Revelation Chapter 17
VERSE 3 “So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.”
AND HE CARRIED ME AWAY: Brother Russell was the first to understand clearly the 1260-year prophecy of Daniel and its applicable dates. He carried us back in history to lay the historical background for understanding this harlot’s power and characteristics.
Thus Verses 3-5 are a history of Babylon’s glory days
IN THE SPIRIT -- in our minds, the Greek has no article. It best reads “in spirit.”
INTO A WILDERNESS:
The only other place Revelation mentions wilderness is the two times in Chapter 12 where the woman (True Church) flees to escape persecution for 1260 days.” These are clearly the same period. The wilderness (a place, Compare Rev 12:14) represents the condition existing (for the saints) when Jezebel ruled supreme.
“One must be taken aside or apart from the wine, the gaiety, and the garish city lights into the solitude and the sobriety of the “wilderness” condition in order to see the “woman” in her true colors.” (“The Keys of Revelation”, Page 439)
AND I SAW: This is John’s traditional change-of-focus expression. It might seem out of place here; but its purpose is to denote a different focus from the last time (in Chapter 12) we saw the wilderness. At THAT time, our focus was on the True Church; THIS time it is on the apostate church of the same time period.
A WOMAN: the harlot, The Roman Catholic Church.
SITTING ON: i.e., controlling
A SCARLET BEAST:
We often (and correctly) ascribe scarlet to sin. It is noteworthy, however, that this color (along with purple) is frequently used to represent splendor of royalty. (See Matt 27:28 and Rev 18:16) The next verse so uses it for this “royal” harlot. While Chapter 13 represented the great Babylonian church-state beast as being similar to certain animals in order to show its true characteristics, Rev 17:3 instead represents this beast as scarlet -- a totally different viewpoint.
But how was the beast viewed during the 1260 wilderness years?
Was it not viewed as the divinely-righted, royal, government entity by mankind in general?
BOTH uses of scarlet seem appropriate. The John Class would see the SINFULNESS; the world would see the GLORY.
FULL OF BLASPHEMOUS NAMES:
Only here and in Rev 13:1 is the beast so described. Its blasphemies are mentioned elsewhere, but only these two places say it has blasphemous NAMES. This could be symbolic of blasphemous characteristics. But it is more likely that it refers literally to names or titles which this beast assumed which are by their very nature blasphemous.
The term CHRISTENDOM would only be one of many examples.
HAVING SEVEN HEADS AND TEN HORNS: -- seven forms of government and ten support powers or nations. (N.A.N.O.R. Pages 132, 133)
“The “scarlet colored [Greek: kokkinos] beast” should not be confused with the fiery red (Greek: purrhos) dragon of Rev 12:3.
These colors are separate and distinct, as are the beast and the dragon. However, the beast in Chapter 17, having seven heads and ten horns, signifying Rome, is the same papal beast that has a similar number of heads and horns in Rev 13:1.
The present chapter states that the scarlet-colored beast is “full of names of blasphemy”; according to Chapter 13 the “name of blasphemy” is on each of its seven heads. In the absence of anything to the contrary, it should be assumed that the disposition or arrangement of the names is similar in both instances.
The blasphemy, in part, consisted of the beast’s assertion that it represented the one and only true Kingdom of Christ; yet it rained,
(1) BEFORE the Second Advent of Christ (1 Cor 15:25),
(2) APART from a contemporary participation of the twelve apostles of the Lamb and the 144,000 Elect (1 Cor 4:8; Rev 5:10), and
(3) WITHOUT the visible role of the Ancient Worthies, such as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt 8:11), which things are all contrary to the teachings of the Scriptures.”
(“The Keys of Revelation”, Page 439)
We will continue with Verse 4 in our next post.
