Revelation 17:1-4 | The Great Prostitute

We walk through why Revelation 17 is one of the toughest chapters to interpret and why faithful readers land in different places. We trace what the text clearly says about Babylon’s influence and judgment, then let the chapter press a personal question about idolatry and allegiance. 

• why Revelation 17 sparks disagreement and how to study it carefully 
• why the judgment of Babylon reads as added detail rather than a new timeline 
• what “seated on many waters” means using Revelation 17:15 
• how sexual immorality functions as a picture of spiritual adultery and idolatry 
• four leading views on Babylon: ancient Rome, apostate religion, world system, papal Rome 
• why the dating of Revelation matters for preterist claims about AD 70 and Domitian 
• how the woman’s luxury masks inner corruption like a whitewashed tomb 
• what the seven heads and ten horns explicitly mean and why the identities are disputed 
• the unavoidable end: power unites against Christ and still loses 

don’t believe anything just because you heard a guy on a Bible study podcast say so, but you, just like the Bereans, search the scriptures, you study, and you do the research on your own to prove whether these things that you hear are true. 

Outro music - Ben Fuller

Transcript

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Why Revelation 17 Is Hard

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Well, thanks again for joining me as we continue in our study through the book of Revelation. We're starting chapter 17, which is widely regarded as one of the most difficult chapters in the entire book, if not in all of Scripture. And what makes this chapter so difficult at times is that many commentators and scholars, theologians and preachers, they take differing views on how to interpret what we're going to be reading. There are all sorts of theories and conjectures as to the meaning of this chapter. And so I'll ask you to do the same thing Paul said of the Bereans in Acts 17.11, where they received the word with all eagerness, examining the scriptures daily to see if those things were so. In other words, don't believe anything just because you heard a guy on a Bible study podcast say so, but you, just like the Bereans, search the scriptures, you study, and you do the research on your own to prove whether these things that you hear are true. And so my goal as we make our way through this chapter is to lay out for you a couple of different interpretations and why people reach those conclusions. Now we just completed the seven bulls of wrath poured out by seven angels, and so we know history is coming to an end. But in this chapter, we see that John sort of circles back and gives us some details regarding the judgment of Babylon. In other words, many people believe that we're not reading a sequential order of events here, meaning this judgment is coming after the judgment of the seven bulls, but rather John is going back and providing more details about those judgments, and we're going to be provided more details as it pertains to the judgment carried out against Babylon. And so some people believe that this is just another way of describing the judgments

Babylon And The Nonlinear Timeline

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that we saw in the last chapter, or at least it's a complementary description of those judgments. And as sort of a spoiler alert, one thing that we need to be mindful of, and one of the biggest controversies in this chapter is the actual identity of Babylon. In other words, who or what exactly is meant by Babylon here? And so let's get started with verses one and two, where John continues by telling us, then one of the seven angels who had the seven bulls came and said to me, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 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. And so we immediately see this connection between the last chapter, where we have the seven angels with the seven bowls of wrath and judgment, because one of those seven angels addresses John and invites him to come and see the judgment of the great prostitute. Now, depending on which translation you're reading, your Bible may say the great prostitute or the great whore or the great harlot. And all of those are accurate. That description, that word, it comes from the Greek word porna, which is where we get our English word pornography, or porn for short. Now another thing to keep in mind as we make our way through the next couple of chapters, notice the difference between how this great prostitute is described versus how John describes the bride of Christ that you may have heard about. John mentions her in chapter 21, but it's used as a symbol of the church or believers, and so you have this huge contrast between two women, the great whore and the bride of Christ. But the angel says to John, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters. Well, what in the world does he mean by seated on many waters? Well, this one is actually pretty straightforward. In short, the waters here represent many nations, and we know this because this is one of the few symbols in Revelation that are clearly explained to us. We are explicitly told when we get to verse 15, where the angel says to John, The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages. And so the one rule of interpretation is that scripture is always the best interpreter of Scripture. But what this is telling us is that the woman has influence. She has authority or dominion over a vast international population. And throughout Scripture, to sit upon something often conveys rule or authority or control. It's not merely describing a physical location. And we will see a sort of progression here with the prostitute where she goes from sitting on many waters to sitting on a scarlet beast to sitting as a queen. And so this recurring image of sitting is one of exercising influence or dominance. And in this case, sitting on many waters is speaking of having that dominion over many nations. And I also want to remind you that as we see further descriptions and read more about this great prostitute or the great whore, as some translations have it, that although there is some cultural and economic issues going on, the fundamental issue is spiritual adultery or idolatry. And we've discussed in previous chapters how the idioms of sexual infidelity actually point to the spiritual infidelity or the worship of other gods. And this is the primary issue with the influence of the great harlot that we're going to see here. And remember, verse 2, speaking of the great harlot here, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of

