| Home | Our Hope | |
| Bible Study |
|
February 1, 2025 |
| Come Out Of Her, My People | ||
The title of this study is a quote from the book of Revelation. As you probably know, the book of Revelation can be a difficult book to understand. We're going to take a look at that passage and the whole context around that passage to understand what we are supposed to, as God's people, get out of.
The quote in the title comes from Revelation 18, where God is calling some of his people to come out of this woman that they are in. We're also going to refer to Revelation 17 because it also tells us about this woman. Together those two chapters refer to this woman in a whole bunch of negative ways. The three that we're going to focus on are:
What is this telling us? Are we talking about real prostitution? What are we talking about, and why do people need to come out of this woman? And as I mentioned at the start, Revelation can be difficult to understand. That's because it frequently uses symbols to represent other things, so I'm going to have to do something here that I really hate doing. I'm going to have to just tell you the meaning of some of the symbols that are being used. I can't spend the time to explain to you why these symbols represent what they do. So, in some cases, I'm going to tell you what the meaning is without explaining why.
The harlot is spoken of in both chapters 17 and 18. Those two chapters are really dedicated to just the harlot, whatever she is. She is being judged by God, so this is telling us about what's going to happen to her. In the process, we learn a lot about who she is and what she has been up to. We're going to start at the beginning of chapter 17.
And one of the seven Angels who had with them the seven vessels, came and spoke with me saying, "Follow me; I shall show you the judgment of the Harlot who sits on many waters," (Revelation 17:1)
The phrase "sits on many waters" is one of those symbolic phrases. It symbolizes a person who "rules over many people." God is more interested in spiritual things, so the focus is really on spiritual leadership or on having a spiritual influence over people.
The word "harlot" is used in the Bible an awful lot, especially in the Old Testament, because of Israel and others. It refers to a prostitute in the physical sense sometimes, but God is much more interested in spiritual prostitution. A harlot is a woman who goes after other men for what she can get from them. We understand that in the physical sense. In the spiritual sense, it's a woman who goes after other gods for what she thinks she can get from them. Mostly that is how it is used in the Bible because of Israel turning to other gods.
That's how "harlot" is used in our verses. This harlot has left her husband and chased after other gods.
"For the Kings of Earth committed fornication with her and all Earth dwellers are drunk with the wine of her fornication." (Revelation 17:2)
The word "fornication" is related to the harlot and her prostitute business, so it's fornication in a spiritual sense. In the physical sense, fornication speaks of various kinds of invalid relationships, relationships that you should not have. In the spiritual sense, it speaks of invalid relationships between the church, God's people, and the world. That has been a problem throughout the Bible, the church mingling with the world, with the church forgetting that they don't belong in the world. That's really the big story about the harlot.
The verse also describes the earth dwellers as being drunk with wine. The word "drunk" is also used in the Bible many times, both in the physical and spiritual senses. The word "drunk" in the physical sense symbolizes a person who is confused, stumbling around, lost, or dazed. Those are all appropriate ways to think about that. In the spiritual sense, the meaning is much the same, confused, but in a spiritual way. A person stumbling around spiritually, lost, or dazed spiritually.
The verse also talks about the wine and the wine of her fornication in particular. And so wine, in a cup especially, is seen quite often in the Bible, more often in the New Testament. Wine, in that sense, is her life, who she has been as a person, and how she has lived as a person. So "wine" and "wine of her fornication" are talking about the life of fornication that she leads.
People are drinking that example she has lived and becoming drunk. And so in more literal terms, you could say that the way this woman has lived has caused other people to become drunk and confused about how they should live.
And he brought me to the wilderness in the Spirit, and I saw a woman who sat on a blood-red beast full of blasphemous names, which had seven heads and ten horns. (Revelation 17:3)
This verse uses the word "beast," which symbolizes a group or organization. This verse and those that follow will describe the beast and the woman symbolically. Once we understand those symbols, we will have a better understanding of who the beast and this woman are and be able to identify her.
The woman that we see here will turn out to be the harlot. They're just different names for the same person. The verses haven't told us that yet, but they will. Also, this harlot-woman symbolizes the same thing all women symbolize in prophecy, that is, churches, organizations of believers.
This harlot-woman symbolizes a church that should be the bride of Jesus, and therefore loyal to Jesus, but she's been acting the harlot and chasing after other gods. She is not doing what she should be doing.
In Revelation, sometimes the organizations it speaks of are called "beasts", and other times they're described as something else, as we see here, where the organization is called a harlot and a woman.
The other beast we see in this verse is just called a "beast". It is also an organization. It will turn out to be the world government. I won't explain much about that, but this same beast appears in other places, including the book of Daniel. From Daniel through Revelation, we see its form change slightly. It starts out as a beast with 10 heads, then we hear the story of how three of those heads are destroyed. So when the verse describes a beast with seven heads, we can tell that this is a late stage of that world government.
