Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #16 of Revelation, chapter 18, and we are reading Revelation 18:7:

How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

Here, God reveals what Babylon is saying in her heart as if she were a person.  Of course, this is simply revealing the mindset of Satan and the mindset of the unsaved inhabitants of the earth.  This is what mankind, in their fallen condition, is thinking in his heart: “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.”  What does that mean?

In our last study, we went back to Isaiah, chapter 47, and we saw that there is very similar language in that chapter and we will are going to go there, but, let us first look at something in Isaiah, chapter 14, where Satan is also speaking in his heart and God tells us what he is saying.  It says in Isaiah 14:12-14:

How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

This is very similar to what Babylon is saying in her heart and we would expect that because the king of Babylon is Satan and his kingdom takes after him.  We read in Isaiah 47 some language concerning the “heart” of Babylon.   It says in Isaiah 47:7:

And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever…

Earlier in Isaiah 47, it was said of Babylon that she was the “lady of kingdoms” and the word translated as “lady” is the word translated as “mistress” when it refers to Sarai in the Book of Genesis; Sarai was “mistress” or “lord” over Hagar, her handmaiden and Hagar was a servant to Sarai.  Likewise, Babylon is the “mistress of kingdoms” and “lord” over the kingdoms of this world because Babylon represents the ruling kingdom of Satan that rules over the unsaved people of the world. 

So, it says here, “And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever,” which means she thinks she will continue in this role as “lord” over the people of the earth.  Again, it says in Isaiah 47:7:

And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: so that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, neither didst remember the latter end of it. Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, that sayest in thine heart…

Again, God is revealing what is in Satan’s heart, as only He can do, because God does know the inner, deep-down thoughts of mankind and of Satan and the evil spirits.  God knows exactly what is going on inside their minds, so He reveals it.  It goes on to say, in Isaiah 47:8:

… I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:

But, first, let us think about the first part of the statement concerning the thought in the heart of Babylon: “I am and none else beside me.”  What does that sound like when we read that kind of statement?  It should actually be very familiar to us, especially because we are in the Book of Isaiah.  It was just a few chapters earlier in chapter 43 that God said, in chapter 43:11:

I, even I, am JEHOVAH; and beside me there is no saviour.

There is just God, and God alone is Saviour.  God, alone, is God.  He “is” and there is no other.  Yet, Babylon is saying, “I am and none else beside me.”  Babylon is glorifying herself and she is actually deceived into thinking that she is God.  We saw in Isaiah, chapter 14, that this is exactly what Satan thinks and that is why he wanted to take his seat as the man of sin and to rule in the temple, showing himself that he is God.  It is the pride, arrogance and terrible sin of Satan to want to be God.   When Satan came into the Garden of Eden, what did he use as “bait” to tempt Eve and Adam into falling for his lie?  What lie did he tell them?  What words did he use?  If you remember, it was the promise that if they would eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would be like God.  Eve said to the serpent, in Genesis 3:3-5:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

In the King James Bible, they translated it as “gods,” but it is the word “el-o-heem,” which is normally translated as “God,” with a capital “G” and translated in the singular tense.  In Genesis, chapter 1, it was God, “el-o-heem,” that created the heavens and the earth.  So, Satan, without any doubt, is telling Eve that man would be “God.”  He is telling them that this is what that particular tree had in store for them: “All you have to do is eat of the fruit of that tree and you will possess the wisdom and knowledge of God to know good and evil and you, in fact, will be like God.”  You see, that was what Satan wanted all along – he wanted to be God.  The temptation for mankind was the same temptation.  Satan fell for it himself.  He deceived himself in lusting after a desire to be God, so he used the very same sinful desire for Eve and Adam and they, also, fell into sin at the very beginning.  The fall of man was a lustful desire to be God.  That was the real sin.  There was a discontent and dissatisfaction with Lucifer and the fallen angels – it was not good enough for them to be angelic spirits and to be ministers to the heirs of righteousness.  That was not good enough for Satan and he sold that discontent to mankind: “It is not good enough for you to be mere creatures created in the image of God when you can be God.”  That was his selling point.  “You can be God yourselves and you do not need to rely upon God.”  Who knows what went through their minds, but that was the tactic the enemy used in order to get man to fall into sin and in their desire to be God.

Babylon, which represents unsaved mankind, became the kingdom that Satan won at the point that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and became subservient to Satan and he ruled over everything that Adam and Eve had ruled over in this earth.  Then nations and kingdoms developed and they all belonged to Satan by the right of conquest.  So Babylon, the lady of kingdoms and the mistress that ruled over all the kingdoms of this world, has this evil desire implanted in her heart from the very beginning when man fell into sin: “I am, and none else beside me.” Of course, this is a statement that is only fitting for God to say of Himself.  It was God who told Moses at the burning bush to tell the Israelites, “I AM THAT I AM.”  He is the ever-existent One.  Are there any besides God?  There are no other Gods, so that language is language that applies to the Sovereign Lord of the Bible alone.  But, it is the language that Babylon is claiming in her heart.  She is lifting herself up to say these things. 

Remember, when we looked at Tyre or Tyrus in Ezekiel 28?  First of all, we had seen that Tyrus is a picture of mankind.  Let us look at Ezekiel 28:12-13:

Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God…

Just as we read in Genesis, chapter 3, it was only Adam and Eve or Satan that could be referred to as “Tyrus,” but because of the language God uses, it can only apply to man.  Again, it says in Ezekiel 28:13-15:

Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.

