The woman that you saw is the great city that has rulership over the kings of the earth.  Rev. 17:18.
 
    The image of the "great city" clearly has universal application.  The book of Revelation calls it Sodom, Egypt, Jerusalem, and Babylon (Rev. 11:8; 14:8).  It is still a factor in the world at the end of history (Rev. 17).  So it is likely that early readers of Revelation would have identified this image with Rome.  The great city "has rulership" (present tense) over the kings of the earth.  The beast the woman rides is also seven mountains, which would probably remind first-century readers of the seven hills of Rome.  First-century Jews and Christians often referred to Rome as Babylon, etc.  There may be a lesson for us in this identification.
 
    Around the time of the composition of Revelation the legal standing of Christians in the empire had begun to come under threat.  Jews were taking action to isolate Christians from the synagogue.  But Judaism was the only religion that was exempted from Roman religious law.  To be seen as separate from Jews, therefore, put Christians in real peril.
 
    A second problem that Christians began to face were accusations from their Gentile neighbors.  As Gentiles came to see a distinction between Christian faith and Judaism, they often examined Christianity with hostile contempt.  They accused Christians of being "haters of the human race."  Pagan rituals and rhetoric saturated public events in Asia Minor.  Christians, therefore, usually avoided them so as not to compromise their faith.  Pagans began to think of them as antisocial.
 
    The general population, on the other hand, took a smorgasbord approach to religion.  They felt free to pick and choose among a variety of ideas.  Much like today, they did not appreciate people who thought that they were right and that everybody else was wrong.  As a result they accused Christians of "atheism" because they would not worship any god but their own.  The peoples of the empire each had their own religious preferences, but added worship of the state gods as a token of their allegiance to the state.  But Christians would not accept the state gods as objects of worship.  So pagans considered them "atheists."
 
    Christians, oddly enough, also faced charges of "cannibalism."  It had to do with Gentile perceptions of the Lord's Supper, in which Christians were "eating the body and drinking the blood" of their Lord.  Although Christians understood such statements in a spiritual way, apparently their pagan neighbors did not.  So stories circulated that Christians sacrificed children and others in order to eat them at their Lord's table.  Such accusations combined to create an insecure world for Christians to live in.
 
Lord, I am grateful to live in relatively sheltered times.  Keep my faith strong when life is good.

 The ten horns that you saw, and the beast, these will come to hate the prostitute, and she will be made desolate and naked, and they will eat her flesh and burn her up with fire.  For God has placed it in their hearts to do His purpose, and to be of one purpose themselves, and to give their domain and power to the beast until the words of God are brought to completion.  Rev. 17:16, 17.
 
    God retains sovereignty over the choices that His enemies make.  While evil is self-destructive in nature, God's guiding hand limits the harm that evil powers can do.  In the end, not only the beast but even Satan will do God's bidding (2 Thess. 2:11).
 
    In 1935 Karl Doenitz (born 1891) became the commander of the reconstituted German submarine command under Adolf Hitler.  Derisively referred to as "Admiral Doughnuts" by the Allies, he considered the problem of defeating Great Britain in war.  The fact that Great Britain was an island nation was both an advantage and a vulnerability.  It was an advantage in the same sense that an enemy could not attack it unless it had overwhelming air and sea superiority.  On the other hand, it was a vulnerability in the sense that the shipping lanes needed to remain open for Britain to survive a war.
 
    Doenitz had an idea and presented it to Hitler.  With careful planning and focused resources, he could have factories producing 40 submarines a month by the year 1938 (well in advance of the war that eventually broke out).  If Germany targeted merchant shipping instead of military vessels, it might strangle Britain's military and economy in a matter of months.  Hitler considered the plan but rejected it.  He did not see the brilliance in a tactic that would surprise the enemy.  Instead, enamored with "the big stuff," he wanted to match the British in the ego-boosting arena of naval warfare--battleships and aircraft carriers.
 
