The twelfth chapter of Revelation
shows us a picture of God’s church as the pure bride of Christ. And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman
clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of
twelve stars” (Rev. 12:1). We see the bride of Christ exalted in the
heavens, but she is not without opposition. John tells us of a great dragon
waiting to oppose her; a dragon who would be followed by a series of beasts.
Chapter 17 draws a contrast
between this woman who represents God’s holy church and another woman who
represents the false church of this world: …and
I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast…The woman was arrayed in purple and
scarlet, and was adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a
golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality.
And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother
of prostitutes and of earth’s abomination” (Rev. 17:4-6). If the woman from
chapter 12 represents the pure church of God, this woman draws a sharp
contrast. She is clothed in all the things that are valued by fallen man. She
represents the riches and prominence that catches our attention. But our
present purpose is not to consider this woman, but the beast on which she rides
because it is this beast that shows us the danger of false religion in our day.
It is this beast that carries the woman into the wilderness away from the
purpose and direction of God.
What could such a beast
represent? We need not speculate because Scripture reveals the answer. The
seventh chapter of Daniel gives an account of a vision. Daniel saw four beasts
rising out of the sea. The interpretation defines these beasts as
representative of political systems, or kingdoms. These four great beasts are four kings who shall arise out of the earth
(Dan. 7:17). The beast referenced in chapter 17 has the same origin: And I saw a beast rising out of the sea
(Rev. 13:1)… This beast in the thirteenth chapter has the same
characteristics as the beast in the seventeenth chapter. The woman (the false
church) rides on this same political system that we find in chapter 13. And the
seventeenth chapter provides the place of origin of this great beast: And the angel said to me, “The waters that
you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations
and languages” (Rev. 17:15). The
beast originated with man!
By now you’re wondering what this
has to do with the church today. Why would we spend the time to consider
visions of beasts and prostitutes? We study this symbolism because it shows us
the opposition we face today. Not only opposition from the sinful things of the
world, but opposition that comes from those who claim to be the church! Though
Scripture teaches us what the church is supposed to be, and defines the role of
leaders we find ourselves living in a day when Scripture no longer seems to be
adequate. We always want something more: more structure, more control, more
planning, more gimmicks, more bureaucracy. We place people in positions that
were created by man rather than God; they lead us in worldly directions that
were never intended by Jesus Christ when he established the church. The most
dangerous opposition to the church today comes from the direction we are being
led by the political systems and structures that we have put in place. Look
where they led this prostitute: INTO THE WILDERNESS!
We
tell ourselves that without our devices and programs the church will never
succeed. Without our ideas and control we will never see people won to Christ.
Without the authority of man the church can never be all that God called her to
be. So we spend year after year doing God’s work in our own authority, but to
pursue these futile endeavors is to place ourselves on the back of a beast. And
that beast continually leads us away from God. It cannot be tamed, and we have
put ourselves in a place where there is no control. We find ourselves in a
situation that is little different from a secular government. We create and
establish what we think we need, and it grows beyond our control as it carries
the church out into the wilderness. We create and release these beasts into the
world with no idea what the consequences may be. Many of them are the greatest opposition
to God’s church today.
When
man takes control, the very establishment that was supposed to be God’s vehicle
to bring the gospel to a fallen world becomes little more than opposition to
His work. C.E. Orr commented on this situation, “Christianity should be full of
interest to all mankind, She not only cools the heated brow, cheers the
drooping heart, and strews life's pathway with flowers of peace, but she deals
with man's eternal destiny. She will
smooth the rough places all along his journey of life, and when he has come
down to the end, it is she that will bear him across the valley and welcome him
to the home prepared for his eternal inhabitancy. Since the day of her nativity she has had a
bitter obstinate foe, Satan, and wicked men have combined to bespoil her white
robes and mar her fair form. They have
struggled long and hard to bring her low.
The have endeavored to extinguish her radiant light and defame her true
character. We have only to take a stroll
through the halls of denominationalism to learn how far they have
succeeded. To many pews and pulpits our
virgin has no excellence or beauty. In
the pulpit orator's exposition of her she is not exalted one whit above the
coarse, vulgar world. Satan has
succeeded in veiling her fair form and true virtues from the hearts of
many. In the opinions of many she is
reduced to a mere nothing. Angels weep
to see her fair robes trailed in the dust.
Those who pretend to love her have brought her to shame” (The Gospel Day, 10-11).
Have
you ever wondered why we don’t see God move in great power today? Why the
church seems impotent in the face of persecution and opposition? It’s because
we have wrestled control away from God and climbed onto the back of a beast
that is leading us away from Him. God will not settle for the position of
consultant, He wants nothing less than His rightful place: King! Kyle Idleman
explains, “God declines to sit atop an organizational flowchart. He is the
organization. He is not interested in being president of the board. He is the
board” (Gods At War, 23). Is this
really the case in the church today? Can we honestly say that God is the one
who sets the agenda? Does He reveal the direction? Does He dictate the doctrine
we teach and the sermons we preach? The church can never live up to her
God-given potential unless we can answer these questions with a resounding,
“yes!”
Just
like the prostitute, we value the things of the world. We look to the halls of
academia and their sophisticated philosophies for direction. We pursue the
business models of the world, and the methods of their leaders. We compromise
the truth of God for the world’s version of success and find ourselves with
little influence and no power. This is to be expected when our attention is
turned from God. The beasts on which we ride never pursue His purposes, but
always lead in a contrary direction. They take us to a place where we wander
aimlessly hoping to find something that will give us a purpose and a vision. We
peer hopelessly through the darkness expecting to find the Light from whose
presence we have been carried. We largely buy the current lies of the world
when they tell us that if we do not change we will “lose our brightest and our
best.” Os Guinness wrote, “With postmodernism teaching that truth is ‘created,
not discovered,’ the premium on the ‘best and brightest’ increases and the
prize becomes the triumph of intellect over reality” (Time for Truth, (60).
There
was a day when great preachers of God’s Word called us to flee from such
beasts. They called us away from the rule of man, and the wilderness to which
it leads. They called us to the purity of the gospel, and the authority of
God’s word. They invited us to leave the things we control, and give ourselves
up to the Spirit of God. Some may scoff at us for teaching such a message
today, but Scripture has not changed. We need not wander through the wilderness
because God has called us to something better, something more. Christianity
delivers us, not only from the penalty of sin, but to the very presence of God.
When the church is truly the church, our faith places us in complete harmony
with God’s will and we experience the power of heaven. This is what led Martyn
Lloyd-Jones to write, “Anything controlled by us, whether lifeless or lively,
is not Christianity. Christianity is
that which controls us, which masters us, which happens to us” (Authentic Christianity, 22).
From
where I stand the church needs direction today. We have forgotten who we are,
whose we are, and where we’re going. But Lillie McCutcheon reminded us,
“Confusion and chaos are the results of man's ignoring God. God alone knows the pattern for the world
created by His hand. When man excludes
God from his plans, it is as disastrous as flying a plane with only one
wing. Until we learn that the wing of
materialism must have a balance-wing of spiritual strength, we shall continue
going in circles and heading for calamity.
This is true politically, socially, scientifically, economically, and
most of all religiously. The Bible has
the answer for our mixed-up world” (The
Symbols Speak, 121).
We
must remember that beasts only do what their nature leads them to do. We create
them and try our best to tame them, but God has already provided all we need.
The church does not need another structure or political system. The church
needs the Word of God. It is only there that we will find the direction we
need. It is only through the Word that we become the pure bride of Christ. Christ
died that he might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present
the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish (Eph. 5:26, 27). Are we part of
such a church?
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