Four Views On Babylon’s Identity

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whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk. And so before we continue, let me go ahead and say that the biggest controversy, the central question of chapter 17 is the actual identity of the Great Whore. In other words, we're not talking about an actual woman here. The prostitute being described is symbolizing something else, and that something else is really the central question of this chapter and where interpreters disagree. And so I want to present a few different perspectives on who the Great Whore represents here. And so first, there's the view that the woman represents ancient Rome. This is the preterist view, or the view that the events here in Revelation that we're talking about have already occurred in history and culminated with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. And this is probably the most common academic view, that the woman represents the city of Rome, which ruled the nations in John's day. And a couple of reasons why they believe this is because Revelation 17, 18 says the woman is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth. And in the first century, that clearly described Rome. Verse 9 says that she sets on seven mountains, and Rome was famously known as the city on seven hills. And then also Rome persecuted Christians, which matches the woman being drunk with the blood of the saints that we read about when we get to verse 6. But there are a couple of challenges to this view. First, Revelation also portrays events that many people believe extend beyond the first century, the most glaring being, of course, the return of Christ, which obviously hasn't happened yet. And also, there are just some details that seem to point to a future global system rather than being confined to just and merely ancient Rome. Now, to be fair, that would be full preterism, but there are those who consider themselves to be partial preterists. They believe that, yes, much of Revelation is indeed in the past, particularly chapters six through nineteen, but that some events are still future, such as the return of Christ. Now one important note here concerning either of these two preterist positions is the dating of the book of Revelation and how crucial and critical it is. If Revelation was written before AD seventy, then it's plausible that some prophecies point towards Jerusalem's destruction. But if it was written around AD 95, during Emperor Domitian's reign, which is the traditional view held by many scholars and early church writers, then Revelation could not have been predicting the fall of Jerusalem as a future event, because it would have happened about 25 years earlier. And this is one of the most significant debates in Revelation studies because the date of the book has major implications for how it's interpreted. But again, most scholars place John's writing of Revelation around 95 AD. So that's one interpretation on who the great harlot is and why they believe that. But another interpretation is that the woman symbolizes an apostate religious system. Now many dispensational and futurist interpreters see the woman as a false worldwide religion. So preachers like John MacArthur, for example. And their reasoning is that she commits spiritual fornication with kings of the earth. She influences virtually every nation. Later, the beast destroys her, suggesting that political power eventually turns against religion before demanding worship for itself. And so this fits well with Revelation 13, where we saw that the beast becomes the sole object of worship. Now, one of the challenges to this view is that verse 18, when we get there, specifically calls her the great city. And so some argue a purely religious interpretation. It doesn't fully explain that language. But another interpretation for the great harlot here is that she represents Babylon as a world system. Some see Babylon as representing the entire rebellious world order, including religious, political, economic, and cultural. And so people who believe this view, they point out that chapters 17 and 18 describe false religion, political alliances, this enormous wealth and commerce and luxury and also persecution. And so instead of one institution, Babylon becomes the symbol of civilization organized in opposition to God. Now the strength of this interpretation is that it explains why Babylon seems bigger than just one city as we read through the upcoming chapters. But the challenge is that the text often sounds very specific rather than purely symbolic. And the last interpretation that I will mention, and there are others, is that the woman represents papal Rome, meaning the institution of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church. This was the view of Protestant reformers, people like Martin Luther, John Calvin, William Tyndale, and so it represents the historic Protestant view. Now their reasoning in believing this is that the woman is described here as dressed in purple and scarlet. She's wealthy, she influences kings, she persecutes believers, and she claims religious authority while being spiritually unfaithful herself. Now some of the events do fit remarkably well if you look at them historically, but others seem to point to events that have not yet occurred. Although they would argue that the Catholic Church is still around and still very powerful, and so they can still play a part in any future events. But to be clear, this was the view of early reformers, and so it doesn't necessarily represent the majority view of evangelicals today. And so as we take a step back and we consider these different interpretations or views on who or what the great harlot represents, there are a few things that we cannot ignore. Regardless of who the woman ultimately is, we know that she represents something immensely influential. She has a close relationship with political rulers. She's wealthy beyond measure. She persecutes God's people. But she's also eventually

