Revelation 17:7-14

The Mystery of the Beast

A sermon by Pastor Joe Haynes

Preached on August 2, 2020 at Beacon Church.

Of all the fictional villains introduced during the 20th Century, one of the ones people love to hate the most is Cruella de Vil. She’s most famous because of the Disney movie, One Hundred And One Dalmatians—but she was created in 1956 in the book by Dodie Smith. Cruela de Vil is a play on words for “cruel devil.”[i] In the book, she is married to a rich furrier whose name is never mentioned. When she’s asked what her married name is, she replies that she made him take her name; she domineers him and he obeys her completely; she rules the household, always keeping the fire hot and wearing her fur coat, even in summer—her house is appropriately called “Hell Hall.” She steals almost a hundred dalmatian puppies to get their fur. But in the end, her crimes are discovered and her husband’s business is destroyed, and she’s forced to sell Hell Hall. It’s just a story. One spin-off of the character called Cruela “The Queen of Darkness”.[ii] Just a story. But truth is stranger than fiction. In the book of Revelation, John sees a vision of an evil woman that makes Cruela de Vil seem like a cartoon.

In my last sermon, on verses 3-6, I showed from those verses that this woman, this great prostitute called "Babylon the Great" (v5), represents a city like Babylon, and that she is also a great and prominent false church--a church that is no longer in power; a church that is not innocent but false and guilty of blood; a church that is not the only apostate church but is the mother of them all. This City-Church is not the Bride of Christ. The same angel will take John again, in Rev 21:9, not to the wilderness but to a great, high mountain, where he will show John the "Bride, the wife of the Lamb." That true Church is a spiritual city, the whole number of all who truly love Jesus, who belong to Him, who hold to His Word, His Gospel, His teaching; (21:10), the "holy city Jerusalem… having the glory of God, its radiance like a most rare jewel" founded and built upon the apostles of Christ. Ask yourself this morning: does that describe you? In Revelation 17:7, the woman being carried by the beast is not the wife of the Lamb but an adulterous and unfaithful impostor claiming to be the Queen of Jesus Christ. Here's what I see as the lesson of this passage: The truths the angel reveals to John about this false church is a gracious warning from God to keep you from betraying Jesus Christ.

The angel reveals the decline of Babylon the Great (7)

“But the angel said to me, ‘Why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her,’” (Rev. 17:7 ESV). The angel corrects John’s astonishment with the truth about Babylon and the Beast.

The first word of Revelation 17:7 is “but.” What follows is like a helpful rebuke from the angel, like a good sermon that hits you where you live. “Why do you marvel?” And yet, she is seductive, convincing, alluring, and persuasive. Look at verse 2! The people of the earth fall for her charms, are caught up in her allure, are deceived by her beauty. And so in his massive commentary, GK Beale says there is a “likelihood that John was also attracted in some way to the Babylonian woman.”[iii] John said, "When I saw her I marveled greatly" (6b). The Greek text doubles up that word “marvel” to make it intense: he “marveled a marvel” but then adds the word “great” to make it more intense: “he marveled a great marvel”. It seems the power the prostitute had to intoxicate the "dwellers on the earth" (v2) even affected John, at least to some degree. John is a good and faithful man, a follower of Christ who endured suffering for Jesus' sake—he surely was not about to let himself be drawn to this woman. He seems to recoil from the sight of her. And the word he used, “marvel” often has an element of fear to it. Beale says, “perhaps a good translation would be ‘awestruck.’”[iv]

