SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/26/2015
9:44 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Review of Revelation
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Unknown
Message of the
verse: As promised I want to quote
from a sermon by John MacArthur that he gave in March of 1994 on the 17th
chapter of Revelation entitled “The Destruction of the Final World Empire PT-3.” This will be all that we have for this
Spiritual Diary today.
“Revelation 17 is our text tonight
in our ongoing study of this great apocalypse. I feel like I need to make a
brief apology to those of you who have not been with us in our study of
Revelation because you're going to get dropped right in the middle here and you
may feel a little bit suspended because you don't know what has gone before for
several weeks, many months and even into the years that we've been studying
this great, great book.
We turn again to this marvelous chapter and we will pick up where we
left off last time as we concluded the first six verses. Some introductory
comments, I think, are appropriate as we set the context.
We have learned repeatedly through all of the months of our study of Revelation,
the apocalypse, the unveiling of Jesus Christ, that the theme of this book is
Christ Himself. And that the truth of this book is not to be avoided but it is
to be understood and it is to be incorporated into life. The life of every Christian
exposed to this book will be dramatically altered,
dramatically
changed. And so it should be.
The promise of our Lord Himself in chapter 1 verse 3 is, "Blessed
is he who reads and those who hear the words of the prophecy and heed the
things which are written in it, for the time is near." That is a
beatitude, that is a blessing. We have indeed been blessed as we have studied,
as we have read, as we have heard, as we have heeded the great truths of this
book. We have seen its three major divisions...the visions of the exalted
Christ in the glory of His
resurrection life as
He ministers in His church in chapters 1 to 3. And the vision of the glorious
and exalted Christ as He appears in heaven in chapters 4 and 5. The visions of
the exalted and glorified Christ as He unleashes judgment on the earth,
punishing those who are ungodly and reject the gospel, at the same time
preserving unto eternal life those who believe and belong to Him. And that in chapter
6 and right on through chapter 18. So that's the section we're in, we're in the
section of the unfolding of the judgment of Christ as He takes back the
universe which is in the hands of the usurper, Satan himself.
We are already now coming to the end
of this period of judgment. It ends in chapter 18. And then in chapter 19 the
climactic return of Jesus Christ and that ushers us into the final part of this
book which is the glorious vision of the returning, conquering Lord as He comes
with His saints to destroy the ungodly, to rescue His own, to establish His Kingdom
which will usher in the eternal new heavens and the new earth...all the way on
right out to the very end of chapter 22.
And throughout the
months that we have been studying this great book we have learned so much.
We know where
history is going and why it's going there and how it will get there. We know
how man's final years on earth will be lived out. We have seen previews of
holocausts of judgment that make any other earthly catastrophe a small and
insignificant thing. We know that the universe will fly apart into unregulated
chaos and the sky itself will fold up. We know about earthquakes and pestilences
and famine. We know about the destruction of all of the seas and the death of
everything that is in them, the destruction of the fresh water and the death of
everything is in them. We know
about hailstones of
a hundred pounds that will hit the earth. We know about fire.
We know about signs
and wonders. We know about miraculous resurrections. We know about
preachers in the end
time, great powerful witnesses. We know that there will be angels like
satellites flying across the mid-heaven in the latter days, preaching the
gospel of Jesus Christ so that all the world may hear and no one will have an
excuse. We know with exact information the future deaths of millions of people
and how they will occur. We know how the career of Satan will transpire and how
his millions of demons will operate, and how they will be released
systematically at the end time. Some belched up out of the pit itself, others released
from their captivity somewhere near the river Euphrates. We know about the
future of Israel
and its redemption.
We know also about the deadly persecution of the Jews. We know about the
anticipated joys of
the church, the bride of Christ and what awaits them. There is so much we know,
so much applicable to life, so much that brings us joy and gives us
responsibility. We know the ultimate price of sin and we know the ultimate
reward of holiness. We know that the rejected Jesus is coming again, not to be
rejected, but to be exalted. We know the One who came in humility will come in
glory, and the One who came and left will come never to leave
again.
We know the people of God who belong to Christ will triumph over all
persecution, all disaster, all death and all judgment. We know where our
eternal state is, it's up. How far up, we're not sure. We know what it is like.
It is marvelously described to us and we'll get more into that description as
we march on through the remaining chapters.
We know where the universe, the world, and everything that is in it and
everyone who is in it is headed, where it's going, how it will end. And that's
just a little bit of what we know. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could go into
every history class and every philosophy class in the world and tell them all
that we know?
One specific truth that we know which we are addressing in chapter 17
is that there is coming a time on earth just before the return of Jesus Christ
when there will be a worldwide religious system. Everybody will, in a sense, be
bowing down to the same shrine. A time when there will be given to Satan a
greater control of the world than he has ever had, certainly than he even has
now. A time when Satan and all of his demons in the heavens will be cast down
to earth, when a certain number of temporarily bound demons in the pit will be
released, when two hundred million demons bound at the Euphrates River will
overrun the earth. We know there is coming a time when Satan's domain on the
earth will reach its apex, its high point.
In the midst of that overrunning of Satan and demons in the world,
there will be the collecting together of a one-world empire, ruled by the
Antichrist. At the same time there will be a final form of world religion. The
final empire of Satan, as we have seen, which will be directed on earth by his
demon possessed leader called the Antichrist, the son of perdition, the man of
sin, the little horn, the willful king, whatever of the prophetic terms you
want to use, will be the expression of Satan's greatest impact as he makes a
final attempt to wrest the world from God and to prevent Christ from establishing
His Kingdom and receiving His proper glory.