The Personal Question Behind Babylon

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destroyed by the very political powers that she once influenced. And it's easy to read Revelation 17 and spend all of our time trying to identify Babylon. But the Russian novelist and the historian Alexander Solchanitsyn reminded us that the line dividing good and evil, it cuts through every human heart. So maybe the question isn't only where or what or who is Babylon or the harlot. The more uncomfortable question might be, how much of Babylon is in me? But now that we've been introduced to the great prostitute and we've discussed some possibilities about who or what she represents, remember, verse two told us that with the great whore the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk. And so what we see is that the kings of the earth and the earth dwellers get into bed with the great whore. They commit adultery with her. They've cast their lot with her because she is going to bring them all the prosperity and all the comforts of life. Notice also that the harlot's influence, it extends beyond just the kings of the earth. It also includes ordinary people, the earth dwellers. And we've seen a few times now in Revelation that that term earth dwellers, it's a technical term referring to unbelievers. And these unbelievers have given themselves to the beast and they become drunk from the wine of her sexual immorality, referring to her idolatry. And so what's being described is the harlot's corrupting influence on the people, and through her economic and political power, she will lead them into international immorality and idolatry.

The Prostitute’s Luxury And Corruption

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And so again, now that we've introduced some of the ideas about who or what this great prostitute might be, and how she will lead the earth dwellers astray, let's now continue with verses three and four, where John continues by saying, And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. So John is shown a woman seated on a scarlet beast, and the fact that she is seated on it means that she exerts some influence on it. But at the same time, her being seated upon the beast may mean that she is dependent upon it for her influence. In other words, she is supported by this beast. The beast is scarlet, and the woman is also clothed in scarlet, which, by the way, is a sign of riches and luxury. Both the beast and the woman being scarlet in color, it might reveal that they are two different manifestations of the same ungodly character in the world. Now this woman, she's evidently very wealthy because she's dressed in purple and adorned with gold and pearls and jewels, and so at first glance, she doesn't appear to be a prostitute at all, because she's dressed like royalty. And in John's world, purple was extraordinarily expensive and associated with wealth and royalty and status, especially the prestigious purple dyes that were involving the extraction of purple dye from just large quantities of these murek snails. And so John is portraying this woman as clothed in extravagant luxury. And since we know she's a prostitute, we also know where her wealth comes from. It comes from her sexual immorality, in other words, her idolatry. And so this woman is a harlot, but her whoredom is obscured by her expensive clothing and the wealth and the jewels that she's covered in. But in addition to her clothing and the jewels, she's also holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And this cup, it's beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, its contents are disgusting and detestable, and it signifies that the woman, this great prostitute, is defiled and stained, regardless of her outward appearance. And this whole description of the great harlot, it reminds me of Matthew 23, 27, where Jesus rebukes the scribes and the Pharisees when he said to them, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, and this woman, this great prostitute, is similar. It's a powerful image, beautiful and clean on the outside, corruption and death on the inside. But now that we've discussed the woman's appearance as it's described in verse 4, I want to go back to verse 3 where John said, And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full