Let me ask you this: have you ever felt your flesh attracted to and tempted by something your mind and heart rejected? It is one of the great realities of history that this false church openly appeals to people’s flesh—flaunting wealth and grandeur, position and power, seeking to affect her people’s behaviour through appealing to their senses—especially of sight. Where Christ changes people’s hearts by His Spirit and by the preaching of His Word, this prostituted church is ignorant of the power of God’s Word and relies on other means to promote her religion. Even true Christians can be drawn in by her wiles and enticements. John was not immune to her allure and neither are you and I. So the angel addresses, confronts, and corrects John’s visceral reaction to the Prostitute by exposing the truth about her. But to make this brief application, don’t you long for the day when you will finally be free of the sin in your heart? When you will never be tempted or drawn in and attracted to what you know is wrong? When you will always respond rightly to what is good and turn away from what is bad? In the meantime, while we wait for that day to come, aren’t you so thankful that God has given us His Word and His Spirit to break the spell of sin and to train us to love and celebrate what is truly good and lovely? We must be people who thank God from the heart for His wonderful, sanctifying work in us!

In verse 7, the angel says, "Why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast…" And what he explains to John, how the angel interprets these symbols for John in verses 8-18, strips away the woman's mystique and removes her mystery. But you will never understand this if you aren’t ready to think and diligently apply yourself to Scripture. A mystery is something unknown and hidden and so the angel explains and illumines and exposes the truth about her and the truth about her relationship with the beast but none of this is simple (or there wouldn’t be so many different opinions on Revelation!). So look closely and think with me. The word “mystery” is singular: not “mysteries.” It is one mystery: of the woman and of the beast—they are inseparable (almost). There is no woman apart from the beast and for a very long time there was no beast apart from the woman. By exposing the mystery, the angel will reveal who the woman is, what the symbol represents in real life and also what the beast represents. But notice what he says, still in verse 7, about the status of their relationship at this point in the prophecy: it "carries her."

I want you to notice that word, "carries." In Rom 11:18, Paul uses this word to say that branches do not support the root; the root supports ("carries") the branches. It's the same word in Galatians 6:2 where he says "bear one another's burdens"; in Rev 2:2, where Jesus says He knows, "you cannot bear with those who are evil." And in the next verse (2:3) Jesus uses the same word again saying He knows, "you are bearing up for my name's sake, and have not grown weary." So in verse 7, when the angel says the beast "carries" the woman, he clarifies what it says in verse 3, that the woman was "sitting on the beast"--she is not its rider, she is its passenger. The beast bears the woman, puts up with the woman, supports the woman, and carries the woman. When John sees this woman being carried along on the back of the beast in the wilderness, he sees her at a time when she is no longer in control. She is the passenger and the beast now has to carry her. And as we will see in verse 16, the beast now hates this woman. The rest of this chapter is the revealing of this mystery—first exposing the truth about the beast (in the time we have left this morning), and then the truth about the woman (that will be next Sunday.) The truth the angel reveals here shows that in the era of the seven bowls, the era we are living in today, the Great Prostitute is in a far more precarious position than she knows. And what we learn here is a gracious warning from God’s Word to you to not betray Jesus.

The angel reveals the identity and destiny of the Beast (8-11)

Keep in mind the scene John saw in verse 3; and what the angel said in verse 7: the woman sits on the beast but the truth is that the beast carries her. This is bad news for Babylon because the beast is destined to be destroyed. “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction,” (Rev. 17:8 ESV). Verse 8 is kind of a plot spoiler. But it’s about time. John’s readers were already introduced to a beast rising from the bottomless pit in chapter 11—in that prediction, it killed Christ’s witnesses; then to a dragon with seven heads and ten horns in chapter 12—in that prediction, it persecuted the followers of Christ; then to a beast with seven heads and ten horns in chapter 13—in that prediction, it blasphemed God and waged war against the saints. Now the angel now gives John the keys to unlocking the meaning of these symbols so that believers would one day be able to identify the great enemy of God’s people.