The verse also says that the woman sat on the beast. As we saw with the harlot "sitting" on the waters, where the meaning was "spiritually influencing", the same is true here. The harlot - woman (the harlot church) influences the beast (the world government).
The verse mentions that it's a blood red beast. Blood red is, in prophecy terms, very often linked with sin. That's the meaning here. This is a blasphemous, sinful beast that does all sorts of things that offend God.
The verse also says this beast is full of blasphemous names. Blasphemy is denigrating God, diminishing him. Of course God can't be diminished. The diminishment happens within the blasphemer. Blasphemous names would be how the beast refers to itself. So the verse is telling us that the beast is saying all sorts of things about itself that are blasphemies. One of the names it could give itself is "God." This blood red beast, full of blasphemous names, is calling itself all sorts of wonderful things that are blasphemies against God.
Back to the woman.
And the woman was wearing purple and scarlet gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls and had a cup of gold in her hand, and it was full of abominations and the filth of her fornication. (Revelation 17:4)
Lots of symbology here. That whole purple, scarlet, gold, pearls, precious stones, and all the rest is a description of two different things, kingship and wealth. By saying that she wears all of this, the verse shows that she believes that she is that kind of a person, that she is wealthy and a king.
She wears purple. In the Bible, purple is the color of royalty. Purple was an extremely hard color to make and therefore expensive. The only people who could afford to have purple garments were people who had a lot of wealth, which was royalty. Scarlet and gold and precious stones and pearls are all the other effects of wealth that we see here. This harlot - woman, which we know now to be a church organization, lives as a king, thinks of itself as a king, and as a wealthy person. This helps identify the organization.
As a symbol of a church, she should be described as dressed in white and unadorned.
The verse also says she has a cup of gold in her hand. We don't care so much about the gold; that's just another one of the symbols of wealth. We also notice the scarlet was gilt with gold. But the cup has an additional meaning that we mentioned before. It is her life and path. Jesus was one of the best examples of this. When he's praying to God the day before he's going to be executed, he prays to the Father and says, "Let this cup pass away from me if it is possible". He wants a different path, a different future.
Her cup is full of abominations and filth and fornication, which tells us that not only has she been doing these things, but she plans to keep on doing them, and she's not going to change. This is the path into the future that she sees for herself.
And upon her forehead was written: "Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the filth of Earth." (Revelation 17:5)
We saw that she was a harlot. Now the verse takes it a step further. She is also the mother of harlots, other churches that are like her. This is the consequence of her fornication. Others see her life and desire it. The metaphor falls apart here, but these other churches could have "merged with her" or "remained in her". They are her children, spawned by her, but they are separate from her.
This church is:
The verse also calls her Mystery Babylon the Great. Many people guess at what that means. It is complicated but very important to coming to an understanding of what's wrong with that church. That's next.
This Mystery Babylon name for her confuses a lot of people, and we need to spend a bit of time on it.
Revelation refers to this harlot, this woman, as Babylon, in two different ways:
Only once is the word "Mystery" used; the other 4 times it isn't. What does that tell us?.
The word "Mystery" is used in the New Testament to refer to things that are not understood, or difficult to understand, or not completely understood. It's not necessarily a secret. The word is used quite a bit; in fact, Paul uses that word quite often.
Some translations translate the word as secret instead, but that is not the best choice.
So what is the mystery here? What do we learn from this one reference where it calls her Mystery Babylon the Great? The reason that it's there just once has to be an indication that the text that follows is going to explain what this mystery is, or why she is a mystery.
That's what we saw in those verses. It says that she is the mother of harlots, and the mother of the filth of the earth. That's the mystery about her. The church that should be dressed in white is, in fact, not at all dressed in white, and is mothering harlots, and polluting the people of the earth with all of her ideas.
We're jumping to Revelation 18 now.
And after these things I saw another Angel from Heaven, who had great authority, and Earth was brightened by his glory. 2 And he shouted with a great voice: "Fallen, fallen, Babylon the Great! And it is become the abode for Demons and a prison to every impure and detestable spirit." (Revelation 18:1-2)
These verses contain one of those Babylon the great references that don't use the word "Mystery". They also contain some harsh words about her. She has become the home for demons, the place where demons live, and a prison to every impure or detestable spirit.
That's an interesting charge … for a church. Demons live there happily, even comfortably. It's their house. They wouldn't leave if they didn't have a good reason to leave. It's a church where demons live and play and frisk about, whatever demons might do. Then it also says it's a prison for all evil spirits. That tells us that, even if they wanted to leave, they couldn't leave. The church won't let them go. This imprisonment is meant in a figurative sense, of course. No human could hold a demon captive.
