This is the Bay-Mont podcast with Marty Salmon. I'm his co-host Brent Billings. Today we confront the

great beast of Babylon as it appears in Revelation and consider which part of the story we should

align with the most. Excellent. We're going to this huge battle that we've been building up to is

going to take four chapters of Revelation. So we're just going to go through it. Brent, we're going

to read and I'm going to share some commentary and you're going to read and I'm going to share some

commentary and we're just going to see where this takes us. Buckle up. Buckle up. All right, so just as

John begins to bring this epic show down to a close, we find the villain entering right on cue.

Revelation 17, Brent. We're almost done. We're working on it. This episode and one more.

Spoiler alert. Can you feel it? You got it. You can feel it coming. It's coming. Yep. One of the seven

angels who had the seven bulls came and said to me, come, I will show you the punishment of the great

prostitute who sits by many waters. With her, the kings of the earth committed adultery and the

inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. All right, so Babylon,

the image driving the end of this apocalyptic vision from John is often pictured in the prophets

as a prostitute who lures the nations into her adultery. One would think of Isaiah 23,

Jeremiah 51 as direct references that would have particular relevance to this conversation.

Babylon becomes the apocalyptic image for kingdoms of evil. Just as Babylon terrorized the people

the Old Testament and fell into disrepair, so would every kingdom spoken of an apocalyptic imagery.

The fall of Babylon becomes a foreshadowing of what happens to empire in every form.

Give us some more, Brent. Then the angel carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness. There I

saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads

and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and was glittering with gold,

precious stones, and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things,

...