Has it ever occurred to you that the Bible probably ought to be rated “R”? It’s definitely not G, and parental guidance is certainly needed. I don’t think it rates an X, even though there’s an awful lot of violence, especially in the OT, and even some sexually explicit material, because the content certainly has more than a little redeeming social importance. But even if the only book you looked at was Revelation, I think an “R” is about right. It’s pretty violent. And today we’re going to be touching on sex. There are some words and images in here which may need some explanation when you get home - that is if your kids are listening to the
sermon at all. But I think it can be done. In fact, I think it needs to be done. Children in grade school learn more about these matters than I knew when I graduated from high school. And the only thing that will protect them against our culture’s corruption is the word of God. And besides, the tough bits of Scripture can’t be skipped over just because they’re hard to explain.
This chapter of Revelation introduces the whore of Babylon, also called the great harlot or the mother of prostitutes. And of course we all know that - at least I think we all know - that John isn’t really talking about women selling their bodies for money. He’s talking about human beings trading eternal life for temporary pleasure. But God uses the metaphor of prostitution, of adultery, because it’s the strongest possible way to explain how ugly, how harmful, how unacceptable - and yet how tempting - it is to make that choice.
Writer John MacArthur says that there is a sense in which Karl Marx’s statement that ’religion is the opium of the masses’ is true. People are religious because God created them to be worshipers. And so if they aren’t worshiping the true God, they will worship someone or something else. And so even though we may look around and think America is getting less religious, we aren’t. Just less Christian.
Our natural longing for God has been sidetracked by the lie that we can have growth without pain. spirituality without sacrifice, and salvation without repentance.
Revelation seems to teach that the end times will be characterized by a single world religion. This may be literally true. On the other hand, this world religion may simply be a way of conveying the fact that all false religions have certain things in common, and so whether or not they are actually called by the same name doesn’t really matter. All false religions are characterized by a desire to make God a servant of our own egos and desires.
The story of Babylon really begins with the tower of Babel. You may remember that after the flood, Noah’s descendants, led by a man named Nimrod, said to themselves, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." [Gen 11:4] And throughout the OT, if you look for it, you will find that “the city” is always the place where people forget God, and start imagining that they can reach heaven - or build it - under their own power. And it certainly seems that most of the Western world - the product of the
so-called enlightenment - is buying into that same self-congratulatory illusion that human beings can build paradise on earth.
Although male gods technically ruled in ancient near Eastern religion, the worship of the mother goddess was central. The mother goddess appeared in three forms: virgin, mother, and crone, and ruled over life and birth and death. In most of those cultures, there was a story of death the goddess’ son, who was then restored to life by the mother goddess. Non-Christian scholars like Joseph Campbell uses these myths to try to discredit Christianity, teaching that Christianity is a derivation of these myths, rather than understanding that each one of these myths is a muddled reflection of our inborn awareness of death, and hunger for redemption and life.
In Phoenicia, the mother was called Ashtoreth, and the son Baal. The Egyptians mother goddess was Isis and her son was Osiris. The Greeks had Aphrodite and Eros. Artemis of the Ephesians - whose followers caused Paul so much trouble in the book of Acts - was another of these mother goddesses. And even Israel fell into the temptation of worshiping the mother goddess, saying to Jeremiah when he rebuked them, “We are not going to listen to you. Instead, we will... make offerings to the queen of heaven and pour out libations to her, just as we and our
ancestors, our kings and our officials, used to do in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. We used to have plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no misfortune. But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine." And the women said, "Indeed we will go on making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her; do you think that we made cakes for her, marked with her image, and poured out libations to her without our husbands' being involved?" [Jer 44:16-19]
The Old Testament prophets often portrayed Israel as a woman, either God’s faithful bride when pure, or an adulteress when unfaithful. And Gentile writers and artists also portrayed their homeland as a woman. You know the seated statue of Liberty that appears on some of our quarters? Well, she looks remarkably like the goddesses on Roman and Mesopotamian coins and other artwork. Since cities were always founded near water, whether a seaport or a river, the great Mediterranean cities appeared as a wealthy goddess enthroned beside a river. . And that image is the source of John’s description of “the great whore who is
seated on many waters.” [v. 1]
What does this female figure actually do to earn the title of harlot or prostitute? Well, the next thing John tells us is that “the kings of the earth have committed fornication” [v. 2a] with her. Many commentators say that this means the world religion and a single world government will marry up in a state religion supported by political power, with political decisions given legitimacy by false claims of moral authority. Others - myself included - simply believe that political power always seeks - and claims religious legitimacy. Ambitious rulers and false religions both seek power, neither can manage it alone, and neither is willing to submit to the true God. So what John is telling us here is that the natural tension between church and state disappears when the church stops calling the rulers to account, and when the rulers stop fearing the just requirements of God.
Think about it. There are a lot of things that we - that is human beings in general - would like to do and be and have, if they - and we - weren’t held back by fear of the law, or by fear of God. And once we stop fearing God, why, anything goes. The German philosopher Nietzsche was one of the few thinkers who have taken the consequences of denying God to its logical conclusion. If there is no God, there is no morality. It’s that simple. There is only power. And the purpose of power is to indulge the self - whether it is in sensuality or other forbidden pleasures. What do you suppose happens when the kings of the earth fall for the false promises of the mother goddess? They - and the people they rule - become intoxicated. “The inhabitants of the earth have become drunk with the
wine of [their] fornication.” [v. 2b] You take a little sip; it tastes good, nothing bad happens. So you have a little more and whaddya know... pretty soon you’re rolling around in the gutter.
