Revelation 17:1-2

The Judgment of the Great Prostitute

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on July 5, 2020 at Beacon Church.

Many of you don’t know this, but when I returned from the mission field and came back to Canada, when I was 19 years old, I worked for a year as a courier driver in Greater Vancouver. I found a job where having a heavy foot, driving fast, was an asset. And I got a lot of speeding tickets. One of them stands out: I was coming around a bend in the road where it ran alongside a park, when I spotted an RCMP officer racing on foot across the grass toward the road up ahead. I thought, “that’s odd.” He ran right out into the road. And then he pointed right at me. I could see that he seemed upset. And I thought, “uh oh.” And I suddenly had a choice to make: do I pull over and hear what he has to say, or do I keep driving? Because when you see that a person in authority is upset, and you start to realize they are upset with you, it is important that you take the time to find out why they are upset with you—what you did to make them angry. That’s what we find out in Revelation 17: an angel who had just been part of pouring out God’s wrath on the earth comes to speak with John. If you have any good sense at all, you should be very concerned about the wrath of God. And you should suddenly be very eager to find out what this angel has to say about why God is angry.

Who this angel is and what he has to say give John’s readers the timing and target of divine judgment so that you will flee God’s wrath and be faithful to God’s Son.

The angel represents God’s final judgments

“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute…’,” (Rev. 17:1 ESV). Revelation chapter 17 picks up where Revelation 16 left off. That's the point of the first word here, in the ESV, "then." After John saw the shocking finale of God's wrath poured out on the earth in wave after wave of judgment, crashing down in the symbolized picture of seven angels pouring out seven bowls of God's wrath, one after another, then, in his vision, the scene shifted and John saw an angel. Let’s consider who-when-what: first, who this angel is, that will tell us when this is about; and next, what he says to John.

The angel is one of those angels from chapters 15-16—one of the seven who had the seven bowls of God’s wrath.

Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. (Rev. 15:1 ESV)

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, "Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God." (Rev. 16:1 ESV)

This angel is “one of them”; he is representative of all seven. So when you think about this angel you should think about all seven of God’s final judgments on the earth. This clue tells us when this is about. That it is one of these angels whom John, in his vision, sees coming now to talk to him, shows us, John's readers, that what he has to say still has to do with the period of time of the seven final bowls of God's wrath. In other words, as far as times goes, what John sees in chapter 17 is about the time period predicted in chapter 16. Or in other words, it’s about the time before the return of Christ and the end of the world as we know it. Chapter 17 (and 18) is like an aside; it doesn’t make new predictions, it expands on and explains what has already been predicted. It is a sidebar, an excursus, a digression, a detour, a tangent. That's the significance of verse 1: the angel who came to speak to John now is one of the seven angels holding the seven bowls of God's wrath.

This of course tells us where this prophecy fits in the overall sequence of events in Revelation. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that the predictions in Revelation are built around three series of seven (and they run in order—like seeing 7 icons on your computer desktop, numbered one-seven; the first six are files but the seventh is a folder—when you click it you find 7 more numbered icons inside). So in Revelation we find seven seals, then seven trumpets, then, in chapter 16, "seven bowls" (“which are the last”, 15:1, “for with them the wrath of God is finished”). The angel now talking to John, in chapter 17, is from this last series: the seven bowls. It's a long time ago now since I preached through all of those. But to catch you up, this whole prophetic vision was given by God “to show his servants the things that must soon take place” (1:1). One of the keys to understanding Revelation is to keep that in mind: what John saw did begin to take place soon, and continued in order with the seals, the trumpets and the bowls, and is still taking place—though we are living right at the end of the predictions now. John saw his vision in about the year 95AD, just as the Roman Empire was about to enjoy its longest golden age, but as Christians were an often persecuted minority barely tolerated by the Roman government. The seven seals predicted the decline of the pagan Roman Empire and ushered in the next series, the seven trumpets. The seven trumpets predicted the overthrow of the western Roman Empire by barbarian invaders, and the overthrow of the eastern Roman Empire by Muslim invaders. That brought us to the 1500s, and the events of the Protestant Reformation.

