CHAPTER 17
We have now entered on the scenes of the last judgments, which God is to fulfill in order to introduce the glory of Jesus. The seven vials have accomplished the wrath of God. The Spirit of prophecy gives with more detail the two forms of evil developed at the end-Babylon and the beast. Things are more simple and more easy to understand than at the beginning of the Apocalypse. When evil becomes openly manifest, the thing is more evident; for the winding up of the scene of this world interests more particularly the church.
Verse 1. In speaking of heavenly things, one speaks of things that are not yet as though they were, for God has foreseen and judged everything. Heaven is familiar with evil as judged, as with that which is good to enjoy it. God has taken notice of everything beforehand; and all is found on the path to His glory. The angel is familiarly acquainted with all that relates to the great whore. To us this is not clear and must be explained. All that happens to us is foreknown and pre-arranged of God, in order that His child may stand in the midst of difficulties. All I have to do is to say-God is perfectly acquainted with the position I am in, and He knows the way He has prepared to extricate me out of difficulties if I remain faithful. In all things present your requests to God, knowing that He cares for you. John could not so much as even imagine such a thing as this great whore; she has the double character of corruption and influence over the nations.
Two things are contained in this chapter: Babylon and the beast; corruption and the power of evil in violence. Man's will manifests itself in two ways-corruption and violence: this was the world's state at the time of the deluge. Satan is a liar and a murderer. The Lord Jesus is the truth and the life, instead of being a liar and a violent man. Antichrist does his own will. Jesus does the will of Him that sent Him. Here is corruption, violence, self-will, and murder. Babylon is corruption in all its depth; and the beast is self-will, revolting even against God Himself. These two principles, which have been from the beginning, are embodied, and act.
Verse 2. The kings of the earth are the powers where light has shined, the powers of the last prophetical scene of monarchies. Verse 3. Babylon is center of commerce, of riches, the capital of the vanities of the world, the mother of idolatries; but as to the Spirit of God, it is a desert (v. 3). He finds nothing in the world that can satisfy the holy desires of a renewed heart. What the flesh or the natural man loves, the Spirit hates. What is desirable to the natural heart is only a desert and corruption to the Spirit.
The beast, having seven heads and ten horns, is the Roman empire. The woman is here seated on the beast, and rules it. This is the relationship between the moral corruption of this world and the civil powers. Later these relations are changed. In the Old Testament Babylon poisons the nations. Here also she is the center to which the nations are attracted, the center of the corruption, the luxury, and the glory of this world. It is also the center of religious idolatry; Dan. 3. This system of corruption at the beginning rides the beast, and rules it. The kings of the earth find it profitable for themselves to sustain this relationship with the woman; corruption governs.
The names of blasphemy are varied characters of self-will and of rebellion in the beast which opposes God.
Verse 5. We see in Babylon the spring of all corruption. She is the cause that all the relationships that ought to subsist with God, are sustained with the world. She leads men to abandon the true God; they may give themselves up to idols.
Verse 6. The secular power puts the saints actually to death; but it is Babylon who is guilty. She is drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs, the witnesses of Jesus. As it was once Jerusalem that was guilty of the blood of prophets, so it is now in Babylon that the blood of the saints is to be found. It is here we find the principle of that religion which is connected with the world, and has its resources there. It is the most hateful thing in the sight of God.
Verse 7. John is marveling that that which had the form of godliness and the name of religion should be guilty of the blood of the martyrs. It must have been no less amazing to a Jew that God should require of Jerusalem the blood of the prophets. In the sight of God one generation inherits of the preceding generations all the iniquity which they have completed. Their conscience ought to be warned by this iniquity. " Ye be witnesses unto yourselves that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers," says the Lord. If Christians are not entirely separated from Babylon, they inherit the iniquity of the preceding times, because they join themselves with it, their conscience not gathering any instruction from it. When man has exhausted one principle, God presents him with another to work upon his conscience: and, if he rejects it, he is so much the more guilty. In Abel nature is violated; afterward, the traditional knowledge of God; Rom. 1:18-23. Afterward it is the law; and then it is -Jesus Himself who comes to put the heart to the proof. When the knowledge of the Father and of the Son is introduced, the Jews then seek to show their faithfulness to God by killing those who introduce this knowledge. Man glories in a truth that costs him nothing inasmuch as it is generally received, and takes advantage of it to oppose the admission of more light which would demand faith. The Jews insist on the unity of God in order to deny the Son. When we appeal to a truth that was blessed to us at one time, in order to refuse another sent now, it is rejecting the means by which God will act now. It was the bigoted Jews, not the heathen, that opposed themselves most to the introduction of Christianity.
