19th Episode - Beast and Babylon: Seven Views as Possibilities from Revelation 17:1-8

 The roller coaster at King’s Island in my hometown, Cincinnati, is called “The Beast.” And the introduction to Revelation in my son’s “Teen Devotional Bible” invites us to “Remember your first roller coaster ride? You wondered if you could handle the speed, the shaking, the twists and turns of this awesome ride. Even its name was scary…You did not know everything that would happen on your first roller coaster ride, but the view before you gave you a feel for it and issued a challenge to ride. That is exactly what the book of Revelation does.” 

The outline for Revelation provided in this study Bible continues the Roller Coaster analogy:

• Welcome, roller coaster riders. (Revelation of Jesus, Chpt.1). 
• Instructions for your safety (Letters to Seven Churches, Chpts 2-3). 
• Climbing the first big hill (View in Heaven, Chpts. 4-5). 
• The big dive downward (God’s Judgments, Chpts. 6-10, 15-16). 
• Twists and turns (Battle of Good and Evil, Chpts. 11-14) 
• The Corkscrew (Defeat of False Religion, Chpts. 17-18) 
• Back to the terminal (Return of Jesus, Chpts. 19-20) 
• Let’s do it again (New Heaven and New Earth, Chpts. 21-22). 

We have ridden the track of Revelation for seventeen chapters. We have climbed the first big hill, taken the big dive downward and experienced the twists and turns along the way. In the last chapter, we encountered “The Corkscrew” of false religion. Riders of Revelation hold very different opinions about that leg of the ride. So, as we did earlier, with the debated 666, we need to consider other views, which has been one of our aims throughout our study. Let us ponder seven solutions to Babylon and the Beast. Remember these views must: Explain who or what Babylon represents, differentiate between Babylon and the Beast she rides, decipher the Beast’s riddle, “five have fallen and one is,” Interpret the coming eighth one in relation to the other seven, account for the ten kings who are allies of the Beast Relate how these make war against the Lamb as well as how they destroy Babylon, and finally are themselves destroyed themselves.  

Transcript

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Well, the beast in Babylon. Seven solutions interpreters have come up with. Welcome back to the Unsealed Book Podcast. I'm Mark Roser. And today we step into one of the most debated, misunderstood, and most symbolically rich chapters in the entire Bible, Revelation chapter 17. Now, if Revelation is a roller coaster, then this chapter is the corkscrew. It twists, it turns, it flips you upside down, and it leaves many writers disoriented, dizzy, and divided. So fasten your seatbelt because we're going to look at seven solutions. Well, my son's old teen devotional Bible introduced Revelation with a roller coaster analogy. And it said, remember your first roller coaster ride? You wondered if you could handle the speed, the shaking, the twists, and turns of this awesome ride. And then it said, that is exactly what the book of Revelation does. And it's true. Revelation is not a lazy river. It's not a scenic train ride. It's a roller coaster. And chapter 17 is the corkscrew. And we've climbed the first hill in chapters 1, 2, 3, 4. We've looked at the message of the book. Christ is coming soon. We've looked at a vision of Christ as he appeared to John and instructed him to write to the seven churches in Asia. We looked at those churches in Revelation 2 and 3. And in 4 and 5, we saw heaven. And then we plunged into the seals, trumpets, and bowls, and we went through the twist of the battles of chapters 11 through 14 and chapter 17, the defeat of false religion, the unmasking of Babylon, and the riddle of the beast. And because the chapters produce so many interpretations, so many theories, and so many disagreements, we're going to walk through those seven major solutions, and I'm going to give you mine. Not to confuse you, not to overwhelm you, but to help you see the landscape, to help you understand options, to help you discern what the truth is. Because devout, sincere, pious, godly men, women have held different views on this. But Revelation is not a sealed book, it's unsealed. And I hope you come away at least with the inspiration that God's word will give you light. So let's begin. The praetorist view, as we've seen throughout Rome and Jerusalem. That's our first stop on this interpretive journey. Past view. They believe most of Revelation was fulfilled in the first century. According to them, John is writing about events of his own day, not ours. In this view, the beast is pagan Rome. Rome that Paul and John, the apostles, knew. Interestingly enough, and we'll talk more about this in a moment, Babylon is Jerusalem, according to this view. The seven heads are Roman emperors. The five that have fallen are past Caesars. The one that is is the current Caesar. The reader would have known who. The seventh is the short-lived ruler who destroys Jerusalem. And the eighth is Nero reappearing and Domitian. Now that's a lot to take in, but let me go at this a little slower with you before we leave the praetorist. Because the praetors disagree among themselves which emperors to count. Should they start with Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero? Should they include the three short-lived emperors who reigned only months? Well, there's no consensus. But the strongest argument is this. John Readers knew who the emperor was. They knew where to start counting. They knew the political landscape. And so they say the riddle made sense to them. There is a riddle. Five have fallen, one