Revelation 17

By Nick Bibile

Rev 17 there is symbolism, there is a literal explanation. There is a double reference to one entity. There is a ref to a woman; the identity of that city is Rome. The city is interpreted as a mystical Babylon. When we are dealing with a city we are not dealing with bricks and motor but dealing with a religious city. Thyatira, Jezebel wife of Ahab, Jesus is not talking of an insurrected of Jezebel but speaking of a religious system that was taking root in that time, in chap 12 another woman, a symbolic woman but this time also a religious system but this time a pure gospel church, then in 19 a symbol a lamb’s wife the city is Jerusalem. The woman is symbolic of a religious system.

In 17 it’s a city, the city of Rome is a system of a corrupt religion. This is a message that reaches to the very end of the time, a religious system that has world wide dominance that word means catholic. A system of religions centered in Rome and appeals a universal appeal which he calls the mystery of Babylon. Under her umbrella are host of daughter systems... This is the final form of apostate Christianity.

We are dealing with a harlot. Israel was the wife of Jehovah, Jer 3, is called a Harlot. Ezk. Turning to harlotry. 50 times it is used in apostasy in the O.T and it is the same here with apostasy in the last days in anti Christianity.

Source of all the problem of America is not a culture problem, but the culture of a problem has to do with worship. God has cursed their worship. They are the result of what is happening today. The curse is on apostasy. The mother of harlot is not a Hollywood culture but apostasy.

V. 6 woman is the religious system.

7 heads are 7 mountains which the woman sits. There are 7 kings. 10 horns are 10 kings. Waters are peoples.

Reformation church separated from the Church of Rome as it was a system of antichrist. Identify the betrayers.

Gal 5:1 apostle Paul, be not entangle again in the yoke of bondage.

Children of Israel were in the bondage of Egypt but very soon they went back again to the bondage, the Jewish Christians also wanted entangled. People set free and now returning to the bondage. The reformation was a deliverance from bondage of Romanism. Martin Luther referred to the Babylonian captivity of the church those dark ages of Rome, the Romish apostasy, the reformation delivered us from the bondage of Rome. The reformers recovered the gospel and set people free and brought all the liberty we now enjoy, this is not a political, economical liberties but all the liberties that we enjoy has to do with the direct fruits of the of the protestant reformations, the only movement in history to wound Romanism. Rome was drunk with the martyrs with the blood of Jesus.

Spurgeon said, “Counterfeit has at length attained to such an eminence that it is with the utmost difficulty that you can detect it. The counterfeit so near approaches to the genuine, that the eye of wisdom itself needs to be enlightened before she can discern the difference. Especially is this the case in religious matters.”

“Has the Roman Catholic Church changed its basic doctrinal position in this present ecumenical era? The answer is no, it has not. The Council of Trent was a Catholic council held from 1545-1563 in an attempt to destroy the progress of the Protestant Reformation. This council denied every Reformation doctrine, including Scripture alone and grace alone. Trent hurled 125 anathemas (eternal damnation) against Bible-believing Christians. These proclamations and anathemas were fleshed out in the murderous persecutions vented upon Bible-believing Christians by Rome, and the solemn fact is that the Council of Trent has never been annulled. The Vatican II Council of the mid-1960s referred to Trent dozens of times, quoted Trent's proclamations as authority, and reaffirmed Trent on every hand. The New Catholic Catechism (1994) cites Trent no less than 99 times. There is not the slightest hint that the proclamations of the Council of Trent have been abrogated by Rome. At the opening of the Second Vatican Council, Pope John XXIII stated, "I do accept entirely all that has been decided and declared at the Council of Trent." Every cardinal, bishop and priest who participated in the Vatican II Council signed a document affirming Trent.”

The following are quotations from Christianity Today, Week of April 18

“After 26 years of serving as the head of the Catholic Church, Pope John Paul II died at the age of 84. From communism to Protestant-Catholic relations,”

"Relativism, pluralism and naturalism are the three main foes of evangelicalism today and they're the main foes of conservative Roman Catholics," said Norman Geisler, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., and co-author of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences.

"We rejoice in the choice because he's going to hold the line and he's not going to allow the liberal element in the Catholic Church to reverse any of those things."

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said Ratzinger will be an ally of U.S. religious conservatives on a litany of moral issues such as abortion, gay rights, cloning and physician-assisted suicide.

"This is a reaffirmation of … Pope John Paul II's policies in all those areas," said Land, who described Ratzinger as "a known quantity."

Prison Fellowship Founder Chuck Colson, an original participant in the 1994 "Evangelicals and Catholics Together" document, which aimed to foster cooperation between the two groups, hailed Ratzinger's election as "a great choice."

"The College of Cardinals has opted for orthodoxy over geopolitical considerations," said Colson in a statement. "Cardinal Ratzinger is strong, solid, and will carry on the tradition of John Paul II. That is very good news indeed for Catholics, for all Christians and for the world."

The Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes, an evangelical Episcopalian. Barnes continues:

He was the world's greatest defender of orthodox, Bible-based Christianity. … Important differences remained between Protestants and Catholics, but John Paul II made them seem small. He was pro-life, pro-family, anti-totalitarian, and quite a lot more that conservative evangelicals identified with. … John Paul was bold and unswerving in proclaiming salvation through belief in Jesus Christ. He did this all over the world, despite declining health and personal risk. … Catholics have lost a great and wonderful leader. And so have evangelicals.

Colorado Springs, Colo. — Focus on the Family Chairman Dr. James C. Dobson released the following statement today in response to news that Pope John Paul II had died:

A few decades ago, the pope wouldn't have been among the redeemed in such a book: He would have played the role of the antichrist himself. Such a belief has a longstanding tradition in Protestant teachings, from Martin Luther ("The papacy is the seat of the true and real Antichrist") to the Westminster Confession ("There is no other head of the Church but the Lord Jesus Christ: nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof; but is that Antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalted himself in the Church against Christ, and all that is called God." Contemporary versions, such as those used by the Presbyterian Church in America, stop at "head thereof").

But no, it's actually Cardinal Peter Matthews, an American critic of the pope, who becomes a villain in the series.

(Tribulation Force, the second Left Behind volume, backtracks quite a bit from the initial suggestion that John Paul II got taken up, saying it was "new pope" John XXIV who was raptured just five months after his installation, and had "stirred up controversy in the church with a new doctrine that seemed to coincide with the 'heresy' of Martin Luther than with the historic orthodoxy they were used to." Old habits die hard, but the books still signal a dramatic reduction in hostility to the office of bishop of Rome.)