Sincerity alone will not do. The new light must be admitted. They will kill you, " because they have not known the Father nor me," John 17:3. Thus it is that the most precious light becomes the instrument of evil in the hands of infidelity. This principle is very important for those who are acting in the kingdom of God. From verse 8 the angel leaves the woman, to give us the history of the beast.
The contents of verse 8 had already been announced in a less clear manner before. When the Roman empire is spoken of, it is said that it exists no more. Here we find this difficulty foreseen, pointed out, and explained. Here is the key to the enigma, with the certainty that He who gave it invented the enigma also.
The Roman empire is to come out of the bottomless pit, from the region of darkness, and act with power for evil. It is a very serious matter to see at the end the power, which has dominion over the earth, come up out of the bottomless pit itself. The inhabitants of the earth shall marvel at this kind of resurrection of the Roman empire, and then it is that the world shall follow after the beast; chap. 13: 3. It will be seduced when the beast shall have taken the character of the resurrection of the Roman empire destroyed centuries ago.
Verses 9, 10. There is a certain likeness between the woman and the beast. A woman, a city built on the perfection of power, on seven mountains, represents the center of corruption. The beast has seven heads also. The heads are kings, or powers of government. Five are fallen-five kings, or five forms of government. The particular facts which have accomplished parts of this are of little importance. History is not necessary in order to understand prophecy. It is even oftentimes an obstacle, because what is often important to man is not so to God, for God has Christ in view.
Although history fulfills prophecy, yet it never explains it; whereas prophecy explains history. The faithful are called to believe in the prophecy before it is fulfilled. The way to understand the word is to have the mind of God, and to apprehend His purposes with respect to Christ. At the time of the apostle five kings had already fallen. The sixth was there. A seventh was to come for a short time.
Verse ii. The eighth head of the beast is the beast itself, the whole power of the beast concentrated in the person of the chief. It is the Roman empire brought to life again through Satan, with a diabolic character, but which shall be destroyed. There will be a restoration hereafter of the Roman empire, and this restored empire shall be destroyed by the power of God. In 2 Thess. 2:3 the man of sin is called the son of perdition.
Verse 12. The ten horns have their power the same time with the beast. The kingdoms that arose out of the destruction of the Roman empire through the barbarians were not the prophetic horns. The trouble men have taken on this subject has been to no purpose. The barbarian kings destroyed the Roman empire instead of exercising their power at the same time with it. There will be a kind of confederation of kings with a center, that is, a head exercising power in the midst of them.
Verse 14. These kings will make war with the Lamb; but the Lamb, who is the King of kings, shall overcome them. The church shall accompany Him. The called, the elect, and the faithful, these are they who shall be with Him.
Verse 16. The horns. They shall hate the whore, and shall eat her flesh, and make her desolate and naked. They are tired of her, and cannot endure her any longer. Man thinks that, if he could get rid of this outward and corrupted form of Christianity, he would be blessed. It is the contrary. When the ten kings have made the whore desolate and naked, they give their kingdom to the beast. The kings of the earth will not give their power to Christ: quite the contrary; they will give it to the beast, and will make war with the Lamb. It is inconceivable how those who read the word of God can entertain the thought that the kings of the earth shall give their power to the Lamb. If one could succeed in destroying the whore, there would be no other result than to make war with the Lamb. It is important the church of God should not be deceived in this respect. God is warning us, in order that we may escape the way that leads to perdition.
This chapter is divided into three essential parts: the woman, who becomes the center of corruption, and who exercises her influence over the mass of people; the beast, which has ascended out of the bottomless pit; the ten kings, who persecute the woman, give their power to the beast, and fall in making war with the Lamb.
A distinction is to be made between the expressions the woman and the whore. That Rome has been the center, this I do not doubt. The woman is the city; but the whore embraces a whole system of corruption that has varied forms, and of which the spirit of worldliness, long covered over under the form of religion, is the over-ruling principle. In this chapter the whore is more particularly shown to us under her religious form. Her flesh is eaten, and she is no more seated on the beast, because the kings give their power to the beast, and the beast itself rules.
It is important to avoid these principles and forms that lead to perdition. The chosen, the called, and the faithful are with the Lamb when He destroys the beast and the kings. This is exceedingly precious, and separates from the spirit of this world. A heathen is not in Babylon. He cannot be there. A Christian may be found there. Whatever connects the world with religion is the principle of Babylon. The spirit of Babylon, the spirit of worldliness, is very slippery ground. Therefore it is that we are warned of God. May God keep us!