A Bible School Manual: Studies in the Book of Revelation / An introduction, analysis, and notes, containing a concise interpretation according to the symbolic view, numerous references to authorities, and general mention of other interpretations, with the text of the American revised version edited in paragraphs, for the use of Bible students

by Stephen Alexander Hunter

(1) The Judgment of the Harlot Announced, Ch. 17:1-2

One of the seven angels having the seven vials, calls John in order to show him the judgment about to be inflicted upon the great Harlot. The agency of a vial-angel in revealing this vision, indicates a connection between the vial-judgments and the fall of Babylon; and, as stated above, it is an elaboration of those judgments, especially that of the seventh vial.

(2) The View of the Harlot, Ch. 17:3-6

The angel carries John in the Spirit away into a wilderness where he sees in the vision an impure Woman arrayed in purple, the royal color, and in scarlet, the sign of bloodshed, while she is decked with gold and jewels, the tokens of her wealth, and has in her hand a golden cup, full of the abominations of her fornications; and she is seated on a scarlet-colored Beast that is covered with names full of blasphemy, i. e. she rests upon and is allied with the world-power, for the scarlet Beast is the same as the Beast from the sea in chapter thirteen (v. 1-10); and upon her forehead her name is written,[514] “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF THE HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH”, and she is “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus”.

(3) The Interpretation Given, Ch. 17:7-18

The angel declares the mystery of the Woman of Sin to John's waiting ears. The Harlot whose home is in the wilderness, i. e. in this world (perhaps so called from the thought of the wilderness as the place of temptation of Israel, of Elijah, and of Christ, and as the haunt of demons where the scapegoat was sent forth to Azazel), is definitely identified with Babylon (v. 5 and 18), the great World-City, the dwelling-place and representative of corrupt society tempting men to evil. The great Harlot is the ideal personification of the great city. There is in fact a double symbolism; the great Harlot symbolizes the great city, as the great city symbolizes the great world, for the Harlot, the city, and the world are one and the same in the wider thought of the Revelation. She is the combined incarnation of commercialism, lust, and irreligion,[515] the unbelieving world and not the apostate church, humanity untrue to God, [pg 197] the social life of men adverse to the kingdom.[516] The Harlot is the manifest impersonation of lust and sexual impurity, a form of the world's sin that has always been the source of ruin to a multitude of souls—her traffic, we are told, is in the “souls of men” (ch. 18:13). She represents the world tempting men through the sexual appetite, though the figure does not stop with that, as the story of the fall of her wealth and the punishment of her irreligious life clearly shows. All the social side of life that tends to sin is represented by this impressive figure before which the Apocalyptist “wondered with a great wonder” (v. 6).

The interpretation of the Harlot Babylon as the Roman Catholic Church, a method so prevalent in the period that succeeded the Reformation, is happily in its decadence, for it has no justification in the text. But to find in this figure a symbol and portent of apostasy prevailing in the church universal that shall increase as the centuries go on,[517] is equally unfortunate and imparts a tone of pessimism to the entire prophecy which cannot be too strongly deprecated. No sign of apostasy is anywhere given in the account of Babylon's fall, for there is no indication that the Harlot was ever holy. Her sin is worldliness, impurity, idolatry, and persecution of the saints. For an apostate church the fitting symbol for that age would have been not Babylon but Samaria, the city of the faithless Israel. And we may be confidently assured that Babylon represents here what it always stood for to the Hebrew mind, the typical world-city, the hereditary enemy of the church from without and not from within, whose harlotry is the sign of her unfaithfulness to God and truth. For even though a majority of Protestant interpreters until within a late period have made Babylon the apostate church, following the traditional opinion, it is nevertheless a mistaken view, since it is based upon the Old Testament use of harlotry as a figure of apostasy and idolatry in Israel, a figure assumed to be identical throughout, ignoring the manifest difference in its present use in connection with a heathen city. The modern view that Babylon is Rome in John's day is nearer correct, but is too narrow in its application. Babylon is the abiding [pg 198] Rome with its worldly life striving to supplant the Christ, the world-city in all ages and times.

The Scarlet Beast on which the Woman is seated, the color of the Dragon (ch. 12:3) and the sign of the blood which it has shed, is referred to as the one that “was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss” (v. 8), a description showing it to be the same as the First Beast which received the deadly wound that was healed (ch. 13:3), i. e. the world-power, and apparently designed to place it in marked antithesis with the divine designation, “who is and who was and who is to come,” in the first chapter of the book (v. 4 and 8). The enigmatical phrase “was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition”, may also refer to a lull in the persecution by the world-power, subsequently to be renewed and leading to its final destruction as a power, though its wider reference is perhaps to the persistence and reappearance of the world-power after any one of its forms has been overthrown, together with the certainty of its final ruin. Most preterists interpret the Beast that “was, and is not; and is about to come”, as a reference to Nero whose return was generally expected (a superstitious phantasy of a Nero redivivus), by a change of figure, the emperor previously referred to as the fifth head of the Beast becoming the Beast itself—a questionable interpretation, apparently wrought out by a keen fancy to fit the words of the prophecy, but lacking efficient support in the text. The Beast in the vision carries the Harlot, i. e. the world-city rests upon and is upheld by the world-power, an unhallowed union in striking contrast with that of the Lamb and the Bride. This symbolism indicates the near relation existing between the world-city and the world-power exemplified in history, the world in its social and irreligious form allying itself with and relying upon the persecuting world-power.