Friday, April 12, 2013

The Whore Of Babylon And the Beast





The Judgment Of The Great Prostitute


Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute… (Revelation 17:1)


What Is Her Identifying Mark?
And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Revelation 17:6 ESV)

And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.” (Revelation 18:24 ESV)

Jerusalem, in New Testament times, was the only city in the world that had killed God’s prophets. Babylon, Nineveh, and Egypt never had done that.

… it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’ O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets … (Luke 13:33-34 ESV)
        
Her Destiny
For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.” (Revelation 18:8)

And Jesus answered and said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone shall be left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2)

This took place in that generation just like Jesus foretold in Mat. 24:34. The Roman army (the abomination of desolation) surrounded Jerusalem  and made it so desolate that Josephus said you could not even tell a city had been there if the Romans had not left a tower still standing. What did the multitude in heaven think about this?

They Rejoiced
After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, [2] for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants.”

Will the Temple Ever Be Rebuilt?
 Once more they cried out, “Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever.” (Revelation 19:1-3 ESV)

And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once. (Matthew 21:19 ESV)

And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’” (Luke 13:6-9 ESV)

Jesus’ ministry was three years. The tree was not immediately cut down after His three-year ministry. It was cut down after He dug around it for forty years, and finally cut down in AD 70.

The Beast
In Revelation 17 the Great Prostitute is depicted as mounted on the Beast. The Beast is identified as the city of seven hills. We all know the city of seven hills is Rome. The Beast is described as also having seven heads and ten horns. The ten horns were the ten kings over the ten provinces of Rome. The seven heads represent seven kings. Five had fallen and the angel says, “One is.” The five that had fallen were Julius Caesar, Agustus Caesar, Tiberius Caesar, Caligula Caesar, and Claudius Caesar. The one still living was Nero. Galba came after that, but lasted less than six months. Nero was the Beast incarnate. The Beast was Rome.
The Great Prostitute riding on the Beast signifies that Rome was the support and vehicle of Jerusalem. The chief priests of Jerusalem, who looked like lambs spoke like a dragon when they cried, “We have no king but Caesar.”
Because each Hebrew letter is also a numeral, the letters that spell “Neron Caesar” total 666. The Great Prostitute is also called the beast that looks like a lamb and speaks like a dragon. She is also called the False Prophet.

The Modern Application
This fulfilled pattern repeats itself in history time and again because the nature of man and the nature of the beast never change. Statism is a beast. The function of the False Prophet was to get the whole world to worship its image. Obama also has “priests” (men of the cloth) like Jeremiah Wright and several others who support his statism.
Statism is the enemy of the City of God throughout Scripture. We see it with the Tower of Babel, we see it in Abraham’s home town, Ur of the Chaldees. We see it with Egypt enslaving Israel. We see it with the King of Babylon forcing everyone to bow to his image of the state. And we see it with Rome.
It can be called the divine right of kings and it can be called Marxism. A rose by any other name is still a rose.

Ron Smith
Churchofthekingmcallen.org

No comments: