Sermon Tone Analysis

Brief Background

For those who are just joining us, we are working our way through the book of Revelation.

John the son of Zebedee was in exile on the isle of Patmos.

Yeshua was revealed to him there, and John was commanded to write to seven communities in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey).

Last week we have discussed the Seventh Bowl of Wrath, and today we begin to talk about the Prostitute riding the Scarlet Beast.

We also read the first few verses of Rev. 17 because I wanted to show that the sentencing of the great prostitute is directly connected to the Seventh Bowl.

Today we will read the entirety of Chapter 17, but will then focus in on the first few attributes.

Let’s go ahead and read, Rev. 17 .

The Mother of Prostitutes

No matter which way we read this passage, we have to acknowledge that this vision is symbolic.

The good news is that the angel tells John what the different symbols represent.

There are three basic characters, The Great Prostitute, the Scarlet Beast and the Kings and People of the Earth.

If I was to list out all of the descriptions of each it would look like this:

Great Prostitute

Sits on Beast & by many waters

Clothed in purple & scarlet

Adorned with gold, precious stones & pearls

Holds golden cup of immorality

Name written on forehead

Drunk with blood of martyrs

Scarlet Beast

Full of blasphemous names

Seven heads

Ten horns

Was, is not, about to rise up from abyss

Kings and People of the Earth

Committed sexual immorality with her

Become drunk with the wine of her immorality

Names not written in the Book of Life

Peoples, multitudes, nations & tongues

Angel’s Definitions

Each time I started typing, I found myself having to go back and provide more definitions.

So instead I have decided to provide all the definitions first, and then we can go into the discussion of other Scriptures, historical context, interpretations throughout history, and practical application.

For simplicity, I am going to follow the outline that I have just presented.

The Great Prostitute is a city, “the great city exercising kingship over the kings of the earth.”

Rev. 17:18

To sit on Beast represents both a familiarity with the Beast, but also a distinction.

The Many Waters are “peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.”

Rev. 17:15

To be clothed in purple & scarlet is synonymous with wealth.

Both colours were very difficult to come by, and were therefore very expensive.

Adorned with gold, precious stones & pearls refers also to the wealth of this city.

The golden cup of immorality has been referred to many times, and is the sum of all the wickedness and sinfulness of the people.

The name written on forehead explains that this city is, “Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and the detestable things of the earth.”

Rev. 17:5b

To be drunk with blood of kedoshim and the martyrs is a reference to the lust for violence especially directed toward the followers of Yeshua.

The Scarlet Beast is directly related to the beast of Beast of the Sea in Rev. 13:1-8 as well as the fourth Beast in Dan.

7:7-8 .

The Beast represents the final world empire.

Full of blasphemous names is similar to Rev. 13:1 where the Beast has many slanderous names.

Also, since blasphemy and slander are both spoken, we see a similarity with Dan.

7:8 where the mouth speaks boastfully.

The seven heads represent kingdoms.

Specifically we are told in Rev. 17:9-10 that they are seven mountains.

Mountains in prophetic literature represents kingdoms ruled by a king.

We are told that five of these kingdoms have fallen, one is in existence, and one has not yet come.

Ten horns refer to specific rulers.

We will read the passage from Rev. 13 and Dan.

7 in just a minute to see just how similar these descriptions are.

What we are told in Rev. 17:12-14 is that these 10 kings are subordinate to the Beast, they give their power and authority to the Beast

Was, is not, about to rise up from abyss.

The Scarlet Beast is the eighth kingdom, but is a resurrected kingdom that comes from the previous kingdoms.

Rev. 17:11

Kings and People of the Earth represent the rest of the unbelieving world that are not a part of the 10 kings mentioned.

The world will commit sexual immorality and idolatry with this great city.

Become drunk with the wine of her immorality.

There will be great wealth to be made, and great power to be had throughout the world.

It will be and intoxicating city.

Since their names were not written in the Book of Life, there is still a distinction between followers of Yeshua and the rest of the world.

Peoples, multitudes, nations & tongues will flock to this city.

It will be the bucket list place for all people.

Other Scriptures

To gain a broader understanding of this passage let us now read Rev. 13:1-8 and Dan.

7:7-8.

In Rev. 13:2 we see that this final empire will be a composite of all the previous empires.

It is “like a leopard, his feet like a bear’s, and his mouth like a lion’s”; all of these descriptions are similar to the different empires listed in Dan.

7 where the typical understanding is that they represent the Babylonian, Medo-Persian and Greek empires.

The fourth beast in Dan.

7:7-8 is distinguished from the other empires.

Many commentators think that this fourth beast is Rome, but I happen to think that it is bigger than Rome.

The reason for this is that John is told that the seven heads represent seven kingdoms.

The description of these kingdoms is as follows:

Five have fallen;

One is;

The other (the 7th) has not yet come, when he comes he must remain for a little while;

The eighth kingdom, the Scarlet Beast, is one of the seven and is headed for destruction.

There are a variety of different explanations for the five that have fallen.

There is the historic approach, where the five kings represent five different Roman emperors.

The difficulty is that we do not exactly know which emperor was alive at the time of the writing of Revelation.

It was probably Domitian, but he was the twelfth emperor, so it does not quite add up.

Another approach is to look at the numbers completely symbolically.

Some reason for this would be as follows:

Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 52C: Revelation 17–22 (Comment)

(a) Seven, a symbolic number widely used in the ancient world, occurs fifty-three times in Revelation to reflect the divine arrangement and design of history and the cosmos.

The enumeration of just seven kings, therefore, suggests the propriety of a symbolic rather than a historical interpretation.

(b) The seven heads of the beast, first interpreted as seven hills and then as seven kings, is based on the archaic mythic tradition of the seven-headed dragon widely known in the ancient world.

Since the author is working with traditional material, this again suggests that precisely seven kings should be interpreted symbolically.

(c) Rome, founded in 753 B.C. according to Varro, was an Etruscan monarchy until the expulsion of the last Etruscan king, Tarquinius Superbus, in 508 B.C. From the perspective of canonical Roman tradition, there were exactly seven kings in all.

Another approach is to see the kings are representative of kingdoms.

For instance, it could be Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, five empires of the world who at one point or another conquered and controlled Israel.

However we are not specifically told that these are the nations.

The Empire that existed at John’s time, the one that “Is”, was the Roman Empire.