Revelation: Skepticism is wisdom

God hasn't given me permission to study Revelation for some years.  Quite a difference from when I was a "notional Christian" (in Barna's wonderful descriptor): back then, Revelation was the only part of the Bible I really cared about and studied.

Partly that was because my family loved to talk Revelation.  When we got together, we swapped and argued new interpretations of Revelation we'd heard or read.  Revelation was always the most interesting, exciting, and important thing God had said.

But it's not just Christians ("notional" or otherwise) who want to understand what the Bible says about the last days.  That desire seems widespread in our culture.  It's probably not just sales to Christians that put Hal Lindsey's books, or the "Left Behind" series, on secular best-seller lists.

God hasn't given me permission, or the insight, to read Revelation for some years.  I'm sure He will at the right time.  'Til then, one more theory about the events and players of the end-times won't be missed.

But until He gives me the Spirit's wisdom to understand Revelation, God has given me the wisdom of skepticism toward the thousands of interpretations that exist.

Revelation deals with end-time spiritual and political events and personages through intensely obscure imagery.  So the book is an open invitation to anyone confident in his own cleverness, to "discover" the hidden meaning he wants to find.  Deception (starting with self-deception) is virtually guaranteed any "interpreter" who comes to Revelation with his own religious or political axe to grind: and most do. 

Traditional interpretations especially have to be tested.  Interpretations of Revelation by Protestants (the branch of Christianity from which most end-time speculation comes) virtually all identify the major end-time personage, Revelation 17's woman seated on "seven mountains" (sometimes incorrectly translated "seven hills"), as the Catholic Church.  This interpretation has come down to us from the first Reformers, and has 500 years of tradition behind it.  But there's good reason to suspect their interpretation may not be based entirely on objective hermeneutic principles.

In outline, the standard Protestant interpretation is that the woman, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH,” is the end-time religious deceiver, and persecutor of true Christians ("drunk with the blood of the saints").  That's a valid reading, as far it goes.  And the Reformers undoubtedly saw themselves as the "true Christians" of that scripture (don't we all ?) in their battle against the corrupt Medieval Papacy.  That too was probably valid in their time.

Taking that interpretation beyond those two facts, however, we run into problems.

The woman is seated on the Beast which has seven heads.  Scripture specifically says interpretive "wisdom" is that the seven heads are "seven mountains."  Rome was traditionally built on seven "hills:" and that was close enough for the Reformers to identify the woman in Revelation 17 as the ROMAN Catholic Church: as most Protestant interpretations still do.

One problem of that interpretation (leaving aside the possibly-significant distinction between "mountain" and "hill") is that other cities of the New Testament Mediterranean world were known as cities built on seven mountains or hills: Athens, for example, and Jerusalem (Mount Scopus, the Mount of Olives, and Mount Zion: Old and New: among them).

Or if Rome is the city indicated in Revelation 17, there's a  problem for contemporary interpretation that Rome is also the "seat" of other world geo-political entities: the government of Italy, for example, or the "global think-tank" Club of Rome (prominent in many "New World Order" conspiracy-theories).  If either became more instrumental in persecuting true Christians in the still-future end-time God's describing: as either could: they might well be viable possible identities for the woman of Revelation 17.

For contemporary interpretation, there's also the problem that other world cities built on seven mountains or hills are centers of false spirituality.  Tirumala, India, for example, home of Vishnu's Temple of the Seven Hills, which claims to be "the most active place of worship in the world."  Even San Francisco, another city traditionally on seven hills, could be said in some ways to have a false spirituality "footprint."

There are additional reasons to be skeptical of the "Harlot = Catholic Church" interpretation.  The Vatican Hill where the Catholic Church is headquartered is not one of the traditional seven hills of Rome; and is, in fact, on the other side of the Tiber from those seven hills.  Rome was, at the time of Revelation's composition, the city of Imperial political power; and a religious center only secondarily.  Rome was certainly not identified with the Catholic Church, which didn't yet exist.

The standard "Evangelical" interpretation also fails to tell us how the seven heads which are seven hills are also seven kings (as are the 10 "horns" of the Beast on which the Harlot is seated); or about what it means that she is also said to be seated "on many waters."  A coherent working interpretation should consist of more than a single equivalence isolated from everything else in its context.

Especially when that single equivalence is itself questionable.  The certain identification is scripture's: the woman of Revelation 17:5 bears an inscription that identifies her as "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."  Revelation 14:8, 16:9, 18:2, 18:10, and 18:21 repeat that identification, as "Babylon the great," "the great city, Babylon" and "Babylon, the great city."
  
Revelation unmistakably identitfies "the great city" as "Babylon."   That is the understanding in which we must take the additional references to "the great city" in Revelation 16:19, 17:18, 18:16, 18:18,  and 18:19 (and indeed, the context of each of those verses show they likewise refer to "Babylon").  Revelation is thoroughly consistent in naming "Babylon" as "the great city."

It therefore seems honest interpretation to understand Revelation 11:8's reference to "the great city" as also denoting "Babylon."  The bodies of Christ's two great end-time witnesses "...will lie in the street of the great city...where also their Lord was crucified."  Knowing Christ was crucified in Jerusalem (another city seated on seven mountains) should give us pause in accepting the standard "Evangelical" interpretation that Rome is Revelation's "Babylon."

God hasn't given me Spiritual insight sufficient to say the woman of Revelation 17 is not the Catholic Church.  That may even be the true interpretation, exactly what God desires we understand from those verses. But He's given me skepticism about that interpretation, sufficient to keep me from the presumptuousness of certainty, until the Spirit speaks.

If He wants me to know who's who in Revelation, He'll show me, at the time He chooses.  My job 'til then is to listen: and to test what I hear.

Amen.