This is telling us about the teachings of the church, the doctrines of demons (1 Tim 4:1). The teachings of this church, the whole doctrine of this church, are evil because it was generated by evil spirits, and the church is not going to change that.
Benefactors of Her Fornication
There are people who are making money from her fornication. There was a hint at that before, but this time it will be detailed.
"Because she mixed of the wine of her fornication for all the nations, and the Kings of Earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of Earth have become rich by the power of her infatuation." (Revelation 18:3)
We covered the meaning of wine and the meaning of fornication before, so I won't go into those again. We see here that the kings of the earth, all the great people of earth, have committed this fornication. There is more to that than I can explain right now.
The verse also says that the merchants of the earth have become rich from their infatuation with her. People are so infatuated (intensely fascinated) with her fornication, with all of her false teachings and ideas, that merchants have become rich selling religious things to them. Remember that the daughter churches are like her.
We've finally come to the verses with our title phrase.
And I heard another voice from Heaven that said, "Come out from within her my people, lest you share in her sins, that you would not receive from her plagues. 5 Because the sins in her have touched Heaven, and God has called her evil to mind." (Revelation 18:4-5)
The verse doesn't just say, "Come out," it gives a reason why. If you stay in her, you may share in her sins. If you do that, you will share in God's judgment of her. That's a truism we know from our own lives. If you hang around with bad people, you're going to become like bad people. That influence is going to spread on you unless you are rock-solid.
Some of God's called people, his true people, are in this church. For some reason, they are blind spiritually and do not see what it is. There is every reason to think the harlot-daughter churches would also fall under this judgment.
God says, "Her sins have touched Heaven," which means they have become so great that judgment can't be put off any longer. The time has come to deal with it. Now of course, this prophecy is speaking of a future time.
"Pay her just as she also has paid, and give her double for her deeds. In the cup which she has mixed, mix her a double." (Revelation 18:6)
This is pretty clear. According to the way that she treated others, pay her back but double. Both sentences say essentially the same thing. The second sentence refers to her cup, which we talked about before. The contents of the cup are her ways and her path. So according to what she has done and is, she will be paid back but double. We might say it a different way. She planned to continue living the way she had been living. Now, what she is and the things she has done are going to come back on her, in double strength.
Glorifying herself is an important aspect of who she is. Remember Revelation 17 and 18 aren't just about what's going to happen to her; it's about who she is. These details are how we will identify her at that time so that we can see prophecy fulfilled, but even now, we may be able to identify her.
"[…] she glorified and exalted herself, give such suffering and sorrow, for she said in her heart, 'I sit a queen, and I am not a widow and I shall not see sorrow.'" (Revelation 18:7)
What she says in her heart is a very arrogant statement, but it is difficult to see because it is a bit cryptic. That "I sit a queen" statement is not the first appearance in the Bible. Pretty much the same words are also in Isaiah 47:7-8. In that case, the verses are talking about a literal Babylon, the real city of Babylon, and its arrogant thoughts about itself. That was before it was conquered by the Medo-Persians. That's the connection between the two - the same kind of arrogance; the same kind of fall.
The arrogance of literal Babylon is being used to tell us about this figurative Babylon we see in Revelation. We'll spend some time looking into what she means by those words, beginning with, "I sit a Queen."
"[…] for she said in her heart, 'I sit a queen, and I am not a widow and I shall not see sorrow.'" (Revelation 18:7)
She says three things:
We're going to group two of them together, "I sit a queen" and "not a widow," because they are related. So, she says:
The phrase, "I sit a queen," means I am a queen in my own right. I didn't become a queen through any other process. I am a queen because I am queen material. I have the royal lineage. I am a queen because I have a right to be a queen.
She says this because a common way for a queen to become ruler was through the death of her husband, the king. So she says, "I am not a widow," which means I didn't become a queen because my husband died. This takes us back to, "I sit a queen," which means she is a queen in her own right.
This statement makes an implication that her husband is not dead. She's implying that Jesus, her husband, is not dead. But if he is alive and isn't ruling, then that, in turn, implies that he is second to her. No church should have that idea. That offends God.
Her last point is "I shall not see sorrow." In Isaiah, these same words can have two meanings. They speak of not losing children or not losing influence, power, or authority. She's contemptuously saying nobody can do anything to her. She's invincible, can't be touched, and will not lose anything.
The verses in Isaiah continue after the part in Revelation ends. He adds a judgment part which says these two things will come on you suddenly, in one day, a loss of children and widowhood. We've already seen the "one day" reference in the Revelation verses."
We've already seen that the harlot has harlot-daughters. They are not her, not part of her church, but they are like her. She is rejecting the idea that those daughters are lost to her. She wants them to come back into her.
We're going back to Revelation 17 now, to verse 16, which we had skipped before. This is still part of the judgment of the harlot.
