Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #12 of Revelation, chapter 17, and we are going to be reading Revelation 17: 14-16:

These shall make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful. And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

I will stop reading there.  Here, God is describing Judgment Day as a time when the beast and the ten horns make war with the Lamb and the Lamb, who is Christ, shall overcome them.  This is a different outcome than at the time of the Great Tribulation when God said that the beast made war with the saints and overcame them.  It said in Revelation 11:7:

And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overcome them, and kill them.

So there is a clear difference between what happened during the time of the Great Tribulation and what happened in the Day of Judgment.  During the Great Tribulation, God had loosed Satan and He used Satan as an instrument of destruction to destroy the corporate church.  Therefore, Satan, the beast, was the one that overcame the saints and he was victorious during that short season of the Great Tribulation, a twenty three year period that ended on May 21, 2011.

But then began Judgment Day and God’s time of recompence when He turned against Satan and brought vengeance upon him and upon Babylon for His temple.  This is the day that we are living in and it is the time of the battle of Armageddon, the final battle between these two kingdoms and the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ is victorious and Christ as the Lamb overcomes all.  We discussed this.  He is King of kings and Lord of lords and He now rules over all the kingdoms of this earth because that was where Satan had ruled through his right of conquest when he deceived Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Then it says in Revelation 17:14:

… and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.

This reminds us of so many other verses in the Bible that say that Christ comes with “ten thousands of his saints,” or the completeness of the saints.  The saints are those that are clothed with “fine linen, clean and white,” which Revelation 19:8 says is “the righteousness of saints.”  They have been made righteous through the righteousness of One, Jesus Christ.  The Bible says, “Know ye not that the saints shall judge the world?”  These saints are God’s elect and they are said to be “called, and chosen, and faithful.”  It says in Matthew 20:16:

So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen.

The “chosen” are the elect.  They are also “called,” but they are just part of many that are “called,” but of that larger number, there are only few that God had predestinated to salvation and whose sins were paid for in Christ when He died for them from the point of the world’s foundation.  It says in 1Peter 1:2:

Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied.

This Epistle is being written to the “elect.”  Concerning the term “faithful,” we are fairly familiar with the terms “called” and chosen,” but our verse also says they are not only “called, and chosen,” but they are “faithful.”  We know that the Lord Jesus Christ is faithful and true.  He is “Faith.”  It is through the saving faith of Christ that we are saved, as it says in Galatians 2:16.  Just as Jesus is “faithful,” the people of God are also “faithful.”  We are made faithful through the spirit that God gave us when He granted us salvation.  It says in Galatians 3:6-9:

Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham.

We are the “faithful” ones of God, the people that God has saved and given His spirit and the Holy Spirit produces fruit in the child of God and one of these fruits is “faith.”  It says in Ephesians 1:1:

Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at Ephesus, and to the faithful in Christ Jesus:

Here, “saints” and “faithful” are synonyms.  For those God has saved, they are true men and they are men in whom is no guile; they have been made purified and holy and they have been given a faithful heart, as God said of David: “David the son of Jesse, a man after mine own heart.”  This is because David had been given a new heart and a new spirit and that heart was patterned after the heart of Christ who is faithful.  So David was a faithful man.  Daniel was a faithful man.  Noah was a faithful man.  Abraham was a faithful man.  When we look at what God tells us about His saints in the Bible, we find one outstanding characteristic that shines through and that is “faithfulness.”  Remember, good king Josiah endeavored to do the will of God and rid Judah of its idols and he faithfully went about that work.  No matter who it is, when we look at a child of God we will see “faithfulness.”  Look at Moses.  Look at Joshua.  Look at Peter.  Look at the Apostle John that God is using to reveal the Book of Revelation.  All these men are faithful and all of God’s people that are truly God’s people have been given a new heart and have an ongoing desire to do the will of God.  This means they want to obey the commandments of God, so you will find men and women that are highly interested in keeping the commandments, no matter what it might be.  If it concerns marriage, the faithful thing to do is to maintain the marriage relationship and not to divorce and God’s people want to obey.  If it concerns women teaching the Bible, the true and faithful woman, like Sarah or Esther in the Bible, desires to do it God’s way and when men are present, she dare not teach.  It is not because of men and it is not because she does not know the Bible, but out of a desire to be faithful to what the Bible says.  

God’s people are “called, and chosen, and faithful,” and that characteristic will shine through, especially during the Great Tribulation period.  God knew this, of course, because He is the one that implants the faithful attributes in His people through the new spirit He has given them, so when God opened the Scriptures to reveal things that had been previously hidden (even major life-changing doctrines such as the end of the church age), He knew how His people would respond in faithfulness.  It goes along with what He tells us in the Gospel of John, where it says, “My sheep hear my voice…and they follow me.”  This is the characteristic of faithfulness that God grants His people.  So the people of God heard the voice of Christ through the Word of God, the Bible, as God revealed the end of the church age, the loosing of Satan and Satan taking his seat in the temple.  They heard the command to come out of the churches and the true children of God faithfully obeyed and followed the voice of Christ and left the congregations.  Of course, we could go down the list of doctrines the Bible presents and we would see that it comes back to that ongoing desire to do the will of God and the desire to be obedient to whatever God says in His Word.  That is what drives the faithfulness of the people of God.  During the day of salvation, God said, “Get this message out,” especially in regard to the Day of Judgment.  Along with that, He showed us that a faithful watchman would see the sword coming and blow the trumpet to warn the people.  Since the characteristic of every true child of God is faithfulness, God’s people saw the sword of the approaching Day of Judgment coming upon the world and they faithfully went forth; they gave of their time; they gave of their resources; they blew the trumpet and they warned the people, out of love and out of faithfulness to the Word of God. 