Revelation 10-14 are a sort of parallel vision within a vision; or a smaller scroll of prophecy contained inside the larger vision of the whole book. When he eats that little scroll, John sees the true Church of Jesus Christ persecuted and ravaged by the beast, the dragon, and the false prophet: Dr. Collins calls it the "Antichristian war against the covenant people of God".[1] But when chapter 14 shows the Antichrist is eventually punished by God, that's the first place John's readers are introduced to someone called "Babylon the Great": “Another angel, a second, followed, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality,’” (Rev. 14:8 ESV). What's so disturbing here is that this Babylon is described as a woman--"she"--who corrupts many nations with her "sexual immorality." That’s a metaphor. The whole “little scroll” book within a book is adapted from Ezekiel, where the same little scroll contains an indictment of the people of Israel for betraying God (Eze 2:8-3:10). That’s what this “sexual immorality” is about.

Well then, chapters 15-16 introduced the final series of seven bowls of God's wrath and the seven angels sent by God to pour out their bowls on the earth. These last seven "bowl" predictions began to be fulfilled, as I've shown, where the trumpets left off--in the 16th century and brought us up to modern times. The punishments are aimed not at the planet in general, but at the people of the earth, of the lands of the old Roman Empire, who "bore the mark of the beast and worshipped its image" (16:2); who "shed the blood of saints and prophets" (16:6); on "the throne of the beast and its kingdom" (16:10); and finally, the seventh angel's punishment seems to focus on Babylon the Great--16:19 says, "and God remembered Babylon the Great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath." That's when one of these seven angels comes to speak to John. And for you and me, we should expect therefore, because this is one of those seven angels with the seven final plagues of the wrath of God who comes now to speak to John, that we are about to find out why God is so angry—what His wrath, in chapter 16, is about.

The woman represents a false and unfaithful church

"Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters,  2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk."  (Rev. 17:1-2 ESV)

Notice that word, “judgment.” It’s a noun. The judgment; the decree; the decision of God, the angel tells John, about “the great prostitute.” Notice this says, “the prostitute” – not “a great prostitute” but “the great prostitute.” Meaning John’s readers should already know who the angel is talking about. We just read Rev 14:8, about “Babylon the Great” and her corrupting “sexual immorality”. Now she is called “the great prostitute” in reference to that metaphorical “sexual immorality”—the ways in which she betrayed God! So “the great prostitute” (17:1) is also called “Babylon the Great” (14:8). Not because she is the literal city of Babylon—God condemned Babylon to be a ghost town in Isa 13:20 and Jer 50:39. Rather that ancient city is a symbol here for something else. Babylon was that ancient arch-enemy of Jerusalem. It was the capital of the empire that God used to punish the holy city, Jerusalem, when the people of Jerusalem were unfaithful to God. Babylon’s armies came and conquered Jerusalem in 606BC, destroyed the city and the Temple in 586BC, and took the remnant of the Jews captive. The Jewish people never forgot Babylon. The first generation of Christians who read John’s prophecy could not have missed the comparison. The Great Prostitute God was going to judge in the end times would be comparable to the city of Babylon, the enemy of those who worship the true God. But more than that, this Babylon would also be a people who betray God.

By calling Babylon “the great prostitute,” instead of just “Babylon the Great,” the angel shows this woman’s greatest crime was against Jesus. If you skip to the end of the vision you will find that this same angel comes to John again, and again invites him to come and see another woman: “Then came one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues and spoke to me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb,’” (Rev. 21:9 ESV). Who or what is the Bride of Christ? She is the true Church, made up of all those in every place and time who truly believe in Jesus Christ. Who or what is this prostitute but a false bride; a false church? Already, even before John’s original readers get any further into what the angel shows John about the prostitute’s judgment, a picture was already taking shape and they would have figured out this woman is somehow a church associated with the city of Rome. Because about 30 years before John wrote Revelation, The Apostle Peter wrote obscurely about greetings from “she who is in Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13) and everybody knew—as even John MacArthur agrees--he was referring “to a church in Rome.”[2] In the early church, even before John wrote Revelation, ancient Babylon was a well-understood code-word and symbol for Rome. And “the great prostitute” is a false-bride, an impostor-church not married to Jesus, but profoundly unfaithful to Jesus. So Babylon, the Great Prostitute, is a Roman church who betrayed God’s Son. This is how John’s earliest readers would have understood Revelation 17:1.