"And the ten horns that you saw on the Beast will hate the Harlot and will make her desolate and naked and will devour her flesh and will burn her in fire." (Revelation 17:16)
We saw that the beast has 7 heads and 10 horns. The beast is a world government. The heads represent divisions within that government, like states or provinces. The horns represent leaders.
Notice that this is a different type of organization than any country I know of. In the U.S., for example, there is one president at the top level; below that, the government is divided into geographic areas called states, and each state has a governor. In this beast government, at this time, there are 10 people at the top level. It isn't clear how the divisions are governed. This changes later. Each of the 10 leaders becomes directly responsible for a division. This probably means that some divisions have more than one leader.
The verse is telling us these 10 leaders are tired of being influenced by the harlot - woman - church. Despite being a harlot church, she likely still teaches Jesus and salvation, though confused versions of those, and likely has doctrines like anti-abortion and anti-homosexuality. That's still too much for the 10 leaders. They hate her and find a way to get rid of her.
They will:
Skipping ahead to chapter 18, we see more about the judgment.
"Because of this, in one day there will come upon her plagues, death, sorrow, and starvation, and she will burn in fire, because the Lord Yahweh is powerful who judges her." (Revelation 18:8)
The harlot church will come to an end. The picture is of an organization that still has its leadership but has little else. The final blow happens in a single day.
We don't see any mention of the harlot daughters in this judgment. I don't know if there's a reason for that or whether they are not mentioned because the focus here is on the harlot mother. I don't see anything that would say that they're being left out because they're not going to be judged. You would think that being harlot daughters, they would also be judged, but maybe there's a lesser judgment on them.
We know that this happens during the anti-Christ reign over the world. The last and worst part of that is called the Great Tribulation. The final part of that judgment likely happens late in that period.
The verses we covered say God will judge the harlot-woman-mother-church for various things: for chasing after a husband other than Jesus - that's spiritual harlotry, for murder - we didn't look at that verse, for the evil things she has done that polluted the people, and for mothering churches like her.
A church never falls this far away from God in a short time. It also takes a long time to become a worldwide church and to become powerful. So we know that this church has been around for a long time.
We also saw that she sees herself as invincible. God despises that attitude and says, no you're not invincible - you're about to suffer.
The question we have all been asking is: who is this harlot-woman-mother-church?
It's possible that this church doesn't exist yet. I doubt that because there isn't enough time before the Second Coming for a new church to form and do all of the things this church has done.
If we look at all the things these verses have said about that church and look around to see if there is a church like that now, we have to say it is the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). Even people within the RCC have said that it must be them.
The same words that the harlot said about herself are the words the RCC has used to talk about herself. She sees herself as being a queen and her husband as king. She would never say that Jesus is a co-king with her or that he is second to her now, but that is how she acts. She lives out those words.
As an example, she says that the Pope is the Vicar of Christ. If you're not a Catholic, that might be new to you. The phrase "Vicar of Christ" means the Pope is the "acting Messiah" while Jesus is gone. He works in the power, the authority, and the office of the Messiah. None of the apostles ever claimed such a thing, but here is the RCC Pope calling himself that.
Not everybody agrees with this idea that this harlot is the Roman Catholic Church. There are Catholics and Protestants who say these chapters are talking about Israel. That doesn't make any sense for many reasons. Israel was judged back in Jesus' time. That was way in our past, not in our future. God has very different plans for Israel in the end-times. Also who would the harlot-daughters of Israel symbolize? Nothing that these chapters have said matches Israel.
There's a good reason why Catholics and Protestants would want it to be somebody other than themselves. Obviously the Catholics say this because they don't want it to be them. The Protestants don't want it to be the RCC because that would mean the Protestants (and the Orthodox) would be the harlot-daughters. History is very clear that they both came out of her.
Most Protestants say that the harlot-church is the RCC. As I said above, there are some Catholics who agree with that. That's a surprising level of honesty. There are certainly Catholics within the RCC who recognize the evil things that the RCC has done throughout history.
I do want to put one little extra note in here. This is a prophecy that tells us of our future. The RCC is probably not exactly the same Roman Catholic Church now as it will be at that time. It will probably be worse, enough so that God decides it needs to be dealt with.
Coming back to our main topic, "Come Out of Her, My People", perhaps the greatest failure of Christianity is that not enough people are prepared to leave a church organization when it goes bad. Church organizations do go bad. That started with Israel. There seems to be an unwritten idea within church teaching that it's illegal or against God to leave a church.
When wily false teachers move into a church, they do it quietly and slowly. They start building a group of people around them who support them. When they take control of a church, despite what you might want to do, you can't make any change to move the church back to true doctrine. Then, leaving is the way to correct that. In these verses, we see God saying, get out of that church. Plainly God doesn't have a problem with leaving a bad church.
A church organization is not a sacred thing before God. It's just a group of believers.