is, and we'll look at that. But the real challenge for the praetorists is this. How do you distinguish between Babylon and the beast? Revelation clearly separates it. The woman rides the beast. The beast destroys the woman. They're not the same. So praeterists, as each school must, proposes a solution, a bold solution. Babylon is Jerusalem. The beast is Rome. They offer seven arguments. One, Revelation 11 8 calls Jerusalem the great city where Christ was crucified, also known spiritually as Sodom in Egypt. Second, Jerusalem is often given symbolic names, like Sodom in Egypt. So it could be called Babylon as well, they say. Jesus said Jerusalem shed the blood of the prophets. That's our third point that the praetorists make. And Jesus talks about on Jerusalem, that generation is going to experience the judgment. And the prophets often called Israel a harlot. And they certainly acted that way in Jesus' day. Babylon's jewels matched the high priest's garments. Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome. So those are more arguments, just as Babylon is destroyed by the beast. Now the new Jerusalem replaces the old Jerusalem, implying the old was Babylon. It's a compelling argument the praetorists have, but it has weaknesses. Jerusalem did not reign over the kings of the earth. Jerusalem was not a global economic power or a maritime trading empire, which we will see. And so, while the praetorist view, first century events fulfilled in John's day, has it has insights, it struggles to account for the full picture. And again, we know Revelation is a prophetic book, and it doesn't end in the first century. Well, the second view, the futurist, which we've looked at at the other end of the spectrum to the praetorist, says it's all future events, a global empire, and a worldwide religion. This is the second solution. This is the most popular view among evangelicals today. It's been made popular through teleevangelists, radio evangelists, many books. And in this view, Babylon is a future global religious system, an ecumenical system, perhaps, a system that encompasses all religions. The beast is also a future global political empire. The seven heads are the seven world kingdoms. And of course, the future one would be the eighth. The ten horns are the ten future kings. The Antichrist is a future world ruler. And the false prophet leads to a global religious revival where they worship the Antichrist. The whole world wonders after him. Now, having said all that, let's break it down a little bit. Futurists see Babylon as a religious mixture. Again, a cocktail of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, New Age spirituality, secular humanism, you name it. Whatever is not genuine faith of Christ. A spiritual melting pot, a religious tower of Babel. Not born-again, spirit-filled Christianity, as taught in the New Testament. But the futurists, they point to events like the Parliament of World Religions, where prayers are offered to a dozen deities under one roof. They point to the United Nations, where global unity is celebrated without Christ. They point to World Council of Churches, where doctrine is often sacrificed on the altar of unity. And they say this is Babylon. Futurists also look to Europe, a revived Roman Empire, many see the European Union, NATO, perhaps, as the embryo of the beast, globalism, the infrastructure of the beast. They see digital currencies, global surveillance, the international alliances is the scaffolding of the beast. Well, things need to change a little bit still geopolitically for there to be such. But one can see this. And the Antichrist they see as a future individual, most a charismatic, deceptive, miracle-working world leader who rises from the ashes of global chaos. Very persuasive, fixing things. And the view has strengths because it takes Revelation seriously as a prophetic book. And it sees the global scope of the beast. It recognizes the future dimension of prophecy. But it does have weaknesses. It can become very speculative and sensational. And it can overlook the present reality of evil. And that's my greatest concern here. That was the expectation the Jews had concerning Christ's first coming, that this must happen and that must happen. And the Messiah will put the Romans to flight and establish Israel as a kingdom. All these expectations of what must happen when the Messiah comes. And of course, Jesus came the first time to suffer and die. And we may miss, in a sense, the proper expectation of his second coming if we think a lot of things have to happen first. We did say the gospel must be preached in all the world as a witness to every nation. And these other prophetic signs are shouting at us. Well, the futurist view. That's my concern. And it may not just be an individual man, and more futurists say it could be a system. We'll come back to that. But the third view, the historical view, the papacy is antichrist. Of course, this was the view of the reformers, the Protestant reformers. In this view, the seven heads are seven empires: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the sixth, which was in that day, Paul's day, John's day, and papal Rome, which was to come, universal power. The beast, they say, is the Roman Catholic Church. The Pope is the Antichrist. The whore is Vatican and the whole system. The kings who turn on her are secular rulers like Napoleon who rebel against Rome. This view was held by Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Tyndale, and Wesley, and a bunch of others. They saw the papacy as the fulfillment, and we'll talk about this of Paul's man of sin. We'll come back to that. Sitting