    Hitler authorized a construction level of one or two subs a month in 1936.  Then he placed massive resources into battleships such as the Bismarck and Tirpitz and aircraft carriers that would not have come on line until 1950!  When war broke out in 1939, Doenitz's handful of subs sank 3 million gross tons of British shipping in the first year.  Imagine the havoc 500-800 subs around Britain might have wrought!  It is very possible that Britain would have found itself forced to surrender within a year after Dunkirk.
 
    Hitler belatedly authorized Doenitz's plan.  By 1944 the Nazis reached a production level of 40 submarines a month.  But by then the Allies had discovered radar and broken the Nazi Enigma code, so they destroyed the submarines as fast as they came from the shipyards.  While His hand is often invisible at the time, history reveals that God is always in control.  It is sometimes the smallest deviations from plan that lead the enemies of God to disaster.
 
Lord, help me live in the assurance that You are in control of my life today.

  [The angel] said to me, "The waters that you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples and crowds and nations and languages.  The ten horns, that you saw, and the beast, these will come to hate the prostitute, and she will be made desolate and naked, and they will eat her flesh and burn her up with fire.  Rev. 17:15, 16.
 
    Texts such as this disturb many readers of Revelation--and understandably so.  A woman is brutalized, cannibalized, and left naked and desolate.  That sounds like a major atrocity to contemporary ears.  While the Babylon represented here was herself certainly brutal and violent, does that justify the use of such violent images in a biblical book?  If television depicted such a scene, we would rush to turn it off so it would not scar our children.
 
    But perhaps we are not seeing the whole picture in this text.  I am reminded of a business establishment in Philadelphia that put up a scandalous sign: "We would rather do business with a thousand Arab terrorists than a single Jew."  Now, Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love and has plenty of sensitive people in it (including Jews).  You would think that crowds of people would have come to protest that sign.  I would have expected the governor of Pennsylvania to call out the National Guard in case of rioting.  Yet not a single person protested the sign, not even in the Jewish community.!  What was going on?
 
    You had to see the sign in its larger context to understand.  The business establishment was Goldberg's Funeral Home.  If anyone was outraged, it was Arab terrorists, and they weren't talking!  The sign was not an expression of hostility to Jews, but rather a wish that Jews would have long life.
 
    The violence in Revelation is also a matter of context.  On the surface it appears that God overcomes evil by the use of forces just as brutal and violent as those Babylon employed.  Does that mean He is in the right because He has the might?  Only if you ignore the larger context in the book of Revelation.  You see, the agent of God's power is the Lamb (Rev. 17:14, 17) that was slain (Rev. 5:6).  The violence by which Jesus conquers Babylon is ultimately the violence done to Him.
 
    Although images of battle appear in the book of Revelation, God never calls His people to use violence in His behalf.  They are summoned instead to suffer as the Lamb did, overcoming not with the sword, but by the word of their testimony (Rev. 12:11).  In the end Babylon's violence leads to her own destruction (Rev. 13:10; 18:5-7).  But the sacrifice of the Lamb and His followers results in a world without any violence at all (Rev. 21:4).
 
Lord, I am in awe as I consider the self-sacrificing path You took to end hatred and violence in the universe.  I want to be more like You.

                        These will make war with the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them, because He is the Lord of lords and King of kings--and those with Him are called and chosen and faithful.  Rev. 17:14.
 
    Native American culture is strongly centered in storytelling, not unlike the Hebrew culture that we find in the Old Testament.  The Elders of the tribe pass on stories about the ancestors that they had heard from their parents and grandparents.  And the grandparents had learned those same stories from their own parents and grandparents.
 
    One time a group of children approached a tribal elder.  As most children will, they begged him to tell them a story.  He shared one that personalizes the war described in our text today.
 