The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. (Rev. 17:8 ESV)

The angel reveals the truth about why this evil beast and its ten horns are going to destruction—taking the woman Babylon with them—their fate was sealed as soon as they started persecuting Christians who follow Jesus and cling to His Gospel. If you wage war against Jesus and His Church there is nobody else to save you. Anyone who makes war on the Lamb of God is going to face the wrath of God. But other than the devil himself, nobody else in history has had his doom announced so far in advance and his fate so widely published as this beast. Daniel 7 predicted the judgment and destruction of this beast 600 years before Christ’s first advent. Now again the angel shows John what is in store for this beast centuries before the beast even arrived on the scene. For centuries beforehand, Christians knew that a great and powerful enemy was soon to rise and ravage the churches of Jesus Christ but just as surely as God’s Word foretold their suffering under the beast, God’s Word also foretold their salvation through death; and God’s Word foretold the vengeance Jesus would exact on their enemy. From the time of the prophet Daniel, it has been a great comfort to the Church to have this prophecy showing how it all would end.

The first thing the angel tells John is that beast “was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit.” Don’t worry about that right now, we’ll come back to that. But the main point about this in verse 8 is that it’s meant to sound like a resurrection: was, is not, and will rise. The rise of the beast, as though from the dead, would be so astonishing to the people who witness that event, that they would be convinced the beast’s power comes from God. In fact it says those “whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world”—those who are not God’s chosen, predestined, elect children, those who are not true believers and followers of Jesus, they “will marvel” at the sight of the beast—the same word as in verse 6. And unlike John who would not allow himself to worship the Prostitute, these people did worship the power of the beast. Their whole religion was built around the beast.

But the angel shows the truth here: the beast rises from the bottomless pit. It’s power is demonic not divine: it’s rise is symbolically, “from the bottomless pit.” In verse 9, the identity of the resurrected beast is given in a riddle that calls for “wisdom” (just like the riddle of the number of the beast in 13:18). “This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated…” (Rev. 17:9 ESV). God gave this clue in a riddle so that it would not be easy to work out, but he gave this clue because it is possible to understand this, with wisdom and some study. The seven heads of the beast are a symbol with multiple meanings that are clues to help us identify this beast. First, the seven heads are identified as seven mountains on which the woman, the false church, is seated. For John’s original readers, this was a thinly veiled reference to the seven hills of the city of Rome.[v] According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, from ancient times, those hills in Rome were known as the Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, and Aventine Mountains.[vi] In case it wasn’t quite clear before now, this is about Rome. The second clue is that the seven heads also stand for seven kings. “…They are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while,” (Rev. 17:10 ESV). Back when I preached on Revelation 12 and the dragon with seven heads, I said,

The seven heads … represent the seven kinds of heads of government that ruled the Roman Empire in history: the Roman historians Livy and Tacitus both identify the first five (kings, consuls, dictators, decemvirs, and military tribunes), the sixth, emperors, was begun by Caesar Augustus.[vii]

Those were Roman historians and that’s also a famous part of the history of the city of Rome: In John’s lifetimes, the story of the city of Rome could be told by describing the “five” kinds of government that were in the past, and the sixth, the new kind of government begun by Caesar Augustus, when Rome became an Empire—that was the “one [that] is” when John wrote this. The angel says another kind of government, the seventh, “has not yet come”—it was still future from John’s point of view in the first century—but when it does come “he must remain only a little while”—again, Roman history shows that the seventh form of Roman government was the fairly short-lived one brought in by Diocletian when he established co-emperors and reorganized the empire in the early 4th Century. So there were seven kinds of constitutional governments—seven heads—and seven “kings” if you will. Ah, but there was one more to come—the beast that wowed the world when he brought the fallen Roman Empire back to life! We know now that the beast stands for the Roman empire at various points in its history as it evolved from one kind of government to another, 7 heads in total up to the fall of the Empire in 476 AD. But what does the other head stand for? The beast under the control of the persecuting, Antichristian head that was, then was not, then was to rise from the pit of Hell?

