EPISODE 267 REVELATION CHAPTERS 17 and 18 " Converging Streams"

This is Share the Word podcast. If you're joining us for the first time, we are so happy that you're here. You've tuned in for episode 267 on the book of Revelation, chapters 17 and 18. Pastor Paul Nitz sits behind the microphone and brings you the big idea of these chapters, so get your Bibles out and get ready to take notes. Here we go. Revelation 17 and 18: Converging Streams.

A thoughtful look at the book of Revelation, the journey we've been on, makes clear that the visions John sees, the things he was shown, were not always in chronological order. It's not a record of one long vision progressing through the tribulation seven years. No, it's not like that. For example, back in chapter 14, the things John was seeing then were clearly at the end of the seven years of tribulation. If you remember, he saw then, in one vision, Jesus with his holy angels coming sickles in hand to reap the earth. And also in that chapter, one of God's angels telling him, Fallen, fallen, Babylon the great is fallen.

She who has made the nations drink of wine of the wrath of immorality, as though that was the end of the story. But of course it was not. It was just a snapshot of what was to come. This has happened before in the study as well. I mean, the storyline moves past something, then later John has another vision which backs up and examines in more detail aspects or events more closely. Chapters 17, 18 are another example of this.

Just last episode, if you remember from chapter 16, John saw the rapid-fire bowl judgments, which happened, I think, just before the second coming of Christ. So at the end of the seven years' time, and now in 17 and 18, he gets more detailed vision specifically about the one world order the Antichrist manages to create during the tribulation era, called in Revelation Babylon. I mentioned a few lessons ago when this term Babylon first showed up that I'm not sure if this is what the New World Order, the Antichrist government, will actually be called then, what he'll call it, or whether this is just what God calls it as a reference back to the first time people on Earth tried to unite against Him, challenges authority at the Tower of Babel, told about way back in Genesis chapter 11.

People whose eyes and ears are tuned into watching and listening for things that connect to end times prophecies have been keyed into the concept of a New World Order for quite some time now. I remember when the Cold War seemed over after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first President Bush gave a speech, I believe this was around 1990, titled Toward a New World Order. Boy, that perked up the ears of all the prophecy buffs at the time. In that speech, the U.S. President talked about how, at that point, he believed the world finally had an opportunity to come together to fulfill the vision of the United Nations by cooperating to create a peaceful, harmonious world. Well, that didn't exactly happen, did it?

But the dream is still alive and well in many quarters, and during the tribulation, the unbelieving world will buy into the Babylon system, believing then that it will finally be able to deliver the peace and security people all around the globe long for. I'll get back to that in a minute. This quest for a global order that can maintain peace on Earth is just one aspect of biblical prophecy those of us who pay attention to these things tune into. I mentioned early on in our Revelation study that I would stop at some point and go through some of the things that lead many prophecy students to think we are close to the time these things in Revelation become reality. I won't take the time to go into all of them in detail, but I'm going to describe just a few of them to clarify what I mean. For example, I think about the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism.

The return of Jews to their ancient homeland, which was foretold by many Old Testament prophets and which began in the middle of the 20th century, is very prophetically significant. As we've seen throughout Revelation, the Jewish people must be in that land, their ancient land. A new temple must be built in Jerusalem. These things must be a reality in order for things in Revelation that John is shown to actually happen. Israel, now more than ever, has become the center of the world's attention, potentially the flashpoint for global conflict. Many people across the spectrum these days are seeing Israel as the greatest impediment to world peace, and the conspiracy theories abound about the Jews controlling too much of the world's assets, having too much influence on the American government, and so on and so on.

What is this leading to? Possibly what we see in Revelation, because anti-Semitism will boil over then in that time, and Antichrist will apparently make the Jews the scapegoat for all the world's problems. And once again, his regime, once in control, will try to annihilate the Jewish people, as we saw in chapter 12. Growing anti-Semitism is one stream to keep an eye on. We've also talked about the rapidly advancing technology that will make the world of the tribulation possible. Although, when I was young, not that long ago, it was hard to imagine how the world's population could be controlled economically, as Revelation says the Antichrist will be able to do by preventing anyone who won't take his mark from buying or selling.

But technology exists now through which a government, with its hands on the controls of the world's banking system, could pull that off. Or remember when we discussed the image of the Antichrist that will be placed in Jerusalem's temple, an image that can move and speak. Again, hard to imagine not that long ago, but technology today makes such a thing very possible. So, those of us who pay attention to what's going on in the world, watching through the lens of biblical prophecy, see these technological developments as very significant. I'm always imagining how new technology I read about, say something like artificial intelligence right now, could be manipulated to deceive the world into believing things which are far from the truth, things useful in moving the world toward the Antichrist's Babylon system. Technology and where it's taking us is another stream to keep your eye on.

