Welcome to a Revelation of Jesus. In this video, we are going to continue our study of Revelation 17 and the fall of Babylon. Last time we examined the details of the great harlot and found that they pointed to the Roman Catholic Church. I concluded that during the final events, when the whole world is trying to escape the pain of the great tribulation, the Roman Catholic Church, along with her daughter churches, will unite with the governments of the world. Together, they will create religious laws to try to force everyone to obey what they believe to be God’s will. In this video, we will look at the scarlet beast as well as other players in the final crisis.
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Most notable is the scarlet beast: “[John] saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (Revelation 17:3). In the previous video, we saw that the scarlet beast has a striking resemblance to the beast that arises from the sea in Revelation 13. Both beasts have seven heads and ten horns, and both are full of blasphemous names. They both have a sphere of influence that includes multitudes of peoples, nations, tribes, and languages, and they both make war with the saints. Most notably, the true believers in both beasts are the same people: those “whose names have not been written in the book of life” (Revelation 13:8, 17:8). We saw in video 44 that the beast from the sea symbolizes the oppressive union of church and state that ruled Europe during the Dark Ages.
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But there are also differences between the two beasts. Most significantly, the scarlet beast is being ridden by the harlot, but the beast from the sea does not have a rider. As we saw in the previous video, the harlot symbolizes the apostate Christian church, which engages in immoral relationships with “the kings of the earth,” in other words, with the world political powers. The absence of a harlot rider during the era of the beast from the sea does not mean that the medieval church was not involved in politics. To the contrary, the church was an integral part of the system, fully involved in the setting up and tearing down of the rulers of the nations.
But in the last days, democracies will have a much looser relationship with the church; Most churches around the world are politically irrelevant, and the United States has even had a policy of separation of church and state.
But attitudes will change when the great tribulation hits; the church at first will seem to have the answers and will set the agenda, insisting that the governments must make laws to bring the people into harmony with God’s so-called requirements. Thus, the harlot is pictured riding, that is, controlling the scarlet beast. But as we will see later, under the stress of the seven last plagues, this union will dissolve. The harlot/church is pictured as a separate entity because, in the end the scarlet-beast nations will turn on the church.
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Despite this difference, the scarlet beast and the beast from the sea are, for the most part, very similar, and this similarity is a key that allows us to identify the scarlet beast. In videos 44 and 45, we saw that the beast from the sea suffered a deadly wound to its political and military head. In history, the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century tore a huge part of Europe out of the control of the Roman Catholic Church. Then, during the French Revolution, France, her strongest supporter, went so far as to arrest the Pope in 1798. And finally, the Italian revolution in the 1870s confiscated the Papal States, leaving the pope a self-proclaimed prisoner of the Vatican.
But while these blows were falling, another power was rising, also predicted in Revelation 13. “[John] saw another beast coming up out of the earth; it had two horns like a lamb, but spoke like a dragon” (Revelation 13:11). I want to briefly review video 45, which looks at the evidence pointing to this beast’s identity, to help us identify the scarlet beast.
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The first evidence is the timing of the beast’s rising out of the earth, from the 16th through the 19th centuries, while the deadly wound was taking place. This coincides with the discovery and establishment of the United States of America as a nation and global power.
Second is the symbol of the earth that the beast rises out of. In chapter 12, the earth came to the rescue of the persecuted church by swallowing up the water that the dragon spewed after her. In history, it was the sparsely settled western hemisphere and specifically the United States, with its separation of church and state, that “swallowed up” masses of people and provided a place of refuge for those fleeing religious persecution in Europe.
And finally, the two horns of the beast from the earth are like a lamb, seemingly harmless or even Christ-like. Horns in prophecy symbolize power and authority; kings, kingdoms, or, in Daniel 7, powerful religious entities.
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In the case of the United States, the “king” is the democratically elected president, and the religion is a fractured multitude of Christian denominations that are constitutionally forbidden from wielding political power. But the prophecy predicts that before it is over, the United States will shed its lamb-like appearance and “speak like a dragon,” in other words, like Satan.
Revelation 13 goes on to tell us how this will happen: “[The beast from the earth] makes fire come down from heaven on the earth… and he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs… telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword” (Revelation 13:13,14). Here we see an entity, the image of the beast, whose appearance, characteristics, agenda, and activities are an image or likeness of the beast from the sea. All the evidence we have looked at indicates that the image of the beast is the scarlet beast of chapter 17.