in God's temple, the Pope, claiming divine authority, infallibility, performing in the Catholic Church miracles, statues crying, apparitions of Mary, but they persecuted the saints who didn't succumb to her doctrines. The great inquisitions, the crusades, the burning of heretics. And the reformers point to the wealth, the jewels, the kellers, the pomp, all of that in the Catholic Church. And they say, this is Babylon. And this view has historical weight. The Seventh day Adventist Church still holds to it. It explains centuries of persecution. It explains this church state alliance. And the whole rise of papal power in the same location that pagan Rome once ruled. The horn that appears, the little horn. But it has weaknesses. It confines Babylon to one institution, makes Babylon both the church and the governmental institution. It overlooks, in one way, the global nature of the beast, and it struggles to account for modern developments. It was a battle that the reformers fought and a manifestation in those days, especially when it persecuted the church. That was emerging to reform the doctrine that the just shall live by faith, that it's not by sacraments and rules and rituals. Okay, let's go to the symbolic view: Babylon as all false religion. That's our fourth solution. The symbolic or idolist view, the view which is based on this idea that these are all symbols. Babylon, all false religion, the beast, all evil government. The seven heads represent completeness of that. The ten horns, fullness of power of that. The imagery is symbolic, not literal. So the message is timeless. They view Babylon in every age. Yes, it's papal Rome, medieval corruption, enlightenment humanism, modern secularism, Islamic extremism, Eastern mysticism, Western materialism, and Christianity, that is Christianity and name, without the new birth. Well, Babylon is the religious world of man. The beast is the political world of man. The symbolic says the dragon is the spiritual power behind them. And this view has strength. It's very flexible, it's timeless, it's pastorial. It applies to every generation. And it makes you look a little bit more discerning at Babylon and at the beast. But it has weaknesses. It can become vague, it can overlook historical specifics, and it can flatten the prophetic landscape and dismiss the intensification of events that we are seeing. But Jesus said it would be like a woman's labor before she gives birth. Well, my view, the unsealed book view. Let me go into that. Seven, yes, is completeness. No question. And this is our fifth solution. It's in the unsealed book. You can get that at mcroser.com. I go into much more detail. But in my view, seven does mean completeness throughout Revelation. So the seven heads are all evil empires. The beast reappears throughout history, has a mortal wound, and re-emerges. Yes, there will be a final. I'll talk a little bit more about that under our last section. But the eighth, when this riddle, five are fallen, one is the six. The seventh continues for a little while. And we have the eight. Well, the riddle, five is fallen. One is simply means the end is near, just like we saw with the seals, the trumpets. Whenever we got to six, the ampage, the intensification, I mean, it was like we're right at the end with the sixth seal. The skies rolling up like a scroll, the sun and the moon, and there's this cosmic upheaval, the same with the trumpets. But it was like, hold on, the end can't come after the seals, because the servants of God, not all of them, have been sealed yet. You weren't born, I wasn't born, uh, the gospel hadn't been preached in all the world. Well, I could go on, but again, there's more in the book. The beast, in my view, imitates Christ, was, is not, and will come. The devil always, and we talk about the satanic trinity. Uh, my view is that revelation is a prophetic panorama, not a puzzle to decode uh a day or an hour, a roadmap. We're gonna talk about time frames uh in a in a future session, the 42 month, 1260 days, the time times in half a time. Uh you can look at that. Uh, you can go back to that. And some of these you might want to listen to twice. The beast, though, is not one empire in one man in one moment. It will manifest itself at the end in man as a conglomerate. We'll talk about this more at the end. But the beast is reoccurring, reappearing, reinventing the power of evil throughout human history. Because unsaved, fallen man is 666. Well, we've had it in Egypt, Assyria, they assume the prerogatives of God, as Babylon did, and Greece and Rome. And so the eighth is simply an a false counterfeit imitation of the resurrection. You slay the beast and he reappears. It's like a resurrection. He's an eighth, but the riddle says he belongs to the seven. He's part of the complete number. Yes, that's the point I'm making. Five have fallen. One is, well, right at the end, it seems, there's the an eighth one after the seventh, but he's part of the seventh. Um it's an elegant view, and I believe it's biblical and consistent and pastorial and realistic, and it's hopeful. And I don't think we're gonna miss as much if we lock into one of the others. Because no matter how many heads the beast grows, even if there's one in our generation that's not the final one, the lamb conquers them all. And we need to, whether we lived in Nazi Germany, or whether we lived in Maos, China, and we were part of the underground church, or whether we live in Iran now, or even in the United States, where we can have a watered-down Christianity, it makes us sensitive. I'll come back to this at the end. But the Islamic view is a sixth view. The beast from