Seven Heads And Ten Horns Explained

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of blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. And so before we go any further in this chapter, I want to spend a couple of minutes discussing these seven heads and ten horns. Revelation 17 actually gives us quite a bit of interpretation itself, but the debate is over which historical or future rulers or kingdoms that the symbols actually correspond to. And so, first, what does the text explicitly tell us that the beast has seven heads and ten horns? And then the angel is going to say further down when we get to verses 9 and 10, the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated. They are also seven kings. And regarding the horns, the angel tells us again, once we get down to verse 12, and the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power. And so we don't have to guess what the basic symbols mean here. The seven heads are seven mountains and seven kings. The ten horns are ten kings. But the question is, who are those kings? And so with the seven heads, there are a couple of different primary interpretations. First, is that these seven heads represent seven Roman emperors. This is especially common among preterist interpreters. Again, preterists believe that most of what we're reading about in Revelation has already taken place in history and culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. But the seven kings are understood as a succession of Roman emperors. Revelation 1710, again, when we get there, says that five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come. And so interpreters attempt to count these Roman emperors until they arrive at the emperor reigning when John wrote Revelation. And so, for example, some people propose that these refer to the Roman emperors Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Domitian, and then the Antichrist. The difficulty with this interpretation is that the answer of who these represent, it changes depending on where you begin counting and whether you're going to include those short-lived emperors like Galba and Otho and Vitellius. This is one of the reasons identifying the seven with seven specific emperors, it's not as straightforward as it initially sounds. But another interpretation of the seven mountains or these seven kings is that these are referring to seven successive world empires. This interpretation is popular among futurist or dispensational interpreters, but with this view, the heads represent great kingdoms that have dominated God's people throughout biblical history, and so a typical reconstruction would be to count the successive kingdoms here as Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, the Medo Persian Empire, Greece, Rome, and then a future kingdom of the Antichrist. And so again These represent the two primary interpretations of who or what the seven heads represent. And we'll be coming back to this as we make our way through the remainder of chapter 17. So that was the seven heads. But what about the ten horns? Down in verse 12 when we get there, we'll read that the ten horns 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. And then verse 13 will tell us that these are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast. Now regarding the ten horns, there are basically three major interpretations. First, that the ten horns represent ten future rulers. This is the futurist view, which is probably the dominant dispensational interpretation right now. The ten kings represent ten actual rulers or political powers existing at the time of the Antichrist. And they initially possess individual authority, but then they'll voluntarily surrender it to the beast. And that creates something sort of like a ten power coalition or confederation under the beast. But preterists, they view these ten horns as being associated again with first century Rome. Again, they believe that all this has already occurred, but they believe that these might represent client kings or some sort of subordinate rulers who supported Rome during its conflicts. But the difficulty is finding exactly ten identifiable rulers who sort of neatly fulfill and fit within everything Revelation says about them. But then a third interpretation sees these ten horns as being simply symbolic of the totality of earthly political power. And so with this view, the ten represents completeness or fullness. And so the horns, therefore, represent the collective political powers of the world, eventually uniting against Christ. And so they don't think they'll will necessarily be exactly ten rulers. But again, the difficulty is how specifically John describes them as ten kings. And so I hope you're starting to understand why this chapter is one of the most difficult of the entire book of Revelation.

Blasphemy, Kingdoms Falling, Christ Standing

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And we'll pick up beginning in verse five in the next episode and continue trying to sort some of this out. But in the meantime, don't overlook another detail that John gives us. In verse three, he says that the beast is full of blasphemous names. In Scripture, blasphemy isn't merely foul language. The beast exalts itself against God. It assumes honor that belongs to God, and ultimately he demands the worship that belongs to God alone. And so underneath all the purple and the scarlet and the gold and the jewels, what John is really showing us is a system saturated with rebellion against God. Now Christians might disagree about exactly who or what these kings or these kingdoms are, but don't miss what John makes unmistakably clear. Whoever they are, whatever they represent, their power ultimately unites in rebellion against Christ. And when the kingdoms of this world finally take their stand against Christ, they lose. You know, kings rise, kingdoms fall, political powers come and go, but revelation is driving us towards one unavoidable conclusion. Every kingdom that sets itself against God eventually falls. And Jesus Christ remains standing.

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If I got Jesus, I've gone more than I could ever need.