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Notice further that the image of the beast is not limited to one nation. The American beast from the earth tells “those who dwell on the earth” to set up a coercive union of church and state like that of the Dark Ages. And it is “the image of the beast that… causes as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed; He forces all… to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads” (Revelation 13:15,16). Check out the link in the description to video 46, which gives details about the image of the beast.
To summarize, the scarlet beast is an American-led coalition of governments that unite with a Roman Catholic-led coalition of churches. Together, they create religious laws that target the faithful followers of Jesus who refuse to submit to the Babylon agenda. This is the essence of the final crisis. God, in His merc,y gives us waymarks in chapter 17 so that we can know where we are and what is happening.
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The first waymark uses past, present, and future tenses in its description of the scarlet beast to establish the chronological context of the vision. “The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel… when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. (Revelation 17:7).
First of all, the beast “was,” in other words, it existed in the past. We have already touched on the role of the medieval papacy, which united with the nations of Europe to enforce its agenda.
But the timeframe of this vision in chapter 17 is when the beast “is not.” The papal beast was “mortally wounded” as it first lost the allegiance of many European people during the Reformation, then lost political control, especially during the French Revolution, and finally was stripped of its sovereignty when it lost the Papal States
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But that was not the end of the beast—“The beast was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit,” in other words, will rise from the grave. In chapter 13, this is expressed by the statement, “his deadly wound was healed” (Revelation 13:3,12). This began in 1929 when the Italian government signed the Lateran Pacts, granting the papacy Vatican City as a sovereign state. Since that time, the papacy has been steadily growing in political power and influence. Major milestones include the Vatican II Council, in which the church committed itself to engaging the modern world and uniting Christendom. In 1984, the Roman Catholic Church established diplomatic relationships with the United States and formed a “holy alliance” that brought down communism. I will include links in the description for the details.
The point of all this is that in the description of the scarlet beast in chapter 17 there is no mention of the deadly wound, which is such a major focus in the description of the beast from the sea in chapter 13. This suggests that the context of the vision is at the end of the “is not” phase of the beast, when the deadly wound is nearly or fully healed.
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Finally, “The beast… will ascend out of the bottomless pit” (Revelation 17:8). We saw in video 32 that the bottomless pit is opened during the fifth trumpet, in other words, in the midst of World War III. Terrible, tormenting weaponry that John compared to locusts will emerge out of the smoke from the bottomless pit. But this is not all. We also saw that the locust army “had as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit” (Revelation 9:11).
In Revelation 11:7 he is called “the beast that ascends out of the bottomless pit [who will] make war against {the two witnesses] and kill them” (Revelation 11:7). With his abbreviated title “the beast” he is part of the unholy trinity of the sixth plague, spewing out “unclean spirits like frogs” which “are the spirits of devils, working miracles” (Revelation 16:13,14).
Here we see that besides the oppressive governments symbolized by the scarlet beast, there is also a more personal beast, the “man of sin” that Paul predicted in 2 Thessalonians 2. Revelation 17 exposes him by focusing on the heads of the scarlet beast. “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits. They are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, and the other has not yet come. And when he comes, he must continue a short time. The beast that was, and is not, is himself also the eighth, and is of the seven, and is going to perdition” (Revelation 17:9-11). This is a difficult passage and we will need “a mind with wisdom” to understand it.
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The first clue is found in the two meanings that the angel gave for the seven heads of the scarlet beast. “The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits” (Revelation 17:9). In the previous video, we saw that this refers to Rome, “the eternal city on seven hills.”
The seven heads “are also seven kings.” Rome itself, being the capital of democratic Italy, does not have kings, but Vatican City, a sovereign nation in the heart of Rome, does: the popes of the Roman Catholic Church. “The independent state of Vatican City came into existence on 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy…The politics of Vatican City take place in the context of an absolute elective monarchy, being governed by the Holy See… The Pope has absolute power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over Vatican City, and is thus the only absolute monarch in Europe” (Wikipedia, article Vatican City).
Apparently, Revelation 17 prophesies a series of 7 popes who will be followed by the antichrist. This can help us to know where we were in the progression of the great tribulation, in order to be on the alert for the appearance of Satan pretending to be Christ.
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The challenge, of course, is the starting point for the series of the 7 kings. Since the scarlet beast does not have the deadly wound that was so prominent in the beast from the sea in chapter 13, it makes sense that the beginning of the series of seven kings coincides with the complete healing of the deadly wound.
