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).

For the last three weeks we have been discussing the Great Prostitute riding the Scarlet Beast in Rev. 17.

The first week we summarised the entire chapter and broke down the three basic characters, the Great Prostitute, the Scarlet Beast and the Kings and People of the Earth.

We also looked at how the angel defined the symbols to John, and especially how mountains are used throughout the Bible to symbolise nations.

Last we dug further into the Seven heads as Mountains and Kings.

Specifically, we covered the dream that was given to Nebuchadnezzar in Dan. 2. And in a very anti-climatic way … forgot the final slide.

So before we get into the last few verses of Rev. 17 and discuss the comparison with Dan. 7 I will summarise the progression of the empires.

The easiest way to answer this is to look at a couple of maps.

Babylonian Kingdom

Firstly, the dream in Dan. 2 was given to the king of Babylon, so we need to remember that this dream relates to him and his kingdom.

Medo-Persian Kingdom

The Kingdom of the Medes and the Persians completely conquered the Babylonian Kingdom and swallowed the entire kingdom.

Greek Kingdom

Alexander the Great rapidly overtook the kingdom of Medes and the Persians.

However, he died shortly after that and by the 3rd century BC his kingdom had been split between the Ptolemaic kingdom in Egypt, the Seleucid kingdom between Turkey and Afghanistan, the Lysimachean kingdom in Bulgaria and the Cassandrian kingdom in Macedonia/modern-day Greece.

Roman Empire

The question I asked last week, was whether not Rome fulfilled Dan.

2:40 ?

“Finally, there will be a fourth kingdom, strong as iron—for iron shatters and breaks everything—and just as iron smashes everything, so will it shatter and crush all the others.”

Did Rome shatter and crush all the other empires?

So, if Rome didn’t conquer the entire kingdom of Babylon, Medo-Persia or the whole Greek Empire, then what is the next candidate?

Islamic Caliphate

Here is the picture that I did not have last week.

The Islamic Caliphate ruled from the time of Mohammad and grew over the next 13 centuries to cover the entire Babylonian, Medo-Persian and Greek empires.

And just as the Greeks had done before, the Islamic empire was “successful in imposing its own culture (Arab), religion (Islam), and its own language (Arabic).”

This Islamic Kingdom (or Caliphate) did not end until 1924.

We will now pick up from there by reading Rev. 17:15-18

Enmity between the Enemy

Here we see that the relationship between the Great Prostitute and the Scarlet Beast is tenuous at best.

Here we see that the angel explains to John that the Great Prostitute represents a great city that exercises kingship over the rulers of the earth (Rev.

17:18).

This city will be wealthy and immoral.

It will be a place or trade, commerce, prosperity and despair.

It seems that initially this city is allied with the final world empire, the Scarlet Beast.

There will be a connection between the two just as John saw the Great Prostitute riding on the back of the Scarlet Beast.

However, this connection seems to be one of utility, and eventually the final world empire will turn on this city.

John is told that the Beast “hates” the Prostitute.

This reveals that there is something about this city that the Beast finds repulsive.

This throws a wrench in the works and creates a bit of a difficulty to interpret.

If this city, Babylon the Great, is necessary to the final empire, then why does the empire bring it to ruin, leave it empty and consume it with fire?

This does not seem to follow the normal way that an empire would treat it’s own capital city.

I see several different points.

Ezekiel’s Perspective

The prophet Ezekiel, when prophesying judgement against Jerusalem states this in Eze.

16:37-39:

This is painful language to hear especially since we know that Adonai fulfilled this word through the Babylonians.

Jerusalem was in covenant with Adonai, and therefore Adonai, through the prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah, treated the nation of Judah and Jerusalem as an unfaithful wife.

The judgement from Adonai includes a jealous anger and fury that the prophets picked up on.

When we look at the passage in Revelation, we see that at least one of the reasons for the Beast turning on the Babylon the Great, is that “God put it in their hearts to do what will fulfill his purpose.”

(Rev.

17:17, CJB)

Adonai is the same today as he was then.