    According to the legends of the tribe, every person at birth receives two wolves who reside within.  The wolves grow with each child and affect human behavior throughout a person's life.  One wolf is the source of everything evil in life.  It promotes unkind, hurtful, deceitful, hateful, and cruel behavior.  The other wolf prompts acts of kindness, truthfulness, love and mercy.  The two wolves constantly battle each other inside, and a person's behavior reflects the wolf winning that day.
 
    The children, enthralled with the story, asked, "Which of the two wolves will win?"
 
    The wise elder paused dramatically for a few seconds and then answered, "The one that you feed."
 
    The war described in Revelation 17:14 is the global conflict of the end-time, called Armageddon in Revelation 16:16.  It will involve every nation on earth and every economic and religious power.  But that battle also has personal dimensions.  The New Testament is fond of describing the personal battle against sin and Satan in military terms (see Eph. 6:10-17), for example).  In the New Testament "the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly weapons" (2 Cor. 10:4).  Fleshly weapons, such as assault rifles and tanks, rip you to pieces.  But spiritual warfare is different.  It is about "tearing down false arguments, and every pretension that lifts itself up against the knowledge of God, and taking captive every thought, to make it obedient to Christ" (verses 4, 5).
 
    A battle rages inside every one of us.  And our part in this conflict is real.  The question is "What are you feeding your mind?"
 
Lord, I will have many opportunities today to choose between Your ways and the promptings of our common enemy.  I submit my choices to You today.

  These will make war with the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them, because He is Lord of lords and King of kings--and those with Him are called and chosen and faithful.  Rev. 17:14.
 
    Recently Hollywood portrayed the social reality of a typical military unit as a "band of brothers."  Why don't soldiers run for their lives in the heat of battle?  Usually out of a sense of responsibility for their colleagues in the unit, who may become closer to them than family ever was.  Something about going into battle together creates bonds of friendship between people the way few other things can.
 
    A couple friends of mine--Ed Dickerson and Bill Underwood--developed the idea that friendships come in seven stages.  First, people exchange greetings and comments about the weather.  The second stage involves the swapping of facts and reports.  When friends move on to the third stage, they will risk sharing opinions and judgments.  Friends reach stage four when they are willing to communicate feelings as well as facts.  In stage five, people begin to share their failures and mistakes with each other.  With stage six, the level of trust has become so high that one allows the other the right to point out faults.  Stage seven is the level of total intimacy, something rarely achieved on earth.
 
    After outlining the seven stages of friendship with a group, Ed likes to ask, "If we apply them to our relationship with God, at what stage does conversion occur?"  Ed believes that it happens when we reach level five with God, the stage where we are willing to share our faults with Him--what we usually call confession of sin.  Ed goes on to point out that many, if not most, congregations seem to be stuck in stage three of human relationships, the exchange of opinions and judgments.  If so, the average Christian would seems to have a closer relationship with God than with other Christians.
 
    But that creates a problem.  According to the Bible, one cannot have a closer relationship with God than one has with fellow Christians!  "If anyone says, 'I love God,' yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen" (1 John 4:20, NIV).  When we cannot say, "I was wrong," to a fellow human, it calls into question our confession of sin to God.
 
    As the final battle of earth's history approaches, God invites the church to truly become a "band of brothers and sisters."  Those who are with Jesus then will be on intimate terms, not only with Him, but also with each other.
 
Lord, shield me from my relational blinders toward others.  Help me today to grow in my capacity to know and love others, even as I know You and am known by You.

   The ten horns that you saw are ten kings.  These have not yet received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings for one hour with the beast.  These have one purpose, and they give their power and authority to the beast.  Rev. 17:12, 13.
 
    Previously we have encountered the seven kings.  Now John mentions 10 kings!  What is going on here?  The 10 kingdoms are end-time characters without a pedigree.  Receiving their dominion along with the beast in the final period of earth's history, they exist in the time of the "eight king" (Rev. 17:11).
 