This iniquity was the sin we were just talking about that was found in mankind.  Now that we understand that Tyrus is a picture of mankind, let us look at Ezekiel 28:2:

Son of man, say unto the prince of Tyrus, Thus saith the Lord JEHOVAH; Because thine heart is lifted up, and thou hast said, I am a God, I sit in the seat of God, in the midst of the seas; yet thou art a man, and not God, though thou set thine heart as the heart of God:

Here it is.  It is the same language Babylon uses, because they are one and the same.  Tyrus and Babylon are synonymous.  It is the kingdom of the unsaved people of the earth.  They are people that were created in the image of God, but they fell in their wrongful desire to be like God, so God says they have been lifted up in their heart: “Thou set thine heart as the heart of God.”  This is exactly what we are reading about Babylon: “I am, and none else beside me.”  Then it goes on to say, in Isaiah 47:8-9:

… I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children: But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perfection for the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments.

First of all, Babylon is saying, “I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children.”  We have to be careful with this language because God uses the idea of a widow in the Bible to typify believers, so we could say that Babylon is refusing that sort of identification when she says she will not be a widow.  But God is saying she will be a widow and, more than that, she will lose her children.  So we have to search the Bible.  What does it mean to be a widow?  And what does it mean to lose one’s children?  Of course, it is interesting and very significant when we go to a couple of verses and one verse will tell us about widowhood and one verse will tell us about the loss of children; we will find the same identification in both cases because there is something that God relates to both widowhood and loss of children.

Let us first go to 1Timothy, chapter 5, where we read about widows in 1Timothy 5:3-5:

Honour widows that are widows indeed. But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God. Now she that is a widow indeed…

We learn that a “widow indeed” is a widow without children.  If there is a married woman and her husband dies, but she has children, then she is a “widow,” but she is not a “widow indeed” because her children should take care of her.  But a “widow indeed” is a woman who lost her husband and has no children and God says of her that it would be the church that should look after her needs because she had no children to care for her.  Then it says in 1Timothy 5:5:

Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate…

The word “desolate” is the key word.  If you are a “widow indeed,” then you are “desolate.”  

We also read in Isaiah 49:21:

Then shalt thou say in thine heart, Who hath begotten me these, seeing I have lost my children, and am desolate…

This is the idea and this is the identification God is making when Babylon is saying that she will not sit as a widow or know the loss of children; she is saying she will not know “desolation.”  But God is saying, “But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood.”  She will be made desolate.  We have further confirmation because there is also an interesting verse in Zephaniah, chapter 2, concerning Nineveh of the Assyrians.  God uses similar language there and Nineveh can also be used as a picture of the world.  Remember that Jonah went to Nineveh and cried that in forty days that city would be destroyed.  It says in Zephaniah 2:13 -15:

And he will stretch out his hand against the north, and destroy Assyria; and will make Nineveh a desolation, and dry like a wilderness. And flocks shall lie down in the midst of her, all the beasts of the nations: both the cormorant and the bittern shall lodge in the upper lintels of it; their voice shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the thresholds: for he shall uncover the cedar work. This is the rejoicing city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, I am, and there is none beside me…

Notice the similar language: “I am, and there is none beside me.”  This is the language of Tyrus and this is the language of Babylon and it is the language of Nineveh because it is the language of mankind right from the beginning in the Garden of Eden when man wanted to be like God.

It goes on to say in Zephaniah 2:15:

…I am, and there is none beside me: how is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand.

Here, it does not mention a “widow,” but it contains the idea that widowhood presents, which is to be “desolate” and this is exactly what God has in mind. 

For further confirmation of this, the Hebrew word translated as “widow” in Isaiah 47 is also used in Isaiah 13. (I think it is the plural form of the Hebrew word,  Strong’s #490.)  Isaiah, chapter 13 regards the “burden of Babylon” and then God goes on to describe Judgment Day and His punishment on the world.  Then He reverts back to speaking of Babylon in Isaiah 13:19-20:

And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

In other words, Babylon will be desolate.  Then it goes on to say in Isaiah 13:21:

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there.

We looked at this before and we saw that all these unclean animals related to the verse in Revelation 18:2 where Babylon had become a “cage” or a “prison” for every “unclean and hateful bird.”  Then it goes on to say in Isaiah 13:22:

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.

The phrase “desolate houses” is a translation of the Hebrew word, Strong’s #490, which is “widows.”  Perhaps “widowhood” would also fit here, but you can see that the King James translators struggled with this and they translated it as “desolate houses.”  They will cry in their widowhood.

We see that being a widow is identified with being “desolate” and the loss of children is also identified with being “desolate.”  Then Zephaniah 2:15 uses the same language as Revelation 18 when it says, “I am, and there is none beside me.”  God says that Nineveh will be desolate.  Also, the word “widow” is translated as “desolate houses,” so we have all the evidence we need to understand exactly what God is saying in Isaiah 47:8:

… I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children:

She is saying, “I will not be desolate.”  But the judgment of God is the shut door of heaven, the removal of the Spirit of God and the end of salvation and it has turned the world into desolation, spiritually.  Babylon says, “It will not happen to me,” but God says, “But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood.”

Lord willing, in our next study we will look at that language a little bit closer.