A third area is the collapse of morality. It's clear from several biblical passages that the last days will be marked by ever-increasing rebellion against God and lawlessness. I sometimes find myself asking, Are we there yet? Because who is even shocked anymore by the daily senseless random acts of violence we see on our news sites and TV screens? We're almost shockproof at this point, sadly. And what jumps out even more for those of us who watch society through the lens of biblical prophecy is the recent blatant rebellion against God's authority and natural order.

Natural law, as our forebears called it. It's hard to believe how many things that were judged wrong by every society, almost universally only 50, 60 years ago, are now, suddenly, earmarks of progressive thinking, of wokeness, of enlightenment. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the whole realm of human sexuality and how it's expressed. When evil becomes good and good becomes evil in the prevailing view of society, when things have turned that upside down, it makes me wonder how close we may be to the end of this age, because God only lets evil progress so far. The New Testament describes the last days as perilous times when people will love only themselves and their money, will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, rebellious, ungrateful, unholy, and hating what is good.

In the tribulation, the great leader will scoff at God and His ways and probably describe them as strictures of the past that the new world must cast away for good. The normalizing of perversions, the growing moral decadence in general, all this, I think, is another stream to watch. I'm from western Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh area. Bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum, bum bum bum bum bum. Every time I watch a Pittsburgh Steelers game on Monday Night Football, one of the announcers will go on and on about the confluence of the three rivers at the point in Pittsburgh, as the scene from the blimp flyover over the stadium shows the city below, where the Monongahela and the Allegheny Rivers merge to form the Ohio. But there are several other rivers and streams that flow into those.

Into the Mon, into the Allegheny, the Yawk, the Conemaugh, the Kiskiminetas, all these streams and rivers flow together, converging to form the mighty Ohio River. That's what those of us who watch world events and developments in view of prophecy are looking for. All kinds of developments that, as they converge, will enable the world of the Antichrist John was shown in Revelation to become possible. Chapters 17 and 18, to me, are the most difficult to decipher in this book.

If you could go back by 50-year increments, so from now back to the 1970s, and from the 70s back to the 20s, then back to the late 1800s, during this whole era, when there has been an increased interest in Revelation and a new willingness to interpret it as literally as possible, that is, that it's describing real future events, throughout this whole span, prophecy students have been continually changing their interpretations of these particular chapters, chapters 17 and 18, and what Antichrist Babylon system amounts to. What chapters 17 and 18 describe, this stream, to continue our analogy, is not as developed as some other things yet, I believe, harder to wrap our minds around. And perhaps it won't be until the rapture of the church. Then it may develop very, very quickly. What am I talking about?

A one-world religion that will assist the Antichrist in coming to and then consolidating his power. In chapter 17, the first several verses say this: Then one of the seven angels who have the seven bowls came and spoke to me, saying, Come here, and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth commit sexual immorality. Those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her sexual immorality. And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. The beast, that is, not the woman.

And the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and unclean things. And on her forehead a name was written, a mystery: Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. Then I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly. Yeah, this vision even made John wonder greatly. What an image.

This woman riding on the beast, dressed richly, bejeweled, drunk, and holding a golden cup full of the blood of martyred believers. What in the world does she represent? The references to her uncleanness and her immoralities. This is familiar imagery used by God in the Old Testament prophets for false religion. Worshiping false gods is often likened to spiritual adultery against God. Only God deserves worship.

For example, in the writings of prophets like Isaiah and Hosea, Israel's unfaithfulness to God is described in these exact terms because the people were practicing false religions and worshiping false idols like the pagan nations around them, and to God this was spiritual adultery, unfaithfulness. They were acting like whores. Even in the New Testament, the book of James, the same analogy is made as he writes about Christians who get too enamored with the world and asks, Don't you realize this is adultery against God? But people are incurably religious. We all know there is something spiritual that is beyond us and greater than us. Even in the world of a tribulation after, I believe, Christians have been raptured out, people will not stop being religious.

No, there will develop then a new ecumenical apostate religion promoted by the false prophet, and it will become something that the leaders of the world and the world population then will buy into, and it will lend its support to the Antichrist. This common religion will help him unite the world, but God describes it as a whore, as unclean, as an abomination when he shows John this revolting image of the drunken woman riding the beast. As I said, over the last 150 years or so, since many Bible students have started rethinking Revelation in more literal terms, believing it's describing things that are actually going to happen in the future just before Christ's second coming. How interpreters have tried to explain this image has been continually changing.

If you could get your hands on a book about Revelation written by a literal interpreter that's more than a hundred years old, say The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop or Henry Alford's commentary on Revelation, the great harlot, they said, was the religion that will support the beast, and they identified it as apostate Roman Catholicism. Roman Catholicism has a much stronger influence back then than it does today, not to mention back then and still today to some extent, many connections to Babylonian mystery religions.

