Babylon - A Mystery Revealed Part 1. Sam Soleyn

Transcription

1 1 8/13/2008 1:07 PM Babylon - A Mystery Revealed Part 1 Sam Soleyn In the recent events that have rocked the world, there has been a rush to understand biblical prophecy. And perhaps no subject has drawn any greater attention than the subject found in Revelation 17 and 18, the reference to the woman Babylon. Now you've heard all manner of speculations, some you've heard on TV, a lot you've heard or read in books or heard from local pulpits. The general speculation is, Well, is America Babylon and is this marking the end of our civilization and our society as Americans? What's fascinating to me is how Americentric we are in our point of view. That is, we're always trying to understand biblical prophecy from where we're sitting. So we fall easy prey to those who come along and say, Well, you know, it just seems to me that America is Babylon. Well it would help for us to review some of the things that were said in Revelation 17 and 18 regarding Babylon, Babylon the great. The whole idea of these messages is to keep God's people from becoming panicked, to help them to stay on track, to keep them from being distracted by every wind of doctrine. It was said that in the old days when they trained war horses, they would explode cannons and firearms near to the heads of the horses so that they would become used to the sound of alarm, and the sound of noise, and sudden startling; loud noises as would be common in a field of battle. There's a Scripture from the book of Jeremiah, the 10th chapter, in which the prophet Jeremiah asks this question, he says, If you stumble on the level ground, how will you do when you are running with horses? And if you are entangled when things are normal, how will you do in the thickets by the Jordan? Which of course was an indication that there were lions in the thickets. We're seeing a great deal of panicked scattering and blind running away and panic in the body of Christ today by these events. And because of this, believers who are marginal are becoming easily picked off by those who will throw out outrageous suggestions, but in panic everything looks good. So my intent is to keep your feet settled, that you not be alarmed by the events that are coming upon the earth. Paul said this, Jesus said this, See to it that you are not alarmed, for these things must happen. So the intent of these series of messages that have emphasized the prophetic have to do more with settling the hearts of the believers keeping you stable, keeping you focused, so that you will be able to endure and you'll be able to make sense out of and you'll be able to understand the things that are happening in our time.

2 2 8/13/2008 1:07 PM Now I'd like for us to take a good look today at the woman of Revelation 17, and this will be presented in a series of at least three messages. So I urge you to get the tapes for these three messages, because I believe that it will help you remain focused. Now as we begin I'd like for us to read from Revelation 17 beginning at verse 1. Pay close attention to the roll in of this vision because it ties in perfectly with another roll in, another way that the Scriptures present a comparable vision, One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, 'Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.' Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. And there I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. This title was written on her forehead: MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.' And one other Scripture, verse 9 of the same chapter 17 of Revelation, This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other is yet to come, and so on. Now let's review what we read. One of the angels unveiling the Revelation to John, one of those who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to John, Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters. And then this angel takes him away to a great and high mountain and shows him a woman sitting on a scarlet beast. Then he describes the apparel, the way the woman was dressed, and talks about her name, her name was a mystery, Babylon the great. Now it means that the intent here is to show a mystery. Now as we get into this mystery, look at this other passage. This one now is from Revelation 21 at verse 9. Exactly the same roll in, the same introduction to this passage, is seen. I'm reading them side by side. Revelation 21:9 says, One of the seven angels who had one of the bowls of the seven last plagues came and said to me, 'Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb. Let's review what we read from Revelation 17 concerning Babylon. One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, 'Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute.' Now do you see any similarity? Of course. The same exact framework, one of the angels who had the seven bowls was the one who said to him, Come, I will show you the prostitute, and one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls says, Come, I will show you the Bride of the Lamb. Then this is what happens: the angel took him into the desert to show him the prostitute and then, he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high and he showed me the Holy City coming down out of heaven from God. So he takes him first to the desert to show him the prostitute, then he takes him to a great and high mountain to show him the Bride; in both cases he was carried away in the Spirit. Which means that this was meant to be not a natural, but a symbolic, reference; a symbolic reference as opposed to a natural reference. And then he describes the woman of Revelation 17 covered with gold and silver and pearls, which are human adornments. But this Woman, who is the true Bride, she is covered in the following way, shone with the glory of God and it's brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper clear as crystal. Now, one of the women is adorned with human

