Yesterday I ran across a video compilation of people who were drunk. They fell down stairs. They tried to fight, but their efforts were ridiculous. A man fell out of a moving boat. A woman in a dress climbed up on the hood of a car and sat there even after the driver began to move forward. Another woman stumbled backwards into bushes and could not extricate herself. All of these people looked silly and sad and pathetic.
The Bible uses drunkenness as a metaphor. In the Book of Revelation, John sees a woman dressed in beautiful clothes and jewelry and sitting on a scarlet beast. This woman has a name tattooed on her forehead and she is drunk. Wait till you hear what she has been drinking …
“The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She had a gold cup in her hand filled with everything vile and with the impurities of her prostitution. On her forehead a cryptic name was written: BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF ALL PROSTITUTES AND OF THE VILE THINGS OF THE EARTH. Then I saw that the woman was drunk on the blood of the saints and on the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I was astonished” Revelation 17:4-6.
Why is John astonished? If an enemy of Christ were drunk on blood, he would not be surprised. John is astonished because he understands that this woman who has played the harlot, who is drunk on the blood of the saints, is part of the church.
Numerous Biblical commentaries agree that this passage references the harlot Judah in Jeremiah 2:20 – Jeremiah 3:8. That is, this one who is drunk on the blood of saints and martyrs—who has been drinking the blood of God’s heroes—has been hiding among the saints all along. How? Consider the Inquisition: thousands were tortured, burned at the stake, and otherwise martyred for holding views the Catholic Church considered heretical. Others were executed for translating the Bible into languages other than Latin. Puritans executed women suspected of being witches.
Pagans, atheists, Nazis, and Communists have killed untold Christians. But a terrible number of godly men and women have also been put to death by those who claim to follow Christ, “but are actually a synagogue of Satan.”
God will send punishers who will render Babylon the harlot “desolate and naked, devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire” (Revelation 17:16) and then an angel will announce “It has fallen, Babylon the Great has fallen!” Revelation 18:2. Nearly the entire eighteenth chapter of Revelation discusses the punishment of this one who persecuted the church while posing as a member of the church.
Persecutors will be punished. Revelation 17 indicates God has a special punishment waiting for those who have killed in His name, particularly for those who have killed other believers.
Revelation is a book of justice. God’s wrath will be poured out—even on the so-called Christians who have killed in the Name of Christ, whether in ancient Rome, in the Crusades, or the Inquisition, or the Salem witch trials, or in any of a thousand other places.
The Bible ends with a story of God’s justice and mercy: His enemies will be punished and those who love Him will receive mercy and rewards.
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