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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 38. Heart-Breaking
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Heart-Breaking
The sixth view is a description of the system of iniquity which has been thus judged and destroyed. [Note: Revelation 17.] In the symbolical language there is a strange woman; she is sitting on an equally strange beast, seven headed and ten horned. The beast is explained as being the kingdoms or civil governments of earth. [Note: Rev_17:9-13.] The woman is being carried by the beast, that is, what she represents is supported by these governments or kingdoms.
What is represented by this woman? The name on her forehead is "Babylon." The next chapter speaks of the city of Babylon, this of a system called Babylon, having its seat or centre in the city. The answer to the question is a most distressing one, that well-nigh breaks one's heart to make. What is the system that has for the past sixteen hundred years been supported by the civil governments of the earth, and has been drunken with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus? There is but one answer to one only a little familiar with history. It is the outer organization known historically as "the Church." This word "church" must be taken at its simplest, fullest, broadest meaning. The Roman Catholic is the great main stem; the Greek Orthodox is the earliest great split-off, the Church of England a later split-off; and the varying split-offs date from the Reformation time up to the present. These all, with certain small primitive bodies, historically group themselves as the Church.
The two symbolical characteristics of this woman are the two dominant characteristics of all branches of this historic church, i.e., supported by civil powers, which has meant dominance by these powers; and, intolerance by each of all the others, and of the hated Jew, intolerance to the point not merely of blood, but of a riot of blood. The exceptional periods and branches only emphasize these two, as the dominant characteristics of this historical Church. The branches that have been organized "free" of civil support, though large in themselves, make up a small part of the whole, and have at some time or other shown the same spirit of intolerance toward each other, and have been supported more or less by the money of those who confessedly are not Christ's followers.
This is both startling and heartbreaking. John is startled terrifically. The shock to him would naturally be greater because, while he was conscious of evil in the Church then, it had not developed yet to the point of these two named characteristics. A little change in the translation will make plainer how terribly John was shaken.
The old version says "when I saw her I wondered with a great admiration;" [Note: Rev_17:6.] the revisions, "I wondered with a great wonder." A little more accurate and full translation would be, "I was so stupefied with astonishment that my brain reeled and seemed about to lose its balance." So great was the terrible shock to both brain and heart of what is here shown to him.
It breaks one's heart today to read it, realizing even so little of just how much it means. Yet we have been prepared for it a little by Paul's word about the restraining One being withdrawn. This is the picture of the climax reached in the time of unrestrained evil during the tribulation. But at the last the beast throws the woman off. The governments will throw aside the Church so long supported and used, and give all their strength to the new leader, who wants all worship to be of himself openly as well as secretly. This is the sixth view, the description of the system, Babylon, as seen from above.
The last look is at the city of Babylon, [Note: Revelation 18.] and its destruction. This is the centre and capital of the system. The natural question is, what city is meant here? The seven mountains "on which the woman sitteth" has naturally led many to think of the seven-hilled City of Rome. But the fact already noted that this book of Revelation is a gathering up of all the Bible, and only that, gives the sure clue to the correct answer. From the time of the forming of the Hebrew nation, the Bible never touches history except such as occurs during the time of Israel's history as a nation. A thoughtful review of the Book makes this clear.
What is the city in the Bible answering to the description of Babylon given here:—"the great city which reigneth over the Kings of the earth," "Babylon the great"? [Note: Rev_17:18; Rev_16:19; Rev_18:10, Rev_18:18-21.] Let one begin back in Genesis, [Note: Gen_11:1-9.] with the attempt by the whole race to build a great city, then think through the books of Kings and Chronicles, the captivity, and especially the prophetic books, and then ask what city in this Book is "the great city"? There is but one answer—Babylon, the city on the Euphrates.
And again comes the almost irresistible impulse to begin to study out improbabilities and probabilities. We say, "Babylon rebuilt! do you believe that?" But our purpose in this little series of talks is not to study present conditions, but only to find out what the Book seems to teach. This word may however be added. In the many passages regarding Babylon in the prophecies, one is often quoted as indicating that in the purpose of God, the ruined capital on the Euphrates will never be rebuilt. [Note: Isa_13:19-22.] Let it be simply, thoughtfully noted, that a rather careful examination of the present conditions at the old Babylon ruins, and then of the detailed language in this Isaiah passage, makes it quite clear that the conditions there, while evidently a fulfilment thus far of this passage, yet do not satisfy fully the language. It looks rather like another evidence of that marvellous mastery in the use of language in Scripture which adjusts itself to different events with long intervals between.
This is the seventh of these views. All seven views must be taken together, to get an understanding of what will take place during this terrible three years and a half.