17th Episode - Beast and Babylon: Seven Identifying Traits from Revelation 17:1-18

 Bruce Willis is David Dunn in the movie, Unbreakable. The movie begins with Dunn as the sole survivor of a terrible train crash, from which he emerges without a broken bone. In contrast to Dunn, Elijah Price, the other main character, has brittle bone syndrome. He can break a bone getting out of bed in the morning. For years, Elijah has researched countless disasters to f ind the ‘Unbreakable One.’ Like comic book heroes and their archenemies, Elijah is the antithesis to David, but he only reveals his identity at the movie’s end. Elijah, we discover, has caused many catastrophes to find Dunn. When asked by Dunn why he destroyed so many lives, Price says, “I could only know who I was by finding out who you are!” 

Babylon is the antithesis to the New Jerusalem and known by her lewdness. Revelation angels relate a ‘tale of two cities,’ or two women, one holy and one profane. John tells us the angel’s explanation of Mystery Babylon. This chapter serves as an addendum to the seventh Bowl, where the judgment on Babylon was first mentioned.1 Chapter seventeen and eighteen greatly enhance our understanding of Babylon’s nature and relationship to the Beast. To understand who she is, I provide a seven-fold identification in this chapter. In our study here, we are like detectives who use forensic science and DNA to establish a positive ID on a person. 

Transcript

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Welcome back to the Unseal Book Podcast. I'm Mark Rosier, and today we're stepping into one of the most sobering and illuminating chapters in the entire book of Revelation. We're going to trace a line that begins at the Tower of Babel, runs through ancient Babylon, rises again in Rome, and stretches all the way into our modern world. A world more united, more connected, and more self-exalting than any generation before us. In Scripture, the Tower of Babel is not just an ancient tale of bricks and mortar, it's a birthplace of a pattern, the spiritual DNA of every later Babylon. Humanity united in pride, reaching upward to make a name for itself, and outward to build a world without the true and living God. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have one language, and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. That's Genesis 11, verse 6. We'll talk more about current events and what man imagines to do. But that impulse to build life, identity, and immortality, even, apart from God, has never died. It's resurfacing in every age, and it resurfaces in every empire. And Revelation shows us where that ancient rebellion ultimately leads. We'll talk about the bowls in our next episode, God's judgment. But today we're going to unmask Babylon the prostitute, the city, the system, the ideology. And we're going to see why God calls his people. Come out of her, my people. Because Babylon's not just a place, it's a spirit, it's a worldview, it's a counterfeit kingdom, which includes man-made religions. We saw earlier the two beasts, the one from the sea and a second beast from the land. How they work in tandem, in concert, to either control man through force from without. That means persecution, even death, or better yet, they would rather deceive from within. Yes, we saw that in Revelation chapter 13. And here we look at the beast in Babylon. She is alive and well today. The antithesis to the new Jerusalem is the beast. And I wanted to begin with a story from the film Unbreakable. Maybe you've seen it. Bruce Willis plays David Dunn, the lone survivor of a catastrophic train crash. He walks away without a scratch. His opposite, Elijah Price, suffers from brittle bone syndrome. He breaks a bone getting out of bed. Elijah spends his life searching for the unbreakable one. And in the end, he reveals that he caused disaster after disaster just to find the unbreakable one. And when Dunn asks why, Elijah says, I could only know who I was by finding out who you are. Well, Babylon is the Elijah Price of Scripture, the antithesis to the New Jerusalem. You want to know what the New Jerusalem, the spirit of the New Jerusalem is? Well, look at the spirit of Babylon. In contrast, she is the dark mirror, the counterfeit bride, the city of man standing in opposition to the city of God. And when we get to Revelation 16 and 17, the angel will show us the two women, the one holy. Behold, I show you the bride, the angel says, and the one profane, Babylon. One is clothed in white linen, clean and bright, the other's dressed in purple and scarlet, glittering with gold and pearls, holding a golden cup full of abomination. John writes, and upon her forehead was a name written Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. That's Revelation seventeen five. So Babylon is not merely immoral. She is the mother of every idolatrous manifestation. She's a spiritual DNA behind every false religion, every syncretistic, so-called Christian religion, every counterfeit gospel, every Jesus that is not the Jesus of Scripture, every humanistic attempt to reach heaven without God, all its sundry ways, man's own works, as he deems what is good and what is evil, and sits in the seat of God, claiming to be God. Well, today's