SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
8/26/2015 9:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Review of Revelation
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Unknown
Message of the
verse: As promised I want to quote
from a sermon by John MacArthur that he gave in March of 1994 on the 17th
chapter of Revelation entitled “The Destruction of the Final World Empire
PT-3.” This will be all that we have for
this Spiritual Diary today.
“Revelation 17 is our text tonight in our ongoing study
of this great apocalypse. I feel like I need to make a brief apology to those
of you who have not been with us in our study of Revelation because you're
going to get dropped right in the middle here and you may feel a little bit
suspended because you don't know what has gone before for several weeks, many
months and even into the years that we've been studying this great, great book.
We turn again to
this marvelous chapter and we will pick up where we left off last time as we concluded
the first six verses. Some introductory comments, I think, are appropriate as
we set the context.
We have learned
repeatedly through all of the months of our study of Revelation, the
apocalypse, the unveiling of Jesus Christ, that the theme of this book is
Christ Himself. And that the truth of this book is not to be avoided but it is
to be understood and it is to be incorporated into life. The life of every Christian
exposed to this book will be dramatically altered,
dramatically changed. And
so it should be.
The promise of our
Lord Himself in chapter 1 verse 3 is, "Blessed is he who reads and those
who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the things which are written in it,
for the time is near." That is a beatitude, that is a blessing. We have
indeed been blessed as we have studied, as we have read, as we have heard, as
we have heeded the great truths of this book. We have seen its three major
divisions...the visions of the exalted Christ in the glory of His
resurrection life as He
ministers in His church in chapters 1 to 3. And the vision of the glorious and exalted
Christ as He appears in heaven in chapters 4 and 5. The visions of the exalted
and glorified Christ as He unleashes judgment on the earth, punishing those who
are ungodly and reject the gospel, at the same time preserving unto eternal
life those who believe and belong to Him. And that in chapter 6 and right on
through chapter 18. So that's the section we're in, we're in the section of the
unfolding of the judgment of Christ as He takes back the universe which is in
the hands of the usurper, Satan himself.
We are already now coming to the end of this period of
judgment. It ends in chapter 18. And then in chapter 19 the climactic return of
Jesus Christ and that ushers us into the final part of this book which is the
glorious vision of the returning, conquering Lord as He comes with His saints
to destroy the ungodly, to rescue His own, to establish His Kingdom which will
usher in the eternal new heavens and the new earth...all the way on right out
to the very end of chapter 22.
And throughout the months
that we have been studying this great book we have learned so much.
We know where history is
going and why it's going there and how it will get there. We know how man's
final years on earth will be lived out. We have seen previews of holocausts of
judgment that make any other earthly catastrophe a small and insignificant
thing. We know that the universe will fly apart into unregulated chaos and the
sky itself will fold up. We know about earthquakes and pestilences and famine.
We know about the destruction of all of the seas and the death of everything that
is in them, the destruction of the fresh water and the death of everything is
in them. We know
about hailstones of a
hundred pounds that will hit the earth. We know about fire.
We know about signs and
wonders. We know about miraculous resurrections. We know about
preachers in the end
time, great powerful witnesses. We know that there will be angels like
satellites flying across the mid-heaven in the latter days, preaching the
gospel of Jesus Christ so that all the world may hear and no one will have an
excuse. We know with exact information the future deaths of millions of people
and how they will occur. We know how the career of Satan will transpire and how
his millions of demons will operate, and how they will be released
systematically at the end time. Some belched up out of the pit itself, others released
from their captivity somewhere near the river Euphrates. We know about the
future of Israel
and its redemption. We
know also about the deadly persecution of the Jews. We know about the
anticipated joys of the
church, the bride of Christ and what awaits them. There is so much we know, so
much applicable to life, so much that brings us joy and gives us
responsibility. We know the ultimate price of sin and we know the ultimate
reward of holiness. We know that the rejected Jesus is coming again, not to be
rejected, but to be exalted. We know the One who came in humility will come in
glory, and the One who came and left will come never to leave
again.
We know the people
of God who belong to Christ will triumph over all persecution, all disaster, all
death and all judgment. We know where our eternal state is, it's up. How far
up, we're not sure. We know what it is like. It is marvelously described to us
and we'll get more into that description as we march on through the remaining
chapters.
We know where the
universe, the world, and everything that is in it and everyone who is in it is headed,
where it's going, how it will end. And that's just a little bit of what we
know. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could go into every history class and
every philosophy class in the world and tell them all that we know?
One specific truth
that we know which we are addressing in chapter 17 is that there is coming a
time on earth just before the return of Jesus Christ when there will be a
worldwide religious system. Everybody will, in a sense, be bowing down to the
same shrine. A time when there will be given to Satan a greater control of the
world than he has ever had, certainly than he even has now. A time when Satan
and all of his demons in the heavens will be cast down to earth, when a certain
number of temporarily bound demons in the pit will be released, when two
hundred million demons bound at the Euphrates River will overrun the earth. We
know there is coming a time when Satan's domain on the earth will reach its
apex, its high point.
In the midst of that
overrunning of Satan and demons in the world, there will be the collecting
together of a one-world empire, ruled by the Antichrist. At the same time there
will be a final form of world religion. The final empire of Satan, as we have
seen, which will be directed on earth by his demon possessed leader called the
Antichrist, the son of perdition, the man of sin, the little horn, the willful king,
whatever of the prophetic terms you want to use, will be the expression of
Satan's greatest impact as he makes a final attempt to wrest the world from God
and to prevent Christ from establishing His Kingdom and receiving His proper
glory.
