Mutually assured destruction of evil. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
This chapter features a distracting vision: the super luxurious and fancy Whore of Babylon riding on the back of the great satanic beast of corrupt political and military power. The vision comes after the woes of judgement – we just had 7 bowls of wrath poured out in the last chapter – and it precedes a final battle at Armageddon.
Wikipedia summarises how numerous people have gone crazy trying to figure out who or what the whore of Babylon is. It’s a catchy phrase, it rolls off the tongue of religious maniacs in many a tv show and movie.
Believers particularly love to say it’s churches other than theirs. Protestant reformers tended to say it was the Catholic church. Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Seventh Day Adventist etc. all seem to have claimed that it was the rest of the so-called Christians.
But why would John of Patmos fire off a letter to encourage Christians struggling with the first waves of Roman anti-Christian persecution that talked about “evil” churches that wouldn’t even exist until 100s of years into the future? It’s hardly a pressing issue for his beleaguered audience.
Makes sense that he’s talking about Rome, the latest (at time of writing) of various evil empires that shape the biblical narrative and prophesy. And sure, the message probably applies equally to numerous evil empires that will come after Rome…
Evil empires fall. Evil eats itself.
It’s so easy to get distracted by the setup and miss the denouement of this chapter. The evil powers of this age may seem to align with a general victorious movement of evil, but it’s only temporarily so. They fall victim to the destroyer. Satan would throw everyone under the bus eventually if he could.
It would be nice, as my Bible blog crawls to an end, to have a narrative arc of value-add I could point to from the process. So I could say something like “I read the whole Bible, and it did me a power of good, I was a mess, there were tough lessons along the way, and I’ve come out the other side in a better place”
I’m not going to get it. Everything seems as much if not more of a mess. Kelly’s had to quit her job because of bullying, I’ve lost my professional status and career and am surviving on shift work, I’ve just had a couple of weeks of difficult ructions in church, my daughter is not speaking to me. Inflation is rampant, pandemic, war, natural disasters. Evil seems to go from bad to worse and I feel a bit like Habukuk, who pointed out to God the evils all around him, only to be told “never fear I’m raising up the Babylonians to come and destroy it all for you”.
Revelation is a tough read for a tough life. Clinging to hope as all hell breaks loose. I don’t feel as wounded or miserable as the last paragraph sounds. I’m actually quite calm and satisfied this morning, as I dose up on flu pills to make it through 7 hours of shifts I can’t afford to cancel. But I was discussing with Kelly this sense that as you get older, there seem to be more bad people winning a lot more than you were aware of when you were young.
The fancy ruling power in this chapter, dripping with jewels, holding a golden cup filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries, surrounded by acolytes drunk on her wine. It’s the image of this loss of innocence. This perception that evil is everywhere.
I listened to a podcast to cheer me up, about one of the first abolitionists. Strategic error, because the guy responded to the most horrific sadism against slaves, some of the darkest evil that men do.
But he prayed for this world, he didn’t just accept it. He did what he could and he had influence. And the evil of slavery did largely eat itself. One person’s decency inspired another and another and another.
Don’t be on the side of evil, don’t be daunted by evil. Pray, trust and wait for it to pass, speak and act prophetically against it.