Watch Out For Evil Doers

Watch Out For Evil Doers

Revelation 17

Michael H. Koplitz

When Andrew was much younger, he decided he wanted to play baseball. The first year that he played baseball was actually tee-ball. In the second year that he played in the West Manchester township league, the coach from each team would get about 10 ft. away from home plate, get on their knees, and pitch the ball to their kids. So there I was, ready to pitch the ball to Andrew for his first time. All I remember from that point on was a white blur flying from his bat directly at my nose. Luckily I fell backward as the ball sped over me.

The book of Revelation is similar to that of baseball in that it is a warning from God for us to get out of the way of evil. It is just like the baseball because it is not subtle. The book of Revelation does not have a hidden agenda. It doesn't sugarcoat anything. Instead, it is as direct as the baseball coming at your face. This is one of the reasons why people throughout the years have not liked to read nor discuss the book of Revelation.

It is a book about God's tough love. We find the same kind of tough love in the pages of the Hebrew Scriptures as God gave warnings to His people Israel throughout their history. God is giving us the same warnings here in the book of Revelation. To ensure that there is no mistake about it, God makes the Revelation extremely clear.

Why would God do this for us? Because God wants us to be in heaven with Him. God created us so that we could love Him and so that we could worship Him. God will not be satisfied with us ending up in Satan's corner. Instead, God wants each of us in heaven, and because of that, He sent us the prophets and His Son and the book of Revelation. So no matter how much we don't like the message of this book because it is not subtle, nevertheless, we must see it as an expression of God's love for us and treat this book in this manner.

As we have done with the past chapters of Revelation, let us take some time to look at the symbolism we find. In chapter 17, we are introduced to a woman named Babylon. At the beginning of this chapter, one of the seven Angels offers to show John the punishment of Babylon, the great prostitute. This description of Babylon seated on the rivers reminds what we read in the book of Jeremiah 51:13. The mighty rivers are the Euphrates and the Tigers rivers, which are located in modern-day Iraq. The kings of the earth who have committed fornication with Babylon sided with evil and are references from Isaiah 23:17 and Nahum 3:4. Nahum is one of the minor prophets found in the Hebrew Scriptures. The golden cup that Babylon is holding that made the earth drunk is the spreading of Babylon’s evil and references Jeremiah 51:7.

John was taken by the Spirit into the desert, which reminds us of Ezekiel 8:3. John will come face-to-face with Babylon, the woman in the desert. This has a similar overtone to it as our Lord Jesus was taken into the desert to come face-to-face with Satan after his baptism in the Jordan as written in the gospel of Matthew chapter four. The desert has always been viewed as a place of insight and renewal, as told in Hosea 2:14, another minor prophet. The woman Babylon is seated upon a beast full of blasphemous names of God, which is reminiscent of Daniel 7:25. The beast has seven heads and ten horns just like the beast that rose out of the sea a few chapters back.

The woman Babylon is dressed in purple and scarlet. It is adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls traded by the Babylonian empire when it existed over 2000 years ago. The golden cop that Babylon is holding is full of the world's sins, as can also be seen in Ezekiel 28:13.

What is fascinating about the woman Babylon is that she resembles the Saints. She has a name upon her forehead. The expression upon her forehead is Babylon. By having a name upon her forehead, she is symbolic of someone belonging to God. She is here to trick us into thinking that she is from God. This is a similar symbol that John used when he described the beast with the seven heads who had a healed fatal wound. That fatal wound that was healed is a symbolic reference to Jesus. He appeared to the disciples with fatal wounds that had been healed especially emphasized in the Gospel of John. So the woman is trying to convince the world that she is from God, but she is genuinely from Satan because she is not dressed in white.