The third clue to the identity of the beast is in verse 11: “As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction,” (Rev. 17:11 ESV). The beast that was to come, still far in the future from when John wrote, was an eighth era of Roman government—but verse 11 says it also belonged to one of the earlier seven. When Rome was decapitated at the overthrow of the empire in the fifth century, it was soon reborn under rulers who ruled not only the city of Rome but were also the high priests of the Church of Rome—like the old pagan emperors at John’s time, who were the heads of the Roman cult that worshiped them as gods in temples around the empire. The eighth head was a form of Roman government that resurrected the old emperor cult and wrapped it in Christian robes. This began the dynasty of the Popes as the heads of Rome and the kingdoms loyal to Rome. This lasted for more than a thousand years. But verse 11 says, “it goes to destruction.” That’s how God predestined the reign of the Popes to end. And that brings us to the ten horns of the beast and verses 12-14. The truths the angel reveals to John about this false church is a gracious warning from God to keep you from betraying Jesus Christ.

The angel reveals the doom of the Beast and its ten horns (12-14)

“And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast,” (Rev. 17:12 ESV). The angel interprets the symbol of “ten horns” to mean “ten kings” or “kingdoms.” But the main point here is their unity with the beast. The ten kingdoms are as one with the beast in a war against Christ (12-14). If you want to figure out what ten kingdoms these are, look no further than the ten nations who rose up in Western Europe when the old Roman Empire fell. I’ll come back to them next week. For now, in verse 12, the angel tells John that at that time, they weren’t kingdoms yet. But they would receive kingly authority in the future, together with the beast. That happened in the sixth and seventh centuries. The main point emphasized in verses 12-14, though, is a point that shows why Babylon’s position, carried on the back of the beast, is so precarious: the end of verse 12 says these ten kings are “together with the beast”; verse 13 says, “These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast,” (Rev. 17:13 ESV). The doom of the Prostitute is sealed because she depends on the beast; the doom of the ten kingdoms is sealed because they are united with the beast; the doom of the Prostitute, the ten kingdoms, and the beast all together is because of whom they are united against. “They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful," (Rev. 17:14 ESV).

Maybe you’ve been at a movie where the audience cheered when the villain got what he deserved? Like when, in the Lion King, Scar’s hyena army turns against him in the end. Or in the Princess Bride when Inigo Montoya finally catches up with the six-fingered man, Count Rugen, who long before had killed his father and says, “I want my father back…” and kills him. But here’s what I want you to consider for a moment: what makes us cheer at scenes like that? That the bad guy got what he deserved? That the good guy finally gets revenge? Do you see in verse 14 how profound God’s justice will be when this day arrives? Like Paul who persecuted the early church found out when Jesus said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” the Beast and those united with him will one day find out that the whole time they thought they were fighting for Christendom, they were fighting against Jesus Christ. They thought they served Christ but they never loved His Word, His Gospel, or His people. The truth we learn from what this angel reveals to John, about the mystery of the beast, is a gracious warning from God to keep you and me from betraying Jesus Christ. So instead of cheering at the destruction of the Antichrist, check your own heart: do you love Jesus?

When those who have betrayed Jesus are destroyed, I don’t think you and I will cheer because the bad guy got what he deserved. I think we will weep that the name of our Lord suffered such dishonour for so long. I don’t think we will rejoice at the punishment of the wicked. I think we will rejoice when the honour of our Lord is at last vindicated in all Creation; When every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father! The Antichristian popes and the Christendom they used to rule were united against Christ and His Gospel, and for centuries they persecuted the followers of Christ, the martyrs of Jesus and His Gospel. The Protestant Reformation recovered that Gospel, but too many Protestants never stop protesting. What should unite true Christians is not who we are against. Our common cause is not in what we oppose. Our union, our fellowship, is in Jesus. Babylon and the Beast are doomed because they betrayed the Lamb. Do not be defined by what you hate or what you protest: be defined by the One you serve, the One you worship, the One you love above every other. Be defined by the Lamb: (v14b) He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful. “Called and chosen.” This is grace. No one is a Christian because they deserve it, you are saved by grace and grace alone. So be faithful now to Him who called you and chose you and gave His life to save you.