Have you ever had too much to drink? It’s been years since I’ve over-indulged, but I haven’t forgotten some of the stupid things I did when under the influence. Do you have memories like that in your mental library? Well, imagine what happens when a whole society gets drunk? We lose the ability to make good decisions. Our inhibitions - our habits of self-restraint - get thrown overboard. We ignore - or resent - warnings. We take unconscionable risks. We assume that the car will stay on the road, because, after all, to slow down or change course would be simply too - inconvenient. That’s what was the matter with the Pharisees Jesus rebuked when they demanded, "Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you." But he answered them, "An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” {Mt 12:38-39] The warning signs were already there. But they didn’t want to see them. Their alliance with the powers that ran things, the status quo, made them unwilling to admit to what they knew. They forgot that it does no good to keep from rocking the boat if you’re already headed for the rocks.
Now as we think about the city, and our relationship to it, it’s important to keep in mind that Babylon is a metaphor for people gathering together to exercise power to glorify themselves instead of God. Not all communities are organized in defiance of God; Jerusalem, or Zion, is the name used to describe the community gathered under the authority of God.
What else is going on in this passage?
John “saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous n ames, and it had seven heads and ten horns.” That’s the same woman, of course, the same harlot that is identified with the city of Babylon. And the view of her seated on the beast, the blasphemous names and the ten horns, show clearly that her power is based in the support of the antichrist himself. The power of the godless city is not neutral; it is consciously, intentionally, unalterably opposed to God.
And the second half of that image shows her “clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls.” [v. 4] What does that tell us? Well, it shows first how superficially attractive these false religions, these false promises are. That’s the lie, you see, the lie that says along with the serpent in Genesis, “you will be like God.” [Gen 3:5] It’s the same lie that calls out to passersby in Proverbs, "'You who are simple, turn in here!' And to those without sense she says, "'Stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.' But they do
not know that the dead are there, that her guests are in the depths of Sheol." [Pr 9:16-18]
This image also tells us that listening to these promises, cooperating with the unholy alliance of ruler and religion that denies God and indulges our most self-serving passions, will - at least for the time - seem to prosper. Look at the entertainment industry, the incredible salaries that go along with the incredible self-indulgence of public figures from gangsta rappers to sports stars to Madonna and her sisters. Look at the economic power wielded by the homosexual movement - which has discretionary income to burn, since they have no need to invest in their children or their future. Yes, I know, a few are adopting children and looking to the next generation, but that’s the exception, not the rule. And their economic power pushes the merchants who push the politicians who all of a sudden have an enormous incentive to silence the true church.
And that brings us to the final point of this passage. John reports that “the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.” [v. 6]
The hostility of our cultural elites to the word of God and the church of Jesus Christ has become so pervasive that it’s actually getting mainstream press time. Bill O’Reilly has been conducting an outcry against the ACLU, among other organizations. Now, I know that the ACLU has done some good things. For one, they def ended my father - a professor of Spanish and a long-time advocate for Hispanic culture and values - when the U Colo at Boulder fired him for offending a radical Hispanic group. But right now they are demanding - among other things -
that schools stop calling the December holidays Christmas, and even more obviously dangerous and offensive, they are defending the North American Man Boy Love Association’s right to coach pedophiles in how to pursue their victims without getting caught. The attacks on the Boy Scouts, the removal of the 10 commandments from the Alabama courthouse, the use of the term “fundamentalist” to describe Islamic terrorists, all of these stem are symptoms of the hostility to God that has become so pervasive a part of our modern society.
But none of this is new. Each generation has to face and fight the temptation to turn away from God. Each generation has to learn how to recognize and reject false religions - some of which have snuck in under the label “Christian”, some of which openly attack Jesus Christ. We may look back at earlier times in our country’s history and imagined a truly Christian society: but that was a world where slavery was accepted and women were belittled, where going to church on Sunday masked the same kind of selfishness, greed and immorality that today doesn’t need to disguise itself. Yes, today may be more obviously immoral. But true followers of Christ have always been in a minority.
There is no period in human history where the temptation to seek human power and wealth and glory - personified here as the great harlot, the mother of prostitutes, and the whore of Babylon - has not called out seductively to weak, sinful people to abandon the high calling of God and indulge their appetites. The fourth century slid toward dualism, the tenth traded godliness for king-making, the fourteenth sold forgiveness for cash. The prophet Jeremiah also saw that willful disregard of warnings, the same determination to rebel, that characterizes our own time. “Judah saw ... that for all the adulteries of that faithless Israel, I had sent her away with a decree of divorce; yet her false sister Judah did not fear, but
she too went and played the whore.”
Exactly what the alliance between false religion and godless power will look like when Jesus returns we do not know. But we do know how it looks in our own time. “The one who is righteous will live by faith," [Rom 1:17] said Paul to the Romans. That means, eternal life is for those who live faithfully before God, believing in his promises and living by his standards, even when the pressures and temptations to go along with the seductions of our culture are nearly overwhelming. We’re not the first to find it difficult, and we won’t be the last. But we can hold our ground, here in our own time and place. We can be faithful, even in the presence of faithlessness.