the East, sixth solution. The beast is Islam. The woman is a religious system riding states, that is, countries, governments that are Islamic. The ten horns are ten Islamic nations. The seventh head is the Ottoman Empire, the eighth is this revived Islamic uh caliphat, which we've had with ISIS. And they have their own eschatology as to the end and the coming, the return. Uh in this view points to Daniel 8, where the little horn arises out of the Greek Empire, the same region where Islam later arose. It points to the conquest of Jerusalem. By Islam, to the Dome of the Rock as taking the place, standing in the place, the abomination. It points to the beheading of Christians, Sharia law taking the place of God's word. It points to jihad, uh holy war, uh, and it says this fits the beast. Islam does. The view has strength. It takes geography seriously, it takes history seriously. Some are dusting off, uh blowing the dust off old books, because this has been held by those in the past. It takes persecution seriously, like we're having in Northern Africa, in Nigeria. But it also has weaknesses. It can become too narrow. It can overlook other manifestations of evil, and it can oversimplify the global dynamics. Well, what completes the oracle? Again, and we come to a seventh solution, a synthesis, which I would subscribe to and include in mind, the beast in Babylon. Yes, they are representing satanic powers. Where, as Satan said to Jesus, all these kingdoms have been given to me, I can give them. Evil empires, false religions, human rebellion, all of this gives place to the devil. And sinful men, political oppression, spiritual deception, cultural idolatry, they are not one thing. They are not one time or one place. They're all a manifestation of sinful man in rebellion to God, unregenerate man. They're reoccurring, reappearing, reinventing opposition to Christ. And they make war with the lamb, but the lamb will overcome them. The beast he rages, he seduces, he plots, he unites, his armies gather, but Christ wins. Yes, the beast seems to rise again when he's wounded with the sword of the gospel, as the white horse rider goes forth. The beast falls. But then Babylon re-emerges after she's collapsed. And again, uh this is the fatal wound, the man of sin. Let's talk about that and just expand on because Paul has a description of the man of sin in 2 Thessalonians 2, that some of you may have thought of and said, okay, is he going to deal with this? Where Paul writes, that day cannot come until the man of sin is revealed. He says, I told you about this. He's going to come in a time of lawlessness. And this man of sin is going to sit in the temple of God and declare that he is God and that he's going to work strong deception on those who have not received the love of the truth. He's going to work wonders and signs. But Christ that is coming will consume him with the breath of his mouth. Now, for the sake of time, uh we can't go verse by verse, but it's important to understand that some see the Antichrist as a man because of what Paul says here. He sits in the temple of God. But I'm going to suggest to you that everyone who does not confess that Jesus is Lord, that Christ has come in the flesh, is part of the man of sin. It's Antichrist. And it aligns perfectly with John's teaching that many antichrists have already come. And yes, there will be the final, but whether it's embodied in one man or not, the Antichrist, the most dangerous, subtle approach is not looking for a man, but that it's in all men who are unregenerate. It is mankind, not one ruler, but civilization alienated from God. Not one dictator, but what becomes and is becoming a humanistic global ideology that with AI is going to come more and more persuasive, not one throne, but the human heart enthroned in God's temple, rather than the Spirit of God in Christ, is going to become more and more the case. Paul says the man of sin sits in the temple of God. Well, is the temple of God a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem? How can that be the temple of God when Paul says that you, you are the temple of God, that the church is the temple of God. For those looking for a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem, and we've heard stories for years and years that it's about to be built, that the marble's on a boat and what have you, I say, mm-mm-mm. Man shows himself that he is God. It says in 2 Thessalonians 2, 4. That was the original sin to be like God. And that's what the devil wanted, and persuaded man that you can have that too. And man became a child of the devil by nature. In the New Testament, the temple is the human body, the church, Christ Himself. So the man of sin is revealed wherever man takes God's place in the body, in the church, or in the world. I'll say that again. There's no built temple that can legitimately be called the temple. We saw earlier John was encouraged to measure the temple. God's temple isn't finished until the Jewish people come in to covenant in the new man that God is building, where he's broken down the wall of division and created one new man in Christ, where there's neither Jew nor Gentile. A rebuilt temple will not create the temple of God. And Jesus left that temple and said, I leave it to you desolate. I'm not looking for a rebuilt temple. I'm looking for Christ to come and this gospel to go into all the world. Now, with the internet and humanity is God, let me go a little bit further to give you the strongest, clearest, most theologically relevant modern movement that shows man becoming the beast. Not a single figure, but a global system where we worship an image. No