Some commentators have seen the succession of kings as beginning in 1929, when the Lateran Treaty established the papacy as a sovereign state. At the time of this video, there have been seven popes who have “fallen” since 1929, which would make the present pope, Francis, “the beast that… was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition” (Revelation 17:8,11). Since the beast from the bottomless pit emerges with the opening of the bottomless pit during the fifth trumpet, in the midst of World War III, this interpretation is obviously erroneous.
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Another possibility takes into consideration that the healing of the deadly wound was a gradual process, which may have started in 1929, but was not completed until later. During the period before and after World War II, the Catholic Church did not really assert itself in world affairs; although a sovereign state, the Vatican was not an international power. This began to change when Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council in 1962. The first Vatican Council, which began in 1868, had been interrupted in September 1870 when the Kingdom of Italy, having already annexed the other papal territories, captured Rome which had been ruled by the papacy. Pope Pius IX suspended and never reconvened the First Vatican Council and declared himself the prisoner of the Vatican, recognizing that the Roman Catholic Church had lost her temporal authority.
When Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council the first action was to officially end the First Vatican Council, closing a painful chapter of Catholic history and opening a new one in which the council determined that the Roman Church would seek to update the church, restore unity among all of Christendom, and start a dialogue with the contemporary world. It could be argued that this was the true healing of the deadly wound. If 1962 is the beginning date for counting the 7 kings, we are now living during the time described in the vision of Revelation 17. Five “kings” have fallen, the current pope, Francis, is the sixth, and the next pope will only “continue a short time” and then will come the eighth king, the final antichrist.
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Another credible possibility takes into consideration the essence of the deadly wound: the papacy lost its power to manipulate political affairs to further its agenda as it had done during the medieval period. This kind of cooperative union of church and state was not achieved again until the 1980’s with the “holy alliance’ between the Roman Catholic church, headed by Pope John Paul II, and the United States, headed by Ronald Reagan.
In 1984, the United States appointed an ambassador to the Vatican, and by 1990, the alliance had managed to topple Soviet communism, first in Poland and then in Eastern Europe and Russia. This is particularly significant because, as we have seen in previous videos, the United States will lead the coalition of nations and the Roman Catholic Church will lead the coalition of churches that bring about the final crisis. If the “holy alliance” marks the beginning of the seven kings, we are now with Pope Francis in the reign of the third king, with four more to go before the final antichrist.
I will include links in the description for more discussion of this issue. Since Revelation devotes a whole chapter to identifying this end-time entity, it is obviously very important that God’s people seek to understand; we need “the mind with wisdom” that God has promised in James 1:5 as we study, pray, and share ideas with each other.
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One final identification remains: the 10 horns on the scarlet beast. “The ten horns which [John] saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast” (Revelation 17:12,13). This passage reminds us of the fourth beast of Daniel 7, which also had 10 horns. We saw in video 3 that these horns represented the barbarian tribes that took over the Roman Empire and later became the countries of Europe. Although these nations competed and even fought wars with one another, they were united in their support and enforcement of the coercive agenda of the medieval papacy.
Likewise, the ten kings symbolize the diverse nations that unite under the stress of the great tribulation, held together by the glue of religiosity imposed by the Babylon harlot. We already saw these kings in chapter 16; they are “the kings of the whole world” who are “gathered for the battle of that great day of God Almighty… to the place called Armageddon” (Revelation 16:14-16).
Through most of the great tribulation, the masses of people, symbolized by “the waters where the harlot sits,” will blindly support the harlot. But in video 59, we saw that the “water of the great river Euphrates will be dried up” (Revelation 16:12). The seven last plagues will entail enormous suffering. The masses of people, disillusioned by empty promises and the obvious failure of the Babylon “god” to rescue them, will finally turn against their religious leaders.
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Apparently, Satan, the master manipulator, will appear as “the beast from the bottomless pit” and will turn the political leaders against the religious leaders. “The ten horns… will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, and to give their kingdoms to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled” (Revelation 17:16).
With this verse we have finally arrived at something we can hang our faith and hope on—in all of the plotting, intrigues, self-serving alliances, and double-crossing that characterize Satan’s kingdom, God will patiently “fulfill His purpose” until “the words of God are fulfilled.” (Revelation 17:17). If we should live to see this time, we can be sure that God is still ultimately in control.
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