Now this final satanic world empire ruled by Antichrist, the man of
sin, is called here in the book of Revelation by the name Babylon...Babylon the
great. That is the name given to this empire, both in chapter 17 and in chapter
18. Chapter 17 and 18, however, though they both deal with this great empire of
Antichrist called Babylon do differ.
Chapter 17 looks particularly at the religious side, the spiritual side
of Babylon whereas chapter 18 looks at the economic and political side of
Babylon. So as we engage ourselves in the
study of chapter 17,
we are studying the religious side of Satan's final world empire. As I told you
last time, the world is not going to become more and more irreligious, it is
going to become more and more religious. People are going to become more and
more involved in religion...not the true religion, but the false religion of
Satan himself. The closer we get to the end, the more religious they will become.
Satan's empire, then, has two sides initially. We'll talk more about how those
two sides resolve into one, but two sides initially...a religious side and a
political side, a spiritual side and an economic side.
Looking down at verse 5 in chapter 17 we get the name of the worldwide
form of religion. The name of it is "MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER
OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." Now that's quite a name
for a religion. I don't mean by the name of the religion that someday someone
will say to you that I go to the First Mystery Babylon the Great, Mother of
Harlots and Abominations of the Earth church. I don't think you'll see it on
the marquee and I question whether it will ever show up on the stationery.
But that is really what it is. It will have a much more subtle and
deceptive name. But what it is, is, first of all, mystery, that is it is more
than physical, it is more than geographical, it is more than a human organization.
There's something deep and demonic and supernatural and even as yet hidden
about it. It is Babylon. Why? Because it is the final form of religion when all
the world's religions roll into one. And in so doing it is appropriate to call
it Babylon because Babel is where all the world religions really began. They
were all spawned out of a tower of Babel, that is why Babylon the Great is the
Mother of all Harlots. Harlotry in the Bible always refers, when not referring
to an actual harlot, to idolatry. Every form of idolatry and false religion was
spawned out of that original false religion that developed at Babel. And when
God scattered the people all over the globe in different languages, He
scattered their cult, their Babylonish cult as well. And so Babylon was the
originating place and all the harlot children of Mother Babylon will come home
to mother in the end. And the same Satan who spawned
them all will
regather them all into one final form of world religion under the name BABYLON
THE GREAT.
The term "mother of harlots" because all false religion and
idolatry is characterized in Scripture as prostitution and harlotry. And then
this is called also "the mother of the abominations of the earth" because
nothing so offends God as false religion, nothing is so abominable. It is the
supreme blasphemy. So, a supremely blasphemous kind of idolatry will come to
pass that has deep demonic and hidden concepts involved in it and that demonic
kind of religion will reform itself around its Babylonish origins. The system
will be the spiritual side of Satan's world empire. Jesus, of course, warned
about this all the way back in the wonderful sermon that He preached on His own
return, the Olivet Discourse. In
Matthew chapter 24 and verse 21, "There will be a great
tribulation such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until
now, nor ever shall." Jesus predicted this time called the Great Tribulation.
"A time that unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been
saved, but for the sake of the elect those days shall be cut short. Then if
anyone says to you, `Behold here is the Christ, or there He is.' Do not believe
him, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and will show great signs
and wonders so as to mislead if possible even the elect. Behold I have told you
in advance." They're going to be so powerful, these satanic
deceptions, these
satanic seductions, the harlot the whore is going to seduce people into her bed
to catch her fatal disease and die there with her, they're going to be able to
do that because of massive worldwide deceptions based upon demonic signs and
wonders that will deceive the whole world. And so well-orchestrated are they
that were it possible they would even deceive the elect.
Now, this is a very essential element of Satan's final form of world
rule because it is only religion that can unite the world. Politics, economics
can't do it. Culture is too diverse. It has to be something transcending the
physical, the geographical, the historical. It has to be something in the realm
of the supernatural. Satan, who gave birth to all the counterfeits from one
source, certainly has the power with all of his minions to pull them all back.
That one who is disguised as an angel of light and whose ministers are as well
angels of light, that one who originally deceived Adam and Eve and deceived the
people at Babel will again deceive the world and collect them together.”
In our next SD we will look at “The Extermination of the Harlot,” which
covers the remaining verses in Revelation and then it will be on to chapter
eighteen which speaks of how “Babylon” will be destroyed, something we already
know will happen, for it is seen in one of the bowl judgments.
Answer to yesterday’s
Bible question: “Works” (James
2:25). “In the same way, was not Rahab
the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent
them out by another way?” I have to say
that James is speaking of both Rahab and also Abraham in this section of his
letter and what he is saying is that both Abraham and Rahab demonstrated the
proof of their salvation by doing the works that they did. In Abraham’s case it was to offer his son
Isaac as a burnt offering, which the Lord stopped and gave him a lamb instead,
and in the case of Rahab she had trusted God for salvation and then
demonstrated her faith by hiding the spies.
Today’s Bible
question: “What did Jesus say would
cause the world to know that we are his disciples?”
Answer in our next
SD.
8/26/2015 11:04 AM
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