And what time are we in now?  We are in the time the Bible says, “Thou must prophesy again” and when God says, “Publish, and conceal not.”  He tells us to pour out the vials of the seven last plagues.  He tells His people to go forth as He sends in the sickle to reap the final harvest of ingathering of the precious fruit of the earth and to gather the unsaved for the fire.  Again, and again, God is letting it be known what His will is and what the Scriptures say concerning this time period when we are to go forth one more time with the faithful teaching of the Word of God.  What can we expect?  We expect God’s people to be faithful in response to this and that is what we are seeing, more and more.  People are “coming around” and the confusion that we felt for a time is lifting.  There was a slothful period because of a lack of understanding about what God’s Word was saying, but now God’s people are becoming active again with their time and their resources.  Some are even going on tract trips.  We have had tract trips to Quito, Ecuador and San Juan, Puerto Rico and God’s people are turning up for these trips and they are going forth with the tracts.  Locally, more and more people are requesting and distributing tracts and this is what we expect to happen once the Word of God becomes clearer and His will is revealed.  His people will desire to do His will.

Let us go back to Revelation 17:15:

The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

Just to remind us, the “whore” is a reference to Babylon, if you read the earlier verses.  God makes sure this is known, especially in Revelation 17:5:

And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

Babylon typifies the entire kingdom of Satan which would include all the unsaved people of the world.  Here in our verse in Revelation 17:15, Babylon is said to be “sitting,” and to “sit” means to rule.  Remember, God had said in the Book of Isaiah, in chapter 47, that Babylon was a “mistress of nations,” and “mistress” is the word used when Sarai was “mistress” over Hagar; that means she had the rule over Hagar.  So a “mistress” is one that rules.  The “lady” of nations is Babylon and she rules over the people and it represents the kingdom of Satan that ruled over all unsaved individuals.  What God says in our verse confirms our understanding because it says in Revelation 17:15:

The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.

God then explains that the “waters” represent “peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues.”  There are four groups mentioned and the number “four” points to “universality,” as we would see with the four points of the compass.  It is the totality of all the unsaved people of the earth that are under the rule of Babylon.

To explain why God speaks of “waters” to represent people, let us go to Isaiah 57:20-21:

But the wicked are like the troubled sea, when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.

Here, God is likening the wicked (unsaved people) to a “troubled sea…whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”  These are the unsaved people of the earth that Babylon rules over, so Babylon the harlot “sits” upon the waters, the unsaved people of America, China, Europe, Africa or wherever they may be found in this world.  They are “Babylon” and Satan ruled over the kingdoms of this earth and all those kingdoms were his until Christ took the kingdoms at the beginning of Judgment Day on May 21, 2011.

It goes on to say in Revelation 17:16:

And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.

The “ten horns” represent Satan’s rule during the “one hour” of the Great Tribulation when he was lifted up to the highest level of rule he had ever enjoyed in this world.  So we wonder why Satan “hates the whore.”  We wonder about that because the “whore” is Babylon, the kingdom he rules over and which consists of all the unsaved people of the world.  Does Satan not have any regard for those he rules over?  Well, just think of some of the evil rulers of mankind that have ruled over nations; we can think of Hitler or Stalin or other men that have killed millions of people.  We can see how they did hate the subjects they ruled over, but with Satan, God has something particular in mind when He says that Satan hates the unsaved people of the earth.  Let us look at Leviticus, chapter 26, where God is addressing the unfaithful churches.  God is using that word “unfaithful” to describe the apostate church. 

Why do we call them unfaithful?  It is because God has made known His Word in the Scriptures and when God says, for example, that a woman is not to teach and, yet, you can go into many churches and see a woman in the pulpit.  God says that men are not to be divorced and have rule in the churches, but you can go into many churches and find divorced men preaching in the pulpits; they do not meet the qualifications for elders and deacons.   When you go into most churches, they have ignored the fact that God must get all the glory in the matter of salvation, but the churches are encouraging the hearers to “walk down the aisle and make a decision for Christ.”  God says that the Bible was complete when He said in Revelation in the last chapter of the last Book of the Bible that they are not to add to His Book or the plagues written therein would be added to them, but many churches are acknowledging “dreams and visions” and claiming that God spoke to them through a “tongue,” and they are breaking the commandment of God when He said He would not do that.  They are all “unfaithful” churches, like the character of Satan is “unfaithful.”  We could look at it as Christ as “Truth” and Satan as the “liar,” but we can also look at it as Christ being “faithful” to His Word and Satan being “unfaithful.”  The true people of God are faithful to Christ and His Word.  The professed Christians that have not become saved are “unfaithful” to Christ and His Word. 

Well, let me just read this verse in Leviticus 26:17:

And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.

God said this to Israel, but it is, in turn, a statement that has application to the churches.  It was the judgment of God when He loosed Satan at the beginning of the Great Tribulation, as He brought an evil ruler, Satan, to rule over the entire corporate body in all the churches and congregations of the world and this ruler hated them.  We will have to look at this in our next study to see exactly how it is that Satan expressed that hatred.