    If the beast represents the combined political and economic powers of the world, the 10 horns symbolize a significant subgroup of the world's nations.  Crucial to the final events is a worldwide unity of political and economic power.  In order for that unity to happen, this powerful subgroup has to sign on.  Only time will reveal the identity of the 10 kings.  Those who observe this prophecy with care will want to watch for a move toward world unity by a major subgrouping of the world's nations, possibly in the context of the United Nations or some similar organization.
 
    If such an action occurs in the reasonably near future, two major candidates for the role described in this passage might be NATO and the G8 nations.  NATO is a military alliance made up of the United States, Canada, and 24 European countries (including Turkey, which is partly Europe).  It was the outgrowth of the North Atlantic Treaty signed on April 4, 1949.  The treaty's initial purpose was to provide a political and military counterbalance to Soviet power in Europe.  With the collapse of Soviet Communism, NATO has become the chief military and political power in the world.  Worldwide union would be inconceivable without its support.
 
    The G8 nations, on the other hand, are more of an economic group than a political or military one.  Since 1975 the leaders of the major industrial democracies have been meeting annually to deal with significant economic and political issues.  The six countries at the first summit were France, the Untied States, Britain, Germany, Japan, and Italy.  Canada joined in 1976 and Russia in 1998.  While NATO is the more powerful organization on paper, the G8 countries together can dominate NATO.
 
    Whatever the makeup of the 10 kings, the giving of their authority to the beast results in war with the Lamb (Rev. 17:14).  The good news is that the end is not in doubt and that the outcome is clear.  The Lamb wins, and the powers of the the world lose.
 
Lord, I feel confident knowing that in relationship with You I am on the winning side at the end of history.  May this confidence motivate me to live boldly for You today.

   And the beast, who was and is not, he is an eight, but he is one of the seven, and he will go to destruction.  Rev. 17:11.
 
    This text is a monumental puzzle.  First of all, the seven heads are seven mountains, then they are seven kings.  Then an eight head comes at the end but is also one of the seven heads, mountains, and kings!  Not only that, all of these symbols are also equivalent to the waters on which the woman also sat.  (Rev. 17:1)!
 
    But we find a practical principle in all this.  The earlier kings are like the family tree or pedigree of the beast.  He acts just like them.  It follows a pattern that we can also recognize at the personal level.  The sins of the father get passed on to their children.  We all tend to repeat the mistakes of the past--our family history.
 
    Once I had a chance to sit down with a great psychologist on the beach.  I asked him what insight he had that might make my life better.  He brought up the concept of "life commandments," explaining that everyone tends to internalize certain "laws of life" from their home situation around the ages of 9-13.  Such laws are as unchangeable to us as the Ten Commandments, no matter how silly they may seem to others.  Identifying our "life commandments" and reshaping them according to God's Word will bring positive change into a person's life.
 
    After some discussion we identified three life commandments that governed my life in a major way.  They were (1) the need to always be on time, (2) the need for fairness in all situations, and (3) a passionate dislike of dogmatism.
 
    Now, all the these seem like good things, don't they?  It is courteous to be on time and not make other people wait.  The problem is that I can be pretty ugly to people who get in my way while I am trying to be on time!  Often they are the ones I love the most, and they don't deserve to be trampled by someone else's obsession.
 
    Being fair and rooting for the underdog are also good qualities to have.  The trouble comes whenever I perceive that someone else isn't being fair with me.  While I try to extend fairness toward others, I can get pretty upset if I do not receive a similar fairness in return.  This has caused a lot of mishaps around my house!
 
    Unless we act decisively with God's help, we are all prisoners of the rules that circumstances hammered into us in the past.  So I've made some decisions.  I consider it a courtesy to others to be on time, but not at the expense of courtesy toward my family and significant others.  And I choose to be fair as possible in my dealing with others, while letting go the pain of when others have been unfair to me.  I'm happy to report that I'm making progress.
 
Lord, open my eyes to the truth about myself, no matter what the cost.

