Marvellous

 But the angel said to me, "Why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her.
Revelation 17:7 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/rev.17.7.ESV

The Apostle John saw Babylon, the mother of all prostitutes, drunk with the blood of the saints, and he marvelled. Before we rush to the angel's response and sit in judgement over John, we ought to search our own souls. Do we who pay lip service to God yet indulge in sexual immorality?

The world may look dazzling, but as the angel would warn us, we would do well to remember that however sexy it may look, it's beastly, and is passing away. Soon God will destroy this fallen world and forge a new creation. We need to become refugees from this passing age to the eternal Kingdom of God.

I know it's hard to be too prescriptive with Revelation with it being so allegorical. Yet I take the whore Babylon to be a bastardised Jerusalem as it were, a counterfeit Christianity. For John, Babylon was the Roman empire that exiled him to Patmos. To many Christians down the ages, Babylon has been Roman Catholicism, which apes true faith in Christ alone, but blasphemously adds plenty of trinkets to Him, as though He were not enough.

The beast could be interpreted as the powerhouse of antichrist. John explains elsewhere that the spirit of the antichrist is to deny Father God and the Son of God. The worst 'sin' in Islam is to say that God has a Son, the cornerstone of our faith. If Roman Catholicism is the whore and Islam is the beast, we must remember that Catholics and Muslims like us are sinners in need of Christ.

'Heavenly Father, we confess to the weightiness of Your word. Please strengthen us in Christ our Lord and Saviour we pray, in His name, amen'

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