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17:3 action throughout history in separating the chaff from His holy wheat (Job 21:18; Ps. 1:4; 35:5; Isa. 17:13; Luke 3:17). The threshing floor is also symbolic of the marriage relationship: The union of Boaz and Ruth took place on his threshing floor (Ruth 3), and the action of grinding at a mill is a Biblical image of sexual relations (Job 31:10; Isa. 47:2; Jer. 25:10). 4 Thus, instead of consummating her marriage to God through worship at His threshing floor, the Bride went whoring after every other threshing floor, prostrating herself before strange gods and alien altars. Apostate Jerusalem is the Harlot-city; this theme becomes even more prominent in the prophecy of Ezekiel, particularly in Ezekiel 16 and 23, where it is clear that her “adulteries” consist of religious-political alliances with powerful heathen kingdoms (see, e.g., Ezek. 16:26-29). The people of Jerusalem in Ezekiel’s day had abandoned the true faith and had turned to heathen gods and ungodly nations for help, rather than trusting in God to be their protector and deliverer. It is important to note that while Israel herself seems to have regarded these relationships in primarily political terms, the prophets emphasized that the religious issue was central. The reliance of the Covenant nation on heathen powers could not be viewed as mere political expediency; it was nothing less than harlotry. Using language so graphic and explicit that most modern pastors won’t preach from these chapters, 5 Ezekiel condemns Jerusalem as a degraded, wanton whore: “You spread your legs to every passerby to multiply your harlotry” (Ezek. 16:25). Ezekiel’s sarcastic portrayal of Israel’s adultery is sharp and vivid: She lusts after the (supposedly) well-endowed Egyptians, whose sex organs are the size of donkeys’ genitals, and who produce semen in such prodigious amounts that it rivals that of a horse (16:26; 23:20). Her adulterous desire (inflamed by pornographic pictures, 23:14-16) is so great that she is willing to pay strangers to come to her, rather than the other way around (16:33-34); she even masturbates with the “male images” she has made (16: 17). Ezekiel’s prophecy was crude, and he most certainly offended many of his listeners; but he was simply giving them a faithful description of how offensive they were to God. In the view of the all-holy God who spoke through Ezekiel, nothing could be more obscene than the Bride’s apostasy from her divine Husband. The same was true of Israel in the first century. At the very moment when the promised Bridegroom arrived, Israel was fornicating with Caesar. The sight of her true Husband only drove her further into adulterous union with “the kings of the earth.” Rejecting Christ’s kingship (cf. 1 Sam. 8:7-8), the chief priests cried: “We have no King but Caesar!” (John 19:15). The apostasy of Jerusalem led the whole nation into religious and political fornication. Those who dwell on the Land – the Jewish people (see comments on 3:10) – were made drunk with the wine of her fornication, seduced into such a spiritual stupor that they did not recognize their own Christ. Intoxicated by their apparently successful relationship with the imperial power-state, the Jews did not realize that it was a trap: They were being drugged in preparation for their own execution. 3 We have already seen the Woman in the wilderness, where she fled from the oppression of the seven-headed Dragon (12:6, 14). But that wilderness sojourn was out of necessity, and for a specified time. The True Bride does not dwell in the wilderness – the sign of the Curse, the habitation of demons (Matt. 12:43) 6 – by preference. To the False Bride, however, the wilderness is her element; she chooses to remain there rather than follow the Spirit to the promised land. The wilderness is thus her heritage, and her destiny (cf. Num. 13-14; Zech. 5:5-11). This is, again, a familiar prophetic picture: Apostate Jerusalem is a Harlot, plying her obscene trade alongside wilderness roads like a wild ass in heat (cf. Jer. 2-3; Hos. 2). It is as if the Woman of Revelation 12, having fled to the wilderness for protection, has become accustomed to desert life and established an intimate relationship with the Dragon. St. John sees her sitting on a scarlet Beast. It is not immediately clear whether the Scarlet Beast is the Dragon or the Sea Beast. Like the Sea Beast, it is full of blasphemous names (cf. 13:1); and like the Dragon, it has seven heads and ten horns (cf. 12:3; the order is reversed for the Sea Beast, which has ten horns and seven heads, 13:1). Since she is seated “on many waters” (v. 1) and on the Scarlet Beast as well, the imagery seems to suggest that the Beast has risen up out of the sea (cf. 11:7; 13:1). The most likely solution is simply to see the passage as a reference to Jerusalem’s apostate intimacy with both Satan and the Empire. Rome was the devil’s reigning political incarnation, and the two could certainly be considered together under one image. Israel was dependent upon the Roman Empire for her national existence and power; from the testimony of the New Testament there is no doubt that Jerusalem was politically and religiously “in bed” with institutionalized paganism, cooperating with Rome in the crucifixion of Christ and the murderous persecution of Christians. 