Monday 27Dec2021
Today's New Testament reading of Revelation chapters 15 to 19 is taken from the English Standard Version.
After the account in Revelation chapter sixteen of the outpouring of seven bowls of God's wrath, chapter seventeen tells us that one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls invited the Apostle John to see "the judgment of the great prostitute" (Rev 17:1, 2 ESV)
John was taken by the Spirit into a wilderness where he saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast with seven head and ten horns. (Rev 17:3 - 5 ESV)
Revelation 17:3 - 5 ESV English Standard Version
3And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. 5And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations.”
Who is this great prostitute? Who is this woman who sits on a scarlet beast?
Revelation 17:5 above tells us that she is Babylon. Further on in verse 18, the angel explained to John that she is "the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth."
Revelation 17:18 ESVLater in Revelation 18:3, we read,
18 And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.
. . . all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality,
and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her,
and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.
This prophecy brings to mind that we are living in these last days where a single powerful and abominable authority (the great city of Babylon) is in the process of dominating all other authorities and governments on earth.
In Revelation 18:4 - 5, the Apostle John heard a voice from heaven telling him,
“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues;
for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
Brothers and Sisters in the Anointed One, let us watch and pray that we do not fall into the abominations and sexual immorality of Babylon, the woman on a scarlet beast.
