And the woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand filled with abominations and the unclean acts of her sexual immorality.  A name was written on her forehead, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth."  Rev. 17:4, 5.
 
    Many years ago I was attending a professional conference in Boston during the late stages of my wife's final pregnancy.  My flight home to Andrews University was scheduled for 2:00 in the afternoon on a Tuesday.  At 6:00 in the morning the phone rang in my room at the Sheraton Boston.  It was my wife.  "Jon, come home quick--the contractions have begun!"
 
    I dressed and packed with uncommon speed.  Hurrying through checkout, I grabbed a cab and sped off to Logan Airport.  Arriving at the United Airlines desk a little after 7:00, I breathlessly announced the blessed event and asked if there was some way I could get home immediately.  The woman behind the counter smiled and quickly put me on the 8:00 flight to Chicago, with a two-hour layover before the next flight to South Bend.
 
    Arriving in Chicago a little after 9:00, I went to the departure board and noticed that the earlier flight to South Bend was not scheduled to take off for another 10 minutes.  But the gate was about a mile away in the vastness of O'Hare Airport.  With the help of moving walkways and accommodating pedestrians (it's amazing how accommodating people can be when a man runs wild hollering "My wife is having a baby!")  I covered the mile in six minutes flat.
 
    Racing up to the gate, gasping for air, I waved my ticket and shouted, "My wife is having a baby!"  Can I get on this flight?"  The attendant waved me on, glancing quickly at the ticket as I thundered by (the good old days before elaborate security).
 
    I arrived in South Bend 10 minutes before 11:00 Boston time (an all-time record for Boston to South Bend, I suspect).  Heading straight to a phone and still breathing hard, I called my wife.  "False alarm!" she announced cheerily!  "They were false contractions and stopped a couple hours ago."  Slumping into a chair, I decided to wait until my baggage arrived that afternoon.
 
    Things are not always what they seem!  A beautiful woman is dressed in clothing reminiscent of Israel's high priest (see highlighted text above).  But the appearance deceives.  She is Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes.  Not everyone who declares the name of God really serves Him.  We should never place our full trust in human beings and institutions.  God's Word is our safest guide.
 
Lord, give us clear discernment to know the difference between truth and error.

      [The angel] carried me away into the desert by the Spirit.  And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, which was full of the names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.  Rev. 17:3.
 
    The writers, director, producer, and actors all sat down before a 12-inch black-and-white television to watch the first episode of I Love Lucy.  It was October 15, 1951.  All but one of the group had participated in the filming of the show, so the only laughter came from the single person who hadn't seen it before, the husband of a secondary actress.  He laughed so hard he almost fell out of his chair.  The others hoped that his reaction was a good omen.
 
    When the reviews appeared, they were mixed.  The Hollywood Reporter raved about the show.  Daily Variety, on the other hand, indicated that it needed some work before it would be successful.  The New York Times thought the show had "promise."  Time called it "a triumph of bounce over bubbling material."  But when the ratings came out, I Love Lucy stood in the Top 10, and six months later it reached number one.  Time magazine quickly had a change of heart, featuring Lucy on its cover in May 1952.  The more-than-50-year success of the show is a credit to the comedic genius of "Lucy," Lucille Ball.
 
    I Love Lucy established all kinds of records.  Mare than a billion people have seen it.  But one of the show's greatest contributions to the entertainment world was something that happened before it ever went on the air.  In the early 1950s most TV shows performed live for broadcast from New York City.  Stations around the country then played a kinescope, a copy of the show filmed from a TV screen, which left a lot to be desired in terms of quality.
 
    But Lucy and her husband, Desi, were expecting their first child, and they didn't want to move to New York.  So Desi suggested shooting the show with three movie cameras in front of an audience.  CBS said it would cost too much, so the couple took a cut in salary and in return received the rights to the negatives of the films.  Thus the three-camera film system, still used for situation comedies today, came into being--as well as the rerun.
 
    Revelation 17:3 is also a rerun.  We have seen the woman previously in the desert (Rev. 12:6, 13-16).  The same applies to the beast with seven heads, 10 horns, and the names of blasphemy (verses 3, 4; Rev. 13:1-6).  These characters also echo characters from the Old Testament (Eze. 23; Dan. 7; Hosea 1-4).  "What goes around comes around" and "there is nothing new under the sun."  Satan's strategies tend to be fairly consistent.  The problem is not that he surprises us, but that we tend to fall for the same tricks again and again.
 
Lord, help me to learn from the spiritual mistakes I have made in the past.  Teach me to recognize the wiles of Satan and enable me to be faithful in all things today.

  One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters.  With her the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and those who live on the earth have become drunk with the wine of her fornication.  Rev. 17:1, 2.
 