4. For a full discussion of this point, see Calum M. Carmichael, “Treading in the Book of Ruth,” ZAW 92 (1980), pp. 248-66. 5. The attitude of the Rev. H. Foster, Rector of Clerkenwell in the early nineteenth century, is probably representative. Discussing the propriety of preaching from Canticles (the Song of Solomon), he says: “I have preached from various independent texts in the Canticles. I once went through Ezekiel 16, but dared not do it again.” Quoted in John H. Pratt, cd., The Thought of the Evangelical Leaders: Notes of the Discussions of the Eclectic Society, London, During the Years 1798-1814 (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, [1856] 1978), p. 441. In a more down-to-earth age, John Calvin was able to be much more explicit in his lectures – so much so that his nineteenth-century translator simply deleted several passages, with this note: “The Reformer dwells so minutely on the language of the Prophet, that the refined taste of modern days will not bear a literal translation of some clauses.” Thomas Myers, in Calvin’s Commentaries on the First Twenty Chapters of the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1979 reprint), Vol. 2, p. 127. Cf. another translator’s omission of Calvin’s comments on Gen. 38:8-10 (Commentaries on the First Book of Moses, Baker Book House, 1979, Vol. 2, p. 281). 6. See on 12:6; cf. remarks on the wilderness theme in David Chilton, Paradise Restored: A BibiicaI Theology of Dominion (Ft. Worth, TX: Dominion Press, 1985), pp. 24, 46, 50-53. 172
17:4-7 Incidentally, this is one of many indications that the Harlot is not Rome, for she is clearly distinct from it. She is seated on the Beast, supported and maintained by him whose seven heads represent – among other things – the famed “seven hills” of Rome (17:9). It is worth noting too that there is a contrast between the Throne of God, supported by the Living Creatures who are “full of eyes” and who are day and night engaged in God’s praise (4:6-8; cf. Ezek. 10:12), and the Harlot Queen, whose throne is supported by a Beast who is full of blasphemous names. 4 The Woman is clothed in purple and scarlet, garments of splendor and royalty for one who sits as a queen (18:7; see Jud. 8:26; 2 Sam. 1:24; Dan. 5:7, 16, 29; Luke 16:19). She is gilded with gold and precious stones and pearls, in keeping with the Biblical descriptions of the glorious City of God (Isa. 54:11-12; 60:5-11; Rev. 21:18-21), based further on the pattern of the jewel-littered Garden of Eden (Gen. 2:11-12; Ezek. 28:13). Jewelry is also a feature both of the high priest’s garments (Ex. 28:9-29) and of the throne of God (4:3- 4). There is thus no need to see the Woman’s garments and jewels as merely the loud, bold, and extravagant decking-out of a harlot’s costume. Instead, these are originally the clothes of the righteous Woman – the Bride – who is supposed to be arrayed in glorious dress (cf. Ex. 3:22; Ezek. 16:11-14; Prov. 31:21-22). St. John wants his readers to see the Harlot adorned in the beautiful garments of the Church. He wants them to understand that this degenerate whore who fornicates with beasts is still carrying the trappings of the pure and chaste Bride. We should note, however, that the enormous veil covering the Temple gate (over 80 feet high and 24 feet wide) was “a Babylonian tapestry, embroidered with blue, and fine linen [cf. 18:16], and scarlet, and purple.” 7 The False Bride celebrates a communion of sorts: She holds in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her fornication, combining the images of unclean food (cf. Lev. 11) and unclean marriage (cf. Lev. 20; see esp. Lev. 20:22-26). 8 The picture is slightly changed from that of Jeremiah 51:7, where the original Babylon is described as “a golden cup in the hand of the LORD, intoxicating all the earth,” but the basic idea is similar. Jerusalem still has the beautiful chalice of the Covenant, but the communion she offers leads men to death and destruction. Her cup is full of “abominations, ” a word which the Bible often uses in connection with the worship of false gods (Deut. 29:17; Ezek. 5:11). Pharisaic Jerusalem prides itself on its observance of the ceremonial cleanliness regulations, but in reality it is radically unclean, defiled from within by its apostasy and fornication (Matt. 23:25-28; Mark 7:1-23). The overall picture may well be, as Ford has observed, “a parody of the high priest on the Day of Atonement wearing the vestments specially reserved for that occasion and holding the libation offering. However, instead of the sacred name upon his brow the ‘priestharlot’ bears the name Babylon, mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth, a title illustrating Ezek. 16:43-45 [RSV], where Yahweh speaks of the lewdness of Jerusalem.” 