Here is the mind that has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman is sitting, and they are seven kings.  Five have fallen, one exists now, and one is yet to come, and when he comes it is necessary that he remains for a short time.  And the beast, who was and is not, he is an eighth, but he is one of the seven, and he will go to destruction.  Rev. 17:9-11.
 
    In Greek the word for hills and mountains is the same.  So the author may have had Rome, the city of seven hills, in mind as a model for this beast.  On the other hand, since the hills appear one after the other rather than together, this may not be the intention of the text.  Whatever their meaning, the hills in our text represents secular and political power in support of Babylon.  With these "kings" behind her, the Babylon woman will have great power at the end.
 
    The pedigree of this end-time beast is in the seven kings.  Commentators have made many attempts to identify them.  But the basic principle to follow in Bible Study is that God meets people where they are.  When a prophet gets an explanation of a prophecy, the Lord always presents it in terms of the person's time and place (Dan. 2:37-40; 7:19-25).  Thus the one who "exists now" would be the Rome of John's day.
 
    The five who "have fallen" would presumably be the great empires of the Old Testament: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece.  Each of them functioned as an enemy of God's people for a time.  The "king" that is "yet to come," from John's perspective, would be a future power that would become an enemy of God's people after the fall of Rome.  But the seventh "king" is not the last.  Beyond the seventh is an eight, who is also one of the seven!  Can you see why this text has puzzled many through the centuries?  And when you look more closely at the Greek, the imagery becomes even more confusing!
 
    The best explanation seems to be that the seventh head is the sea beast of Revelation 13.  It too came up after the time of John and the Roman Empire (Rev. 13:2) and is resurrected for the final conflict (verses 3, 12).  The "eight head" then would be the final manifestation of political power in support of Babylon at the end (Rev. 17:3).
 
    But it may not be necessary to understand all the details here.  What we have in this passage is the pedigree of a worldwide end-time political power.  It functions at the end the way the seven previous powers in earth's history did.  Worldwide political union was a reality in John's day and previous to it.  Such worldwide union is not a reality at the present time, but will be restored in preparation for the battle of Armageddon (Rev. 16:14-16).  This will be the last challenge of earth's history for God's people.
 
Lord, help this picture of end-time events to energize my decisions and actions today.  I want to be faithful even when everyone else is not.

Here is the mind that has wisdom: The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman is sitting.  Rev. 17:9.
 
    One of the great pastimes of the human race is laughing at the foibles of other human beings.  It is amazing the stupid things that human beings can say when under pressure.  And we laugh, perhaps, because deep down inside we recognize that we are equally capable of such stupidity in a crisis.  Consider the following calls to a hospital emergency room.
 
    Caller:  "If my mom is supposed to take her prescription every six hours, is it OK for her to take it now?"
 
    "When was her last dose?"
 
    Caller:  "At 5:00 p. m."
 
    "And what time is it now?"
 
    Caller:  "It's 11:00 p. m."
 
    "Well...?"
 
    Caller:   "Well, is it OK?"
 
    Caller:  "I've had sore ribs for maybe a month now.  I think they're broken.  I've been drinking for pain control, but it's not working.  Is there anything else I should be doing?"
 
    Caller:  "I just drank an Odwalla beer that's been sitting out for four days.  Should I go get some medicine to throw up?"
 
    "Did the Odwalla taste bad?"
 
    Caller:  "Yes, awful.  I drank the whole thing."
 
    "Why did you drink it if it tasted bad?"
 
    Caller:  "Well, I was in a really big hurry."
 
    Human stupidity can be so funny that even God gets a good laugh over it sometimes (Ps. 2:4; 59:8).  But the humor has a powerful spiritual message embedded in it.  True wisdom belongs to God (Rev. 7:12) and to anyone willing to receive it from Him (Rev. 17:9)!  Without a heart that is open to receive God's wisdom, every one of us is just a crisis away from being a joke!
 
Lord, once again I am reminded of my deep need for the wisdom only You can give.  Teach me today.