Tower of Babel. We're going to talk about seven identifying marks of Babylon that we find in Revelation 17. The profile, if you will, the spiritual DNA test of Babylon. She is called Mystery Babylon. That's the first thing we see. Her name is written on her forehead. Her nature, her identity, her essence, mystery. That's her name. And it means many hidden realities, secrets. She's more than a city, she's a system. She's not what she appears to be. Appearance is deceive. She's a great seductress. It's the second thing we see. She is a great prostitute and even the mother of harlots. Now this harlotry, this uh prostitution is spiritual. It's used as an image over and over again in the Old Testament. Israel commits harlotry against Yahweh, the true and living God. She worships the idols of the nations. She bows down to them. Or she mixes the worship of Yahweh with all kinds of false worship. James talks about this in the New Testament when he says friendship with the world is enity with God. In James 4, verse 4, he says, adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think the scripture says in vain, the Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealousy? Yes, he yearns for all of our devotion. But James goes on, and he does say, but God gives more grace. But God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We're to submit to God, resist the devil, and the devil will flee from us. James says, draw near to God. He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn, weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Well, I haven't heard a message preached on that recently. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up. Well, we're talking about the counterfeit church. She sits on many waters, nations, peoples, languages. Her influence is global. She's not confined to Babylon, Jerusalem, Rome. She's everywhere men live together, apart from the worship of the true and living God. Yes, Babylon, she rides the beast and commits fortifications with kings. She'll use political power for her own ends, like Jezebel. She seduces rulers. And like Jezebel, she is in churches. Historically, we have seen the church use the state to mandate her doctrines, whether the state churches of Europe and England, or even Islamic republics like Iran, that can power and force a certain type of religion on the populace. Yes, she's mystery Babylon, the whore on many waters. And yes, she will go to bed with the kings. She will intoxicate the nation. She holds a golden cup, which is full of abominations, idolatry, image worship, spiritual adultery. She's not afraid to use the violence of the sword of the state to suppress dissent. She seduces the world with prosperity or with power to beat you up if you don't fall in line. Yes, dynamics in churches that abuse and enclosed systems that shame. She's clothed though in purple and scarlet, her wealth and her success, and how things she makes to work. She says, God has blessed me. And this proves, proves it, the power that I have. But like the Pharisee in the temple, she's really praying to her soul. She's the opposite of the bride of Christ, who is submitted to Christ without spa, without wrinkle. Yes, she'll persecute the true saints. John says she's drunk with the blood of the saints. That's Revelation 17, verse 6. And yet, amazingly, surprisingly, she is admired. John himself wondered greatly. Yes, the world applauds at times what God condemns. Jesus himself said, What is highly esteemed among men is an abomination to God. Well, Babylon astonishes the world. John says he was astonished when he saw her, and the angel says to John, Why did you marvel? Babylon is deceptive, she appears noble at times, she appears enlightened, progressive, but beneath the glitter is spiritual filth, like that of dead bones, like that which Jesus exposed of the Babylon in his day, the Pharisaical system. Yes, beneath the beauty is blood, and they would shed the blood of Jesus. And Jesus warned. Yes, he warned of two pitfalls on either side of the road. There is the religion of the Pharisees, the legalism, the holier than thou, the side of the road where they add to God's word and then create traditions that nullify God's word. Yes, they'll put a different gospel in, a different Jesus, a different spirit. Paul talks about this in his letters. Or Jesus warned of the pitfall on the other side of the road, which is worldliness. Jesus said, Beware of the leaven, not only of the Pharisees, but of Herod, which is worldliness. And we saw the doctrine of Balaam warned by Jesus when he warned the churches in the early letters. But if the churches do not deal with Balaam and the Nicolaitans and Jezebel by the end of the book, yes, out of those churches will come the whore, the mixing, and the idolatry. And that's why there's a remnant spoken to in each of those seven churches, and why later God will say, Come out of her, my people. But she's everywhere, even before the gospel goes and penetrates. And then a mixture is made later. As the devil decides you can't beat him, join them. Babylon, her enticements are found the world over. You'll find her in the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Africa. And when the true gospel goes into a land, whether