, of the beast, which was permitted to make war on the saints and conquer them. So the same word runs both ways in Revelation, and that is the point: there are two different kinds of winning in this book, and only one of them is real. The beast conquers by killing. The Lamb conquered by being killed, and He conquers here by being who He is. Notice that John does not describe the battle at all. There is no campaign, no siege, no clash. The kings make war, and the Lamb wins, and the verse has already moved on. That is the confidence a believer is meant to take out of this chapter and into an ordinary Tuesday. The outcome is not in the balance. The nations may rage, but the war against the Lamb has a known result, and the ones standing with Him at the end are the very people who looked, all their lives, like the losing side. over them. Then the reason, and it is not a strategic reason, it is who He is: because He is Lord of lords and King of kings. Weigh that title, because Scripture does not hand it around. It belongs to God Himself, and Moses said so to Israel long before there was a Roman emperor to claim anything:

"For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awesome God, showing no partiality and accepting no bribe." Deuteronomy 10:17 (BSB)

That is the name the slain Lamb wears in this chapter. He is not a rival contender who happens to be stronger. He is the LORD. Every crown in the vision is a borrowed one; His is not. And blessed be His name for the last clause of the verse, because it tells you who is standing beside Him when the kings come: His called and chosen and faithful ones. Look how ordinary that list is. Not the heroic, not the brilliant, not the ones who worked out the seven kings. Called, which is God’s doing. Chosen, which is God’s doing. Faithful, which is simply hanging on to the One who called and chose you. If you are His this morning, that is your description, and that is the whole of your qualification for the day the Lamb overcomes.

Then two disclosures that change how you see everything that came before. The waters, first: peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. She sits on the crowds. Her whole position rests on the consent, the appetite, and the applause of ordinary people, and there is a sober word in that for every one of us, because crowds are made of individuals and every glittering system that ever ruled the world was held up by people going along with it. And second, verse sixteen, which is one of the most startling turns in the Bible. And the ten horns and the beast that you saw will hate (μισέω) miseō, pronounced mee-SEH-oh. Strong's G3404, to hate, and in Semitic idiom to love less. Miseō is the ordinary strong Greek verb for hatred, and John does not soften it. What ought to arrest you is where it lands. Every other time this book shows you hostility it runs from the beast toward the saints, from the dragon toward the woman clothed with the sun, from the world toward the church. Here it runs from the alliance toward its own centerpiece, and it runs suddenly. That is the most searching thing chapter seventeen has to say about what such partnerships are worth. She had every king on earth in her interest, and not one of them was a friend. They were with her while she was useful and they tore her apart when she was not, and it took no persuading at all. Any arrangement founded on mutual appetite ends exactly this way, whether it is an empire or a company or a friendship, because appetite has no loyalty in it. And here is the piece a reader most needs: do not read this as a triumph for the beast. Verse seventeen says God put it into their hearts. The judgment of this glittering city is executed by the very thing she trusted, and even that is not the beast’s initiative. It is God’s, worked out through the self-consuming nature of evil itself, until the words of God are fulfilled. Sin does not need an executioner brought in from outside. It eats itself, on God’s schedule. the prostitute. The very powers that carried her, that she was seated on, that made her alliances valuable and her wealth possible, turn on her. They strip her, they consume her, they burn her. She is not brought down by an outside enemy. She is destroyed by her own partners.

And then the last line of the chapter, laid down flat with no ornament at all: the woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth. The angel has told us what he means to tell us and has stopped. She is a city, a great one, a ruling one. Everything else about her John leaves in the picture, and we will leave it there too. Tomorrow we will hear her fall announced and mourned.