9 5 The Harlot has on her forehead a name written. By now the writing on the forehead is a familiar image in Revelation. We have seen it on the saints (3:12; 7:3; 14:1) and on the followers of the Beast (13 :16-17). The forehead is especially singled out as a symbol of rebellion (Isa. 48:4; Ezek. 3:9); rebellious Israel is said to have “a harlot’s forehead” (Jer. 3:3). But the name written there begins with the word Mystery. Corsini has properly noted the significance of this muchoverlooked fact: “If the prostitute is called ‘mystery,’ that means that she, even in the moment in which she is judged and condemned, still forms an integral and important part in the divine plan of salvation. This cannot be the case for Rome or any other pagan city, but only for Jerusalem. Only she, and no other city, will be renewed and will descend from heaven upon Mt. Sion to celebrate a marriage with the Lamb (21:2, 10ff.), because ‘in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God . . . should be fulfilled’ (10:7 ).” 10 The Harlot’s symbolic name continues: Babylon the Great, for she is heiress and namesake of the ancient city which was the epitome of rebellion against God (Gen. 11:1-9; Jer. 50-51). The name also serves to remind us of her high calling, that she was created to be the True Babylon, the Gate of God. Instead, however, she has followed the path of the old Babylon in her apostate rejection of God’s lordship over her. Now identified with bestiality and confusion, she has become “the Mystery of Lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:7), the Mother of Harlots (corresponding to “Jezebel” and her “children,” spoken of in 2:20-23; cf. the description of Jerusalem as a mother of harlots in Ezek. 16:44-48). 6-7 Now we see what the Harlot has in her cup, the demonic communion with which she and her paramours (v. 2; cf. 14:8) are becoming drunk: It is the blood of the saints, and . . . of the witnesses of Jesus. This is “the wine of her fornication,” the sacrament of her apostasy from the true faith; the ultimate unclean food (cf. Lev. 17:10-14). While it is true that Rome became a great persecutor of the Church, we must remember that Jerusalem was the preeminent transgressor in this regard. The Roman persecution came about through the Jews’ instigation and connivance, as the Book of Acts constantly informs us. 7. Josephus, The Jewish War, v.v.4. 8. For an extended, though preliminary, discussion of the relationships between culinary and sexual purity in the Law, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, [1966] 1969), Ch. 3: “The Abominations of Leviticus” (pp. 41- 57); idem, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), Ch. 16: “Deciphering a Meal” (pp. 249-75). 9. J. Massyngberde Ford, Revelation: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1975), p. 288. 10. Eugenio Corsini, The Apocalypse: The Perennial Revelation of Jesus Christ (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1983), p. 335. 173
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But when you see Jerusalem surround
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Copyright @ 1987 by Dominion Press
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FOREWORD Foreword Readers of the Bo
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PUBLISHER’S PREFACE Publisher’s
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PUBLISHER’S PREFACE case for esch
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PUBLISHER’S PREFACE this book bec
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PUBLISHER’S PREFACE In contrast,
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INTRODUCTION St. Irenaeus is somewh
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INTRODUCTION we must be saved” (A
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INTRODUCTION previous relationship
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INTRODUCTION You have lain down as
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INTRODUCTION are only elaborating a
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INTRODUCTION early churches had suc
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INTRODUCTION actions mean more than
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INTRODUCTION Some will complain tha
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INTRODUCTION Outline of Revelation
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1:1-3 that must shortly take place.