it's Hindu, Buddhist, animistic, Muslim, the first stage is persecution. Yes, Babylon's man-made religion will persecute the religion from heaven, just like Ishmael would persecute Isaac, the one born after the flesh. Babylon is humanistic. It's the world's attempt to get to God without God's way, his only way, which is Jesus. And she'll ride the beast, and we see whether it's in Hindu nations or Buddhist nations or Islamic nations, or even in Russia or certain Orthodox nations, religion will use the state to keep out the true faith of Christ. So the beast, and here's part of the mystery: the beast was and now is not, and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit. Yes, she kind of the was and is and will come, again, counterfeiting the true Almighty Living God. So evil resurrects itself, again, a counterfeit to Jesus' resurrection. It reappears after the gospel has slain it with what seemed to be a mortal wound, it reinvents itself. But the beast is not limited to one time and place. Yes, it will have embodiments. And perhaps one man is the futurists say, but it is the recurring manifestation of satanic political power with religion, whether Nebuchadnezzar, Nero, Caesar's, Mao, Stalin, Hitler, Aetola's, all heads of the beast. One wounded, another emerges in its place, and they demand worship of the images they set up and they persecute the true saints. Yes, evil's like a jack in the box. You push it down and it springs back up. She sits on seven hills, we're told. John says the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. Rome, obviously, was famously the city of seven hills. And early Christians called Rome Babylon, according to 1 Peter 5.13. Peter says, Greek those in Babylon. A name for Rome in the first century, but Rome is not the whole picture. Rome is the hardware at that time in the first century, pagan Rome. And later even when the pagan realm became the papal Rome that persecuted the true faith. Yes, Babylon is the software. The hardware changes, Babylon does not, as Babylon was the first city of rebellion after the flood. She's the mother of harlots. She's the archetype of human pride, making a name for itself, getting to heaven our way. Maybe indulgences, maybe another prosperity success gospel. We're going to get heaven or bring heaven down through our own how-to method. Yes, it can be subtle. A gospel of works. Man getting to God through his good works, the keeping of the law, as it was with the Judaizers that Paul warned the Galatian church of. Babylon lives on. And we see in Revelation 17 when it comes to using political powers, the ten kings, the ten horns, ten kings, who receive power with the beast in Revelation. Ten is symbolic, fullness of power. These kings represent powers of all ages, aligned against Christ. Just like the Sanhedrin used the Roman power to crucify Christ's physical body. Yes, they gave their authority to the beast and they waged war against the lion of the tribe of Judah, who was also the Lamb of God. And just like they did against Jesus, and they took counsel together against the Lord and his anointed. God will work what they do into a great victory. He will use the weapon that they even forge to pierce their head. Yes, the gospel will penetrate, and the Lamb will overcome them. And he who sits in the heavens will laugh. Yes, he's pouring out his spirit, and the gospel is marching on. And yes, the devil attempts, as we see, either persecution at first from without, from the prominent religion that occupies that land, to then later when the gospel does penetrate, and people are raised up to sit with Christ in the heavenly, and those powers are dislodged, those ruling spirits. Later the devil will seek with syncretistic practices to infiltrate the church. It's the Trojan horse approach. But because the Lord is the Lord of lords and king of kings, he's going to have his way. In a shocking twist, the beast and the kings, they will turn on the prostitute. They will strip her, devour her, and burn her with fire. Just as Rome turned on Jerusalem in 70 AD, and General Titus, the Roman legions, came and they destroyed the city. Josephus describes it. Why? Because man's rebellion is really against God and his ways, and that is self-destructive. In religion, man will forge religion to his own end and purpose. But it wouldn't no longer suit him that alliance he built on convenience and self-interest. It never lasts because sinful men eventually hate the very religion they use to their end. Kind of like Judas. He followed Jesus. He had close proximity to Jesus. He was one of the twelve. But really he did so for his own interest. He never allowed the closeness to Jesus to transform him. Yes, he allowed the devil into his heart and would betray the Lord Jesus for a price. Well, that is God's judgment on false religion. And men on humanistic spirituality, every system that claims to offer salvation without Jesus, or betrays him, having once followed him, will have the same end. Augustine wrote of two cities, the city of God and the city of man, and Revelation gives us the same contrast, the New Jerusalem and Babylon the Great. Every earthly city by default contains Babylon, for every human heart is drawn towards sin, until the