    One of my favorite old movies is Samson and Delilah, with Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr.   The long drawn-out scene in which Lamarr entices "Samson" to reveal the secret of his strength is one of the great moments in cinematic legend.  On the one hand, you find yourself absolutely charmed by the attractiveness of Lamarr's Delilah and on the other hand absolutely infuriated by her duplicity and cunning.
 
    In this kind of dynamic it is easy to put the blame entirely on the woman.  She is the seducer.  Samson's great strength doesn't seem to affect one iota of his brain.  In her hands he is all but helpless (especially since he is too distracted by her to call on God to get him out of there).  Delilah is the stereotypical femine fatale.
 
    But this kind of dynamic is falling out of favor in today's world, and the book of Revelation has received a great deal of criticism as a result.  Some commentators complain that John's portrayal of Babylon as a prostitute represents a sexist stereotype no longer appropriate in today's world.  They worry that Revelation's great popularity in the Christian world will translate into even more abuse and hatred of women than already exists.
 
    The women of Revelation do appear in stereotypical roles, but such images were already current in John's day.  Gentile writers of the first century often personified their homeland in female terms.  Coins and other artwork typically depicted a city as a goddess enthroned by a river.  So the book of Revelation was adopting images that communicate effectively within the culture of its time.  While Westerners may be uncomfortable with such language today, it can be explained in terms of its context.  To condemn John (or God) for using the concept of the prophet's day is culturally insensitive and anachronistic.
 
    When sharing the message of Revelation, we should be prepared for some objections from modern audiences.  God meets people where they are.  That means Revelation was well designed to communicate truth in the first century.  But not every aspect of the way that truth was presented will be culturally familiar today.  God is not on trial in the logic or the style of the Bible's writers.
 
Lord, help me to discern the contemporary meanings of these ancient symbols.  Enable me to interpret them in ways that will not hurt other people.

  Every island fled away and mountains were not found.  Great hail weighing as much as a talent [90 pounds] fell from heaven upon men, and men blasphemed God because of the plague of hail, since the plague of hail was so severe.  Rev. 16:20, 21.
 
    When natural disasters come, people always ask why.  Usually there is no simple answer.  But a major cause of natural disasters are actions we thought would be to our benefit.  Something done from the highest of motivations may still have negative consequences.
 
    "What I am trying to do is make the whole world safe for Jews," Harry Truman wrote as he wrestled over the decision whether or not to recognize a Jewish state in Palestine.  Deeply affected by the Holocaust, the American president sympathized with Jewish aspirations for a homeland.  In November 1947 he lobbied for a United Nations resolution that divided Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.  Britain announced that it would hand authority over Palestine to the U.N. by May 14, 1948.
 
    Secretary of State George Marshall advised against recognition.  He warned Truman that Arab countries would unite in an attempt to destroy the Jews.  On the eve of the British withdrawal he told the American leader that "the office of the president" was at stake.  But Truman had made his mind up.  At 4:00 p.m. on the fourteenth of May, David Ben-Gurion read a 979-word declaration of independence in front of a small audience at the Tel Aviv Art Museum.  At midnight British rule over Palestine lapsed.  Eleven minutes later the U.S. announced its recognition of Israel.
 
    "God put you in your mother's womb," the chief rabbi of Israel later told Truman, "so you would be the instrument to bring the rebirth of Israel."  With Truman's decision, the hopes of the Jewish people were realized, but so too were Marshall's fears.  Arab opponents of the new nation immediately declared war, prompting a bloody struggle over Israel's existence that continues until this day.
 
    The plagues at the end are horrible.  In a perfect world God would never choose to destroy and devastate as described here.  But this is not a perfect world.  His people are in danger of destruction, and He intervenes to deliver them from end-time Babylon.
 
    Like President Truman, God once faced a fateful decision.  He could create beings programmed only to obey Him or He could fashion ones that were truly free.  But free beings would be able to reject God and plunge the creation into great misery.  It was a God-sized decision with pluses and minuses either way.  The Lord chose freedom, and the rest is history.  One day the universe will clearly see the the wisdom of His choice.  For now we live with the unavoidable consequences.
 
Lord, thank You for the freedom we have to live and love and choose our way.  Help me to freely choose the best way--the way that You designed me to go.

 And the seventh angel poured out his bowl upon the air, and a loud voice came out from the temple, from the throne, saying, "It is done!"  And there were lightenings and noises and thunders, and a great earthquake.  It was such a terrible and massive earthquake that none like it has ever happened since humanity has been on the earth.  And the great city disintegrated into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell.  Babylon the Great was remembered before God to give her the cup of the wine of the furry of His wrath.  Rev. 16:17-19.
 
    The concepts of a raging God doesn't always sit well with people today.  But one thing we have to keep in mind is that John wrote Revelation primarily to people who were suffering as they heard the book.  In a time