We first encountered the term “Babylon” in our earlier study of Revelation chapter fourteen. While the ancient city of Babylon once existed as a physical place, it has also come to represent an underlying set of core beliefs or guiding principles that govern the lives of the wicked. The Book of Revelation thus employs “Babylon” as a shorthand reference to help identify the blasphemous political, religious, and economic structures that will arise in the future.
Here in Revelation chapter seventeen, we will consider the spiritual aspects of those structures in greater detail. As we progress through our text from this chapter, we’ll find that it separates into two distinct segments. The first section (comprising verses one through six) will introduce us to “Mystery Babylon.” The remainder of this chapter will delve into an explanation of that entity…
“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.’ So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness.
And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written:
MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH.
I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement” (Revelation 17:1-6).
So John, the author of Revelation, encountered one of the seven angelic beings who delivered God’s message of wrath earlier in Revelation chapter sixteen. While John will make many discoveries over the course of this chapter, the opening verse of this passage establishes the principal theme for all that follows: “…I will show you the doom (sentence, judgment) of the great harlot (idolatress) who is seated on many waters” (AMPC).
In contemporary society, we typically use the terms harlot, or prostitute to characterize those who exchange sexual favors for financial payment or other forms of compensation. But as we’ll see, Revelation chapter seventeen will employ this term in a spiritual context as well.
Image Attribution: Babylon (Berlin), CC BY-NC 2.0, Marc Wathieu, via flickr.com disclaimer notice