But then when I was young, during the heyday of the World Council of Churches, 1960s, and the ecumenical movement, interpreters then were imagining that that movement was the possible fulfillment of the vision in Revelation 17 because then many were working toward unification of liberal Christian denominations with Catholicism and other branches of apostate Christianity, hoping to create a more global, unified religion. That kind of petered out after the 1960s. And now, in our times, I hear the speculation now of how this coming one-world religion must include Islam because it's a much faster-growing religion than Christianity, and its influence in the world is growing every day, especially in parts of Europe, for example, parts of Africa, as well as in the Middle East. I find all this stuff very interesting.

I've seen, maybe you have as well, just in the last few months, the new Roman Catholic Pope meeting with the heads of Eastern Orthodox churches, discussing their differences, and then meeting with Islamic leaders more recently, just this month, at a famous mosque in Algeria. And I listened to him when he was interviewed coming away from that, talking about how we all believe in one God and hold similar values, etc., etc. Although these things and the rhetoric are interesting, I don't think we are there yet, if you know what I mean. We're not really quite close to a world religion forming, to be honest. But once the true Church of Christ is raptured and the tribulation dawns, this movement toward religious unity apparently will move very quickly. I wonder what factors then will be driving it.

I have some ideas. I'm watching for these things. But this will be another stream converging to bring the Babylon regime into power. Without getting too much into the weeds, let me just say that in this vision, the seven heads and ten horns of the beast are usually interpreted as first, seven heads, seven successive empires that have dominated the Middle East and oppressed Israel throughout world history. Verse 10 goes on, They are seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other is not yet come.

And when he comes, he must remain a little while. And the beast which was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is one of the seven, and he goes to destruction. I know that's definitely very confusing language, but the five have fallen is probably a reference to past empires that have controlled the Middle East and Israel, namely Egypt, the Assyrian Empire, the Chaldean Babylonian Empire, the Persian Empire, and then Greece. Those five have fallen. They're past. One is, he says, and that would be the Roman Empire, which was currently in control in John's day.

And then he says, one has not yet come. That would be the Antichrist future government. Interestingly and pertinently, all of those past world powers were wedded to false religions. Each of them had their own gods and their own state worship. False religions helped hold those empires together, and that is the point. The great harlot riding the beast in John's vision will be a final world religion that is wedded to the Antichrist regime, his political government.

It will help bring the world together in some kind of common worship. This will undoubtedly be headed by that false prophet character we learned about back in chapter 13, who deceived the world and persuaded people to follow the beast. But this false religion will only be useful to the Antichrist for a little while, because, as we've learned, once he is in control, he will demand that people worship him as God. And chapter 17 here says he and his kings will turn on and destroy the harlot when she is no longer useful to them. Verse 12 says the ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received kingdoms, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour. These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast.

So as we've discussed before, at this time there will either be a coalition of ten primary nations supporting the Antichrist, or perhaps we are past nation states by that time, and the world is divided into ten regions, like administrative regions, and each of them will have a ruler whose loyalty is to the beast, to the Antichrist. There's debate over whether the center of this administrative system will be in Rome or be in actual Babylon, which would need to be rebuilt then in modern Iraq. But more important to understand is that Babylon throughout Revelation is a term that stands for this new world order the Antichrist will establish, one that will be given the spiritual endorsement of a false ecumenical religion then.

I'm certain people living in that era will see all this develop rather quickly and will understand John's visions here in Revelation 17 and 18 far better than we can now. They will see, as chapter 18 describes, all the nations drunk on the wine of her sexual immorality and the kings of the earth committing immorality with her. In other words, the religion and political systems will be intertwined, and the religion will be used by the Antichrist and his leaders then as a unifying force. But all of that heady rebellion against God will be short-lived. Babylon the Great will fall in one day, this chapter says, when Christ returns and be utterly destroyed. Chapter 18 says, In one day her plagues will come: pestilence, mourning, and famine, and she will be burned up with fire, for the Lord who judges her is strong.

I hope I've ignited in some of you an awareness and interest in watching for these converging streams that could well be preparing our world for the end times. I'm not obsessed with them, but it's fascinating. It encourages me to realize God sees and is ultimately in control of all these events. What may be most important for us to take away from John's vision of the great harlot riding the beast is how much God detests false religion. What an image he paints of it here. To him, anything other than true worship of Him, other than giving the rightful place to Jesus Christ, other than faithfulness to His Word, anything other than that is whoredom and abomination.

Why? Because these false religions lead people away from the truth, lead people away from the narrow way that leads to life. They are a satanic substitute, counterfeits being used by Satan, just as much today as in this future time when religion will be used by him to build up the authority of the beast and seduce mankind into following him. The call now, as then from God is, Come out of her, my people. The Book of Revelation has truly been a journey. Thanks, Paul, for once again bringing such an incredible insight to this and all of the New Testament chapters.

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