Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” And 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. The 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. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her, I marveled greatly.
Comment: As I read this passage my understanding is of wickedness symbolically embodied in a prostitute. A prostitute is a person (usually a woman) who sells their body for money. God is the One to whom the people of God owe devotion. The church, the Bride of Christ, has sadly often sold itself into heresy and worshipped Satan. Maybe not by name, but by transferring their devotion away from the truth of God, which is given to us in His Son, Jesus the Living Word, and in His written Word, the Bible. Instead of going all the Way into Canaan (representing the place where God means His people to be), the woman is content to live in the Wilderness of Heresy. Some think that the prostitute represents the Church Rome, which has added to and subtracted from the true gospel. Others think that it may be Islam, which came from a rebellion to Judaism and Christianity. – as a terrible heretical perversion of the truth!. The concept of fleeing from heresy is much more important to me than knowing exactly what ‘Babylon’ means. God knows and I suspect that history will one day make it clear to us. Babylon sucks the blood out of believers and leaves them martyred!
Prayer: Keep me, please, ‘Standing on the Word of God’.
As I read it! 