3 3 8/13/2008 1:07 PM wealth, the other is adorned with the glory of God. One of the women is called by the name of a city, Babylon; the other Woman is called by the name of a city as well, Jerusalem. One is the mother of prostitutes and the Jerusalem that is above is the mother of us all if we're righteous. So what do you see in the contrast of these two women? You see on the one hand the prostitute. A prostitute is a reference to a woman who engages in sexual activity, but for elicit purposes, without a relationship of marriage. A bride also is involved in the intimacy with her husband that is personified in a sexual relationship. One type is perverse, the prostitutes view and ways is a perverse way; the brides way is holy and pure. So the two women are contrasts of each other and one is the real Bride, and the other is the counterfeit bride, indeed, the other is no bride at all but she pretends that she has a relationship. One seems confident in her relationship to her husband, the other is looking for a husband, so she commits adultery with the kings of the earth. Working from the point of view of the true Bride, we know what she is, or shall I say we know who she is. The true Bride of Christ is the one who maintains purity, integrity, and faith throughout all the ages and is faithful to Him. If that's a reference to (and indeed it is) to the true body of Christ, then what is the other, what is the prostitute? The prostitute clearly is a reference to that which is false and an imitation. So the question is: When did the false come into being; when did the true come into being; why is the false named Babylon and why is the true named Jerusalem? If we begin where we are asking these questions, the first introduction that we have in Scripture to the false, is the same introduction that we have to the true. Now, as a setup to this, Jesus is talking in Matthew 23 to the city of Jerusalem and He says, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent unto you, how often would I have gathered you, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, but you would not. In chapter 23 He refers to Jerusalem in such a fashion as this, He says, You have killed the prophets, all the righteous blood shed on the earth might come on you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the son of Zachariah son of Berekiah, whom you slew between the temple and the altar. So Jesus identified the blood of Abel, from the point of the shedding of the blood of Abel, to the point of the shedding of the blood of Zacharia, son of Berekiah, as being all those in the Old Testament whose blood was spilled by the competition that wages war against the saints. You see, false religion has not been content with just speaking a doctrine; it has actively and aggressively waged war against the people of God. And scriptures identify the originating point of this warfare with Abel. And in Jesus' day moves all the way down to the prophet Zacharia and calls what the Jews were doing a present version of the ancient harlotry. Now, what happened with Abel? Do you remember the story of Cain and Abel, and how they both came to offer sacrifices? What sacrifice did Cain offer? Cain offered the fruit of his own hands, the works of his own hands. Abel, on the other hand, offered a lamb. If you take Abel's lamb and run it through history, where does it end up? Abel's lamb ends up on the cross of calvary. So a pure and true relationship with God comes through Christ, and is by the shedding of blood. Now that indicates that there is always an atonement, always an offering for our sins, because we are inherently unable to sacrifice an acceptable sacrifice to God.