gospel transforms that heart. And that dead spirit becomes alive to God, and the soul begins to be renewed by the Word of God. And yes, the society itself can be transformed, the culture. But where the gospel has made inroads and been received, every earthly city still possesses that Babylon, a tale of two cities, of darkness and light, of love and hate. Yes, we see today, and it brings us into our world of today and current events, a new Babel, the Internet, AI, and where that's headed. For the first time since all the way back to Genesis 11, the Tower of Babel, humanity once again has one language, the language of the Internet, a digital tongue, if you will, spoken by billions, a unified system of knowledge, communication, and imagination. And as we saw at the outset, God the Lord Himself said, Behold, look, see, the people is one, and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Wow, men are imagining, and today they're imagining AI companies openly pursue digital immortality. Biotech. Firms seek to reverse aging. And boy, it looks good. It looks good. It's eating from the tree of the knowledge of good. I mean, who wouldn't want to reverse aging? Transhumanists dream of uploading consciousness. Silicon Valley speaks of becoming gods, even cyber people in the future where your parts are replaced. Men getting back to the tree of life without God, because they eat so deeply of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Global elites speak of uniting humanity under one system. Yes, this is Babylon 7.0. Humanism will be the ultimate. Peace, peace, they will say, before the Lord will intervene just like he did on ancient Babylon. But it won't be an intervention just to divide their tongues. It'll be in a final judgment to separate the wicked from among the righteous. Yes, life without the true God, meaning without God's salvation through Jesus. Morality without God's word, and immortality even without the promised resurrection that Jesus brings. Yes, that's where the world's headed. The original lie returns. You shall be like God's, knowing good and evil. The tree of life without repentance, eternal life without the cross, salvation without the Savior. God will not allow it. But that's the spirit of Babylon. And God says, Come out of her, my people. Yes, come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins. We have all spent time in Babylon. We've all drunk from her cup. I know I have. We've all walked her streets even today. She cries out, she utters her voice as a seductress in the book of Proverbs. Yes, who is simple, she cries, let him turn and hither. And as for him who wants understanding, she says, Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant. Yes, the strange woman. She seeks the simple. She lurks in shadows. She seeks to ensnare them. Her words are not to build up, but to entice toward secret sin. Yes, her invitation leads downward toward hiddenness, deception, and ultimately death. And she wipes her lips and says, I've done no wrong. And she whispers in secret and stands in opposition to open, honest, life-giving wisdom, the cry of Christ, Christ who has been made wisdom unto us. Yes, that wisdom cries without, utters her voice also in the streets. She cries in the chief places of concourse in the opening of the gates in the city. She utters her voice. Yes, she also invites the simple to turn in, the pure wisdom of God for correction, for understanding. Yes, there are two cities. A city that needs no sun, for the Lamb is its light, a city where there is no night, no sorrow, no death, in the city Babylon. Well, we'll get back to that and look more at that. But I wanted us to look at it before we talk about God's judgment. Because God says to his people, come out. But Babylon will not let them out without a fight. Just like Pharaoh would not let God's people serve the I am that I am without plagues. So we're going to see in Revelation 15, we're going to take a step backwards. We're looking to look at the seven bowl that contain the seven last plagues. That'll be next time. But let's pray. And we pray, Lord, for the church that we would heed what you say to the churches. Lord, that we would hear your voice, what the Spirit is saying, that we might overcome the world and all that's in the world through the faith of Jesus. That we might overcome the mixing that is so prevalent. Lord, that we would not be intoxicated with the wine of Babylon. Father, we know there's a remnant and that you are calling us out of that which is corrupt and unclean and perverse. God, I pray for a true purity, not that of the Pharisees, that is legalism, not that, oh God, that is based on rules, but that which is the rule of your spirit in the church, the headship of Jesus. Lord, we are praying, cause your church, your bride, to be out, be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but holy. Lord, wash us in your precious, precious blood. Lord, we know that the body of sin has been washed away. Lord, we pray, wash our feet with the water of your word. Renew our minds. Help us, Lord. And we ask this, Father, in Jesus' name, to your glory and praise, Lord. Make us alert of the subtleties of Satan, the deep things. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.