The true Church is called to stay sober and faithful to Jesus

I take this from the fact that God did not just send these seven angels to pour out His wrath; He sent one of them to speak with John. And He gave John this vision “to show His servants what must soon take place” (Rev 1:1); the Lord commanded John to write down the things he saw in this vision (Rev 1:19); and through John, God made a promise: “Blessed are those who hear, and who keep what is written… for the time is near” (Rev 1:3). God did not have to send this angel to speak to John and explain anything to John. But it is amazing grace that He did.

The angel said the great prostitute “is seated on many waters” quoting what Jeremiah 51:13 said about the ancient city of Babylon: 13 “O you who dwell by many waters, rich in treasures, your end has come” (Jer. 51:13). One of ancient Babylon’s great strengths was the rivers it was built upon. They made the ground fertile. They were a natural defense against invaders. They brought Babylon wealth. Skipping ahead again, this angel tells John, in verse 15, that the “many waters” this unfaithful church is sitting on are not literal rivers but peoples and nations: “And the angel said to me, "The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages,” (Rev. 17:15 ESV). The wealth and strength of this false church is the extent of her influence, the spread of her religion, the many countries and cities in which her congregations are found. So when this angel comes and says to John, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters…” and, “…with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk,” there are so many people who need to hear and heed this warning before it is too late.

The angel has come to John to show him the judgement, the final decision and decree of God about the great prostitute. We have been shown the timing of God’s wrath—during the final judgments in Revelation—and we’ve been shown the target of God’s wrath: a great, false church associated with the city of Rome. But why do you think, is the judgment of the Prostitute only revealed at the end of John’s vision? Remember the parable Jesus told about the weeds growing among the wheat? He said that the servants came to their master and said,

“Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?” 28 He said to them, “An enemy has done this.” So the servants said to him, “Then do you want us to go and gather them?” 29 But he said, “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, ‘Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn,’.” (Matt. 13:27-30; emphasis added)

Jesus waits until the era of the last judgments before He exposes the great prostitute for what she is. This is a great mercy. He delays the justice Babylon deserves in order to give people in this false church time to repent and come out of her. The imagery is similar to what God says in Isaiah 1:21 about Jerusalem: “How the faithful city has become a whore, she who was full of justice! Righteousness lodged in her, but now murderers.” When God finally exposes her and the last seven angels finish pouring out their seven bowls of the final wrath of God, it will be too late. But until then, there is time. You know what God said through the prophet Isaiah right before He lamented that the “faithful city has become a whore”? He pleaded; He invited; He urged her people to turn to Him:

18 "Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. 19 If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; 20 but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be eaten by the sword; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken." (Isa. 1:18-20 ESV)

If you had been driving along a bend in the road, 30 years ago, and saw a police officer racing on foot across the grass, run right into the road and point his finger at the driver in the car in front of you, what would you have done? Wouldn’t you have checked your speed and made sure he didn’t have a reason to point his angry finger at you? How much more should you heed what this angel has come and said to John? How much more should you take to heart the warning John has recorded and written so that you can examine your religion before it is too late. Is your heart unfaithful to Jesus? Is your devotion to Him, your trust in Him, like that of a pure and loyal bride? Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool. If you are willing and obedient… Who this angel is and what he has to say give John’s readers the timing and target of divine judgment so that you will flee God’s wrath and be faithful to God’s Son.