longer, as we said earlier, just a one-eyed monster called TV, which is what we had when I was born. We didn't have computers and laptops and phones and iPads. These are no longer fringe ideas. These are mainstream, well-funded, and openly declared that transhumanism teaches that humanity can upgrade itself, merge with machines, edit its own DNA, escape aging, achieve immortality. Just go on the internet and see this is Genesis 3 in scientific clothing, trying to get back to the tree of life. And you shall be gods. Well, Revelation 13, we talked about technology. Who is the beast? Who is able to make war with him? Not just a political tyrant, humanity enthroned, self-exalted, now technologically empowered like never before. Knowledge. Now, as the prophet Daniel said, knowledge will abound or increase exponentially in the last days, and many will run to and fro with travel. So the conquering of death and becoming gods and creating digital immortality, rewriting what they would say as evolution, man saving himself because there is no God who will. This is the man of sin, man in God's temple, declaring himself to be God. And if man doesn't destroy himself first, it's very likely he will get there. When you see the possibilities of AI, or maybe not man destroying himself, but man creating something that destroys him, worshiping the work of his hands, and lo and behold, as many are warning, and these are not Christian voices, these are people who are in AI, warning that if we don't regulate this, we will create AI that will create AI that will create AI, and the work of our hand will destroy us. Artificial intelligence out of a new tower of Babel, super intelligent, a godlike mind, a digital deity, an oracle that guides humanity, not the Spirit of God guiding, not the Word of God anymore, but artificial intelligence, a rebuilt Babylon to get to heaven. The people is one. It says in Genesis chapter 11, they will one. The world's becoming one. Yes, there are divisions still. There are wars and all this that's going on. But the oneness that's happening can bring about anything they imagine to do. They will do. And when God saw that, that's when he came down and he divided their languages. Now, this new universal language is new tree of knowledge. Humanity seeks a tree of life without repentance. This ideology of humanism with supercomputers, secular humanism, man enthroned in God's temple. Well, we could go on and on, and our children, if the Lord tarries, as they say, our children, or even our children's children, what might they see with cloning? What kind of scientific medical breakthroughs? And what kind of temptation it would be even now to extend our lives through artificial uh hearts, lungs, uh, various ways to prolong our life and even to the point of immortality. Um, I don't know about you, but uh it makes a lot of sense to me to see the beast and religion. Religion won't be thrown out the window completely, but you could be sure in this kind of a scenario that uh it's gonna be watered down more and more and more. It's okay to eat the meat offered in the market that's been sacrificed to idols. I'm saying that the idolatry and the desire will become so strong that repentance of sin, the fear of death, uh, the sickness that brings us to examine ourselves, or the chastisement of going without or having struggles, AI solves all that for us, becomes a God that we look to, even though many would still give God lip service in time. Can you imagine what that would lead to? Again, we could say a lot more about that and how we could still have uh then uh persecution against those who would say no, uh, these things are wrong. Uh, they'd say, Oh, that's so superstitious, that's so outdated. You've kept us from advancing all along. Opium of the people, a narcotic. No, man must save man. There, and if there is a God, uh uh, he would want us to do this. Um, and then they begin to decide who lives, who dies as we go through this process. And again, uh, I think it's best just to end in prayer for our sake of time. Thank you for staying with me as we looked at these seven possibilities. And this has been our longest episode. But next time we'll continue and we'll see God's judgment upon Babylon. He's not going to allow it to go on and on forever without him. Father, thank you that you intervened at the Tower of Babel and that you have waited so patiently. You're so long suffering. And Lord, you brought your son into the world and each one of us, those that hear my voice in this podcast, that we might know you and worship you. Father, forgive us for when we worship the work of our hands. Lord, we appreciate the advancements in technology. We think of things like penicillin. Many of us would not be here without all those advancements. But Lord, we realize we cannot save ourselves. We need you. And Lord, we pray that as these advancements come, your people will be very discerning concerning what we allow and permit. Personally, Lord, we know society is gonna have a hard time limiting some of these things, but we pray for our children and our children's children, and we do say, Come, Lord Jesus, because the very best we could make is so far less than the redemptive power and the promise, the foretaste, the resurrection, the new body, the new heaven, the new earth. And so we ask, Lord, for great discernment, and as we've heard these views, Lord, we'll be discerning to come out of Babylon and to be separate, a holy people, unto you, and to worship with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, and to have no other gods before you. Thank you, Father. In Jesus' name, bless each listener. Amen.