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1:4-6 accomplishment. We probably h
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1:7-8 observe that a central aspect
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1:9 14 And His head and His hair we
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1:16 That all the peoples, nations,
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1:20 things that must shortly take
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INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO Part Two H
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INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO The confli
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2:4-6 endure evil men. . . . And yo
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2:9-10 dead, and has come to life:
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2:14-16 expression (none of which m
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2:18-23 and leads my servants astra
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2:26-29 end, to him I will give aut
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3:4-6 church, or even against a nat
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3:8-11 And I will clothe him with y
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3:14-16 sons disinherited and cast
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3:21-22 the elders of a church, and
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INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE The laws
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4:2-3 numerous names and descriptio
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4:5-8 superseded and transcended; t
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4:5-8 19) led Biblical writers to s
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5:1-4 family worship; it is radical
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5:5-7 St. John; and it seems as if
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5:8-10 have gained the victory for
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6:1-2 6 IN THE PATH OF THE WHITE HO
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6:3-4 forth conquering, and to conq
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6:9-10 And authority was given to h
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6:15-17 that Israel’s time has ru
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7:4-8 Though he flourishes among th
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7:4-8 they were listening to the Ap
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7:9 is presumably deliberate, for i
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7:10-14 inheriting the Kingdom (Mat
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7:15-17 They will not hunger or thi
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8:3-5 for that would be about the l
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8:6-7 rout the Midianites, in Judge
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8:12 13 And I looked, and I heard a
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9:13 The vegetation of the earth is
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9:20-21 lations advanced by some co
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9:20-21 men much more atheistical t
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10:2-4 beyond reasonable doubt that
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10:8-10 the Spirit at Pentecost was
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11:1-2 angelic priest measures the
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11:7 have the power to shut up the
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11:11-14 climax with the murder of
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Page 124 and 125: 12:1-2 12 THE HOLY WAR The Book of
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Page 146 and 147: 14:1 14 THE KING ON MOUNT ZION St.
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Page 218 and 219: 21:9-11 The New Jerusalem (21:9-27)
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21:24-27 And deep darkness the peop
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22:3-4 Paradise is not, therefore,
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22:6-9 Final Warnings and Blessings
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22:17-21 unconquerable strength and
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CONCLUSION the pure Bride-City, is
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CONCLUSION does not exempt us from
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APPENDIX A it is reflected in “It
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APPENDIX A make him a pillar in the
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APPENDIX A and wine the night befor
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APPENDIX A Babylon, falsely priestl
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APPENDIX A B. CHRISTIAN WORSHIP 1.
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APPENDIX B been the defining mark o
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APPENDIX B The Bible teaches us tha
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APPENDIX C APPENDIX C Common Grace,
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APPENDIX C for all eternity because
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APPENDIX C better arrangement cultu
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APPENDIX C be destroyed. The two ex
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APPENDIX C universe. It is governed
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APPENDIX C completed, the world was
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APPENDIX C deceive the nations. The
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APPENDIX C creeds and theological u
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APPENDIX C coherence that at least
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APPENDIX C There is continuity in l
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Athanasius. On the Incarnation of t
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________. The Institutes of Biblica
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