We continue on today with our look at the false church of the end times. John has seen her symbolized as a woman dressed in gaudy clothes wearing expensive jewelry. She has a cup in her hand that contains something that has made her drunk. Earlier in the week we talked about the cup being filled with sin, and indeed it is, but it also contains something else. John says: "I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God's holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus." (Revelation 17:6a)
The false church will persecute the Christians of the world during the last days. This is why John views her intoxicated by her success in having Christians martyred for their faith. The power she wields has gone to her head and turned her into a sloppy drunk.
John says, "When I saw her, I was greatly astonished. Then the angel said to me: 'Why are you astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.'" (Revelation 17:6b-7) The angel isn't going to allow John---or us---to be ignorant about what all of this means. He's going to explain to us the symbolism contained in Chapter 17.
"The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not, and yet will come up out of the Abyss and go to its destruction." (Revelation 17:8a) It's going to help us a lot if we keep in mind that although the Antichrist is a person inhabited by Satan, the Antichrist also symbolizes a corrupt political and religious system. The Antichrist is so closely connected to the kingdom he will rule over that he and his kingdom are spoken of as if they are one and the same. This isn't the first time such a close connection has been made. When we think of Nazi Germany, don't we also think of Adolf Hitler? Don't we think of that "kingdom" and its "king" as one and the same? There are many examples we could find of this throughout history, but it most often happens when the king is either exceeding wicked or exceedingly powerful---or both. When the angel tells John the beast once was but now is not, most scholars believe he's speaking of a powerful kingdom that actually existed in history, then fell, then will experience a revival in the last days.
We need to look back at the book of Daniel for a clue about the identity of this kingdom. In Daniel 2, King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon had a prophetic dream regarding great empires of the ancient world. These empires were symbolized by a statue made up of a variety of materials. The feet on the statue represented the final kingdom that would be on the earth before the Lord returns to establish His eternal kingdom. The feet and toes were a mixture of iron and clay. This is important, because in Daniel's own prophetic dream about great empires of the world, a beast with iron teeth symbolized both the ancient Roman Empire and the final empire of the last days. (See Daniel 7.) This is why so many scholars and theologians think that the kingdom of the Antichrist will be, in some sort of way, a revival of the Roman Empire. That theory fits well with the angel's words when he says that this kingdom once was, now is not, and yet will come. We can't say exactly why the Roman Empire would be associated with the kingdom of the Antichrist. I think it's possible that he man of sin will be descended from an ancient Roman emperor.
Or it could be that his kingdom will be spiritually much like the Roman Empire with its idolatry and its forced emperor worship. Not only was ancient Rome very idolatrous, but it was a society in which it could be said "anything goes". Prostitution was legal and it involved men, women, and underage youths. Divorce was so easy to obtain that a person could divorce and remarry multiple times in the same year. It was a wealthy society where alcohol flowed freely and where the citizens regularly engaged in drunken, orgiastic feasts given in honor of various false gods. Persecution of Christians became widespread in the Roman Empire during the reign of that madman Emperor Nero, and even after his reign it was common for emperors to exile Christians who wouldn't burn incense to them and declare, "Caesar is God." John himself was living in exile for his faith when he wrote the book of Revelation. So we see that, whether or not the kingdom of the Antichrist is literally connected with the ancient Roman Empire, spiritually it is going to look very much like the ancient Roman Empire.
The angel tells John, "The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because it once was, now is not, and yet will come." (Revelation 17:8b) It appears that the Lord has always known who would accept Him and who would not. There are a number of passages in the Bible that indicate that the Lord knew everything about us long before we were ever conceived in our mother's wombs. The words of the angel indicates that there is a book in which the names are written of everyone who will ever accept the Lord as Savior. Their names are written down long before they ever make that decision. This doesn't mean that the Lord has chosen who will be saved and who won't be saved; I think it simply means that in His omniscience He knows every decision we will ever make before we make it. During the end times, those who have already accepted Him as Lord, and those who haven't yet made the decision but who will soon make it, have their names written in His book. They won't fall for the lies of the Antichrist.
We will conclude with verse 9 today because the remainder of the chapter is going to take some time. "This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits." (Revelation 17:9) Since Rome has long been called "the city of seven hills", this verse has been often interpreted to mean that the Antichrist will set up his headquarters in Rome. If he views himself as a "Caesar" and if he wants to be called "God" as the ancient Roman emperors did, we can well imagine him wanting to place his throne in Rome. If he views his kingdom as being as great as the Roman Empire in its heyday, we can understand why he would place his capital in Rome. If he is descended from an ancient Roman emperor, we can see why he would feel that he should rule his kingdom from Rome. In our day it's becoming easier and easier to trace our genealogy. Even when we can't trace it directly back by our family trees due to the absence of records the farther we go back in time, DNA tests can tell us a lot more than paper records can. We were just talking about those Ancestry DNA tests this week at work. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the man who will become the Antichrist somehow learns through modern science that he is directly related to an emperor of old. For someone with a mind like his, such a thing will only feed his ego. Such a thing will only confirm what he already believes: that he is entitled to rule the world.
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