4 4 8/13/2008 1:07 PM From the time of the fall of man, man was put out of the garden and he could not just come back to God whenever he wanted to. The way for him to come back had to be prepared because his sin had produced a wall of separation between him and God and there had to be a door, an entrance again, to God. And the blood of the Lamb was always that entrance. So Abel offered the way of entrance and offered a type of Christ, the blood of the lamb, typifying the blood of Christ that would come centuries later. But Cain offered the fruit and the work of his hands, as a result of this the LORD said to Cain after rejecting his sacrifice, He said to him, Cain, sin croucheth at the door, in short, This way exposes you to sin without redemption. Now Cain, you would have thought, would have been grateful for his correction, but he was not. It said, he was filled with anger. Now you remember the story so you know what he did, he invited his brother to join him in the fields, and when his brother did, Cain murdered Abel. The first murder ever to be committed was a murder based on religion. A religious murder was when the jealousy of Cain rose up and stuck a blow that spilled the blood of Abel. From that time on, religion has been killing the saints and drinking their blood. That's why the woman is sitting on the beast holding this cup in her hand. This cup is filled with the blood of the saints. There is an absolute, uncompromising hatred in false religion for the true Bride. Now the question is: Why is false religion called Babylon and why is the Bride of Christ referred to as Jerusalem, and specifically in the Revelation as the 'New' Jerusalem? This is the mystery, mystery Babylon. Well here is the answer to the question: as the children of Israel became, in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, a type for the people of God in the New Testament, the body of Christ. We understand many things about the way things actually are in the types and shadows that the Old Testament presents which now come into the light in the New Testament. So, for example, the enslavement of Israel took place in two places in the Old Testament; the first was in Egypt and the second was in Babylon. Now Egyptian slavery was fundamentally different from Babylonian slavery, here is something of the difference. At the time that Israel was taken into slavery in Egypt, they did not come from the land of Canaan, which was a gift from God to Abraham. It is true that Abraham lived in that land, so did Isaac, and so did Jacob. But when Jacob came down to Egypt, he did not come down as a slave, he was invited down. And his descendants lived in Egypt for a total of 430 years. By contrast, Israel was taken into Babylonian captivity for a period of 70 years. So in sense they grew from a place of being free, invited guests into Egypt, to where they were subsequently enslaved. The significance of this is that they had not yet come into the land that God had given them as an inheritance, nor were they separated out by this time as the people of God. So Israels slavery, in Egypt, is an economic slavery; they are made to work and make bricks without straw and build the cities of pharaoh. But the slavery in Babylon is a different thing. Here, God has already called them out as His chosen people, they are regarded as that lineage through which the Holy Seed, Christ, would come. And they represent this slim, silver cord, as it were, through which the promises of God would be tied from one age to another. And as far as we know, there was no other plan; God had made a promise to Abraham that in his Seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The slavery, therefore, in Babylon was a very particular kind of slavery because you notice again, and again, and again in Babylon the kings of Babylon, whether it was Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar or some other, routinely tried to get the children of Israel to turn away

5 5 8/13/2008 1:07 PM from God. So the character of the slavery in Egypt was economic, but in Babylon it was religious. The intent was to snuff out the light as it was even about to come into the world through these people, through the Jews. Or if you like, to use my former analogy, to cut the silver cord so that there is no connection between the promise of God and the fulfillment of that promise. Babylon is where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are challenged to give up their lives or be consumed by the flames. Or Daniel, challenged to quit praying to God or to face the den of lions. The psalmist who wrote that particular psalm about the captivity in Babylon, characterized it this way, he said, By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, there we wept when we remembered Zion. And then he goes on to say, If I forget thee o Jerusalem let my right hand forget it's cunning. Showing the press that's upon them to give up their understanding of God and their faith in God. Babylon, therefore, stands for the full court press of the spirit of religion to try to swallow up the people of God and break the lineage that would produce the Holy Seed through whom deliverance would come. So false religion is not content to simply oppose the saints; false religion will swallow up the truth and render it null and void and make it impossible for man to come to know God. So in this message I have established the first plank of several that I want to establish, that is, the identity of the woman of Revelation 17; the reference to Babylon the great is a reference to false religion. Correspondingly, the reference to Jerusalem shows the contrast of the Bride to the harlot; as Babylon is the harlot, so Jerusalem is the Bride. Jerusalem, as you know, is the ancient word for 'shalom' or 'shaleem' which means 'peace'. And the city of our God, the city of the dwelling place of our God, is the city of peace. And it's a type of the kingdom of God. So we're born again from above, we're born again not of corruptible seed but from incorruptible Seed. So the New Jerusalem which is from above is the mother of us all and it contrasts between Babylonian harlotry, the spirit of religion, and the Spirit of truth. The spirit of confusion and chaos and the Spirit of peace. Now we'll focus on coming out of Babylon as we get into the next message. So I hope that you will stay with me as we continue to discuss and develop the woman of Revelation 17, mystery Babylon the great.