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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
The Kingdom of Anti-Christ Symbolized by the Great Harlot.
The vision of the great harlot:
v. 1. And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters,
v. 2. with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
v. 3. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.
v. 4. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication;
v. 5. and upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.
v. 6. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.
Although this chapter makes the impression of an independent vision, it is very closely connected with the foregoing chapter and with the plagues of the seven angels, as the introduction shows: And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven vials, and spoke with me, saying, Come, I shall show thee the judgment of the great harlot that sits upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and those that inhabit the earth have become drunk with the wine of her fornication. One of the special messengers of the Lord that had poured out the vials of His wrath upon the kingdom of Anti-Christ and upon all his servants took John along to show him the doom, the execution of the sentence upon the anti-Christian harlot. With emphasis she is called the great harlot, for her impudence and shamelessness have become a proverb and a byword among the nations. It was a powerful harlot, for she exerted her authority over many waters, over many peoples; and it was a wily harlot, for she had induced the kings and princes of the earth to commit fornication with her, she had gained such power over them by her trickery that they willingly carried out her desires, and she had made all nations drunk with the wine of her fornication, with the glamour and pomp of her false doctrines, causing them to forget the love which they should bear to Jesus Christ alone.
John himself saw this harlot: And he took me away into a desert in the spirit. The prophet's soul and mind were dissociated from his body for a short while, in order that he might see this picture: And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast covered with names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns; and the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and wore ornaments of gold and precious stone and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand filled with the abominations and the filthiness of her fornication, and on her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and the abominations of the earth. The impression of the whole picture is one of abhorrence mingled with surprise that the great harlot should have succeeded so well with her designs against the earth and its inhabitants. Everywhere there is a lavish display of barbarous splendor, together with a repulsive show of the traffic in blood and in filth. The beast on which she is sitting is scarlet-colored and covered with blasphemous titles to take away the honor from the Lord of heaven, and its seven heads and ten horns make a strange and fearful combination. The woman herself, clothed with the garments of kings and bedecked with jewels which represent the riches of the world, all of which she had gathered in the course of her unspeakable traffic, had a cup of gold in her hand, the most dangerous feature in the picture, for it was filled with all the abominations and the filth of her fornication, of her adulterous life, with the doctrines of Satan, who tries to deceive the whole world. But on the forehead of the harlot John saw names which she had not inscribed there, for it explained to all men that would read just who and what this woman was. It was a name of mystery that was written there, as the Coptic version of the New Testament has it, and it told all men that this was Babylon the Great, the personification of the kingdom of Anti-Christ. And as she herself had left the Lord of her youth, so she had now become the mother of all other adulterous and idolatrous people in the world and the mother of all the greatest abominations on the earth.
The disgusting impression of the picture is heightened by the last part of the description: And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and I wondered, when I saw her, with a great wonder (a great amount of wondering). The kingdom of Anti-Christ is the devil's harlot, and since he is a murderer from the beginning, she has joined him in shedding the blood of saints and of witnesses of Christ, until she is in a continual state of inebriation as a result of the great amount of blood which she has consumed. No wonder that John stood fascinated by the very horror of the woman's aspect. See Isa_1:21.