Now this final
satanic world empire ruled by Antichrist, the man of sin, is called here in the
book of Revelation by the name Babylon...Babylon the great. That is the name
given to this empire, both in chapter 17 and in chapter 18. Chapter 17 and 18,
however, though they both deal with this great empire of Antichrist called
Babylon do differ.
Chapter 17 looks
particularly at the religious side, the spiritual side of Babylon whereas chapter
18 looks at the economic and political side of Babylon. So as we engage
ourselves in the
study of chapter 17, we
are studying the religious side of Satan's final world empire. As I told you
last time, the world is not going to become more and more irreligious, it is
going to become more and more religious. People are going to become more and
more involved in religion...not the true religion, but the false religion of
Satan himself. The closer we get to the end, the more religious they will become.
Satan's empire, then, has two sides initially. We'll talk more about how those
two sides resolve into one, but two sides initially...a religious side and a
political side, a spiritual side and an economic side.
Looking down at
verse 5 in chapter 17 we get the name of the worldwide form of religion. The
name of it is "MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." Now that's quite a name for a religion. I
don't mean by the name of the religion that someday someone will say to you
that I go to the First Mystery Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and
Abominations of the Earth church. I don't think you'll see it on the marquee
and I question whether it will ever show up on the stationery.
But that is really
what it is. It will have a much more subtle and deceptive name. But what it is,
is, first of all, mystery, that is it is more than physical, it is more than
geographical, it is more than a human organization. There's something deep and
demonic and supernatural and even as yet hidden about it. It is Babylon. Why? Because
it is the final form of religion when all the world's religions roll into one. And
in so doing it is appropriate to call it Babylon because Babel is where all the
world religions really began. They were all spawned out of a tower of Babel,
that is why Babylon the Great is the Mother of all Harlots. Harlotry in the
Bible always refers, when not referring to an actual harlot, to idolatry. Every
form of idolatry and false religion was spawned out of that original false
religion that developed at Babel. And when God scattered the people all over
the globe in different languages, He scattered their cult, their Babylonish
cult as well. And so Babylon was the originating place and all the harlot children
of Mother Babylon will come home to mother in the end. And the same Satan who
spawned
them all will regather
them all into one final form of world religion under the name BABYLON THE GREAT.
The term
"mother of harlots" because all false religion and idolatry is
characterized in Scripture as prostitution and harlotry. And then this is
called also "the mother of the abominations of the earth" because
nothing so offends God as false religion, nothing is so abominable. It is the
supreme blasphemy. So, a supremely blasphemous kind of idolatry will come to
pass that has deep demonic and hidden concepts involved in it and that demonic
kind of religion will reform itself around its Babylonish origins. The system
will be the spiritual side of Satan's world empire. Jesus, of course, warned
about this all the way back in the wonderful sermon that He preached on His own
return, the Olivet Discourse. In
Matthew chapter 24
and verse 21, "There will be a great tribulation such as has not occurred
since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever shall." Jesus
predicted this time called the Great Tribulation. "A time that unless
those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved, but for the sake
of the elect those days shall be cut short. Then if anyone says to you, `Behold
here is the Christ, or there He is.' Do not believe him, for false Christs and
false prophets will arise and will show great signs and wonders so as to
mislead if possible even the elect. Behold I have told you in advance."
They're going to be so powerful, these satanic
deceptions, these satanic
seductions, the harlot the whore is going to seduce people into her bed to
catch her fatal disease and die there with her, they're going to be able to do
that because of massive worldwide deceptions based upon demonic signs and
wonders that will deceive the whole world. And so well-orchestrated are they
that were it possible they would even deceive the elect.
Now, this is a very
essential element of Satan's final form of world rule because it is only
religion that can unite the world. Politics, economics can't do it. Culture is
too diverse. It has to be something transcending the physical, the
geographical, the historical. It has to be something in the realm of the supernatural.
Satan, who gave birth to all the counterfeits from one source, certainly has
the power with all of his minions to pull them all back. That one who is
disguised as an angel of light and whose ministers are as well angels of light,
that one who originally deceived Adam and Eve and deceived the people at Babel
will again deceive the world and collect them together.”
In our next SD we
will look at “The Extermination of the Harlot,” which covers the remaining
verses in Revelation and then it will be on to chapter eighteen which speaks of
how “Babylon” will be destroyed, something we already know will happen, for it
is seen in one of the bowl judgments.
Answer to yesterday’s
Bible question: “Works” (James
2:25). “In the same way, was not Rahab
the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent
them out by another way?” I have to say
that James is speaking of both Rahab and also Abraham in this section of his
letter and what he is saying is that both Abraham and Rahab demonstrated the
proof of their salvation by doing the works that they did. In Abraham’s case it was to offer his son
Isaac as a burnt offering, which the Lord stopped and gave him a lamb instead,
and in the case of Rahab she had trusted God for salvation and then
demonstrated her faith by hiding the spies.
Today’s Bible
question: “What did Jesus say would
cause the world to know that we are his disciples?”
Answer in our next SD.
8/26/2015 11:04 AM
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