We can see that he will deal with the world in the same way that he dealt with the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

The emotive language in Revelation mirrors the description there in Ezekiel.

Confusion

Another point is that there are many times that Adonai has struck His enemies with confusion.

We see in Gen. 11 that Adonai struck the city of Babel with confusion of language, to accomplish His purposes and to disband the people.

We see in the story of Joshua, Jos. 10, that Adonai “threw them into confusion before Israel” and defeated the enemies of Beni Yisrael.

But the passage I want to focus on is in 2 Chron.

20:21-23

Here we see King Jehoshaphat is worshiping and praising Adonai, and obediently sending out the worshipers in front of the armies.

This battle against the Ammonites, Moabites and inhabitants of Mount Seir (modern day Jordan) was won spiritually.

Adonai’s method of bringing about victory was to set the enemies of Israel against each other.

One of the ways that Adonai brings about His judgement upon a sinful nation, is by causing the nation to implode.

This partly due to the destructive nature of sin, and partly due to Adonai’s judgement against the sin.

Daniel’s Vision

Another passage that provides us clarity on the enemy destroying itself is the vision of the four beasts in Dan.

7 :4-8

This vision of Daniel occurred years after the dream that was given to Nebuchadnezzar, however Joel Richardson, in quoting John Walvoord says:

Mideast Beast, The Scriptural Case for an Islamic Antichrist, Joel Richardson, p. 79-80

[Most scholars today] whether liberal or conservative, generally have agreed that chapter 7 is in some sense a recapitulation of chapter 2 and cover the same four empires.”

Most also agree that the lion represents the kingdom of Babylon, the bear represents the Medo-Persian kingdom, the four-headed leopard represents the empire of Greece.

The disagreement, as we mentioned last week, comes from who the fourth beast in Daniel’s vision represents.

Many scholars say that this fourth beast represents the Roman empire, however, does Rome do what the fourth beast does?

Daniel sees that the fourth beast Dan.

7:7 “devoured and crushed—and anything that was left it trampled with its feet."

Later on an angel explains to Daniel that Dan.

7:23

The question is, “Did Rome crush all the empires before it?”

Well, not really.

In the areas that Rome did conquer, they basically allowed the cultures to remain.

For instance, the reason that the New Covenant texts were written in Greek, is because Rome basically adopted the Greek language.

Rome also adopted the Greek gods, and in many ways the Greek culture.

And in most areas around the Mediterranean, there was peace and prosperity.

Also, we showed earlier that Rome did not take over the previous kingdoms of Babylon, Persia, Media and the follow-on kingdoms of the Parthians and Sasaanids.

Islamic Expansion

However, when Muhammed began his conquest it was quite a different story.

You can see from this map, that Muhammed only took over the Arabian Peninsula, however the next two rulers in succession expanded that empire to include all of the Babylonian, Medo-Persian and most of the Greek Empires.

This expansion slowed down by about 750 AD.

Extent of the Ottoman Empire

As each new Calif came to the throne, the empire of Islam continued to grow.

This expansion went on to include all of Turkey, Greece and the Balkans under the Ottoman empire.

The Ottoman empire was at its greatest in about 1566 AD.

So back to the original question, “Did the Islamic empire completely crush the previous empires?”

Well, yes.

Not only did Islam change the laws and practices of every country that was conquered, but they also changed the religion and language.

Also, Is this an empire that is completely strong, like iron, or is it brittle like baked clay?

Joel Richardson puts it this way:

Mideast Beast, The Scriptural Case for an Islamic Antichrist, Joel Richardson, p. 70

Shortly after Muhammad died, a division broke out between the Shi’a (the minority sect, roughly 14 percent of all Muslims), who felt that the successorship belonged to Muhammad’s relatives, and the Sunnis, (the majority sect, 86 percent of all Muslims), who felt that the successorship belonged to Muhammad’s companions, or the Sahabah.

To this day the bloodiest conflicts in the Middle East have been a result of wars between the Shi’a and the Sunnis.

So we see that the Islamic kingdom meets the criteria of the dream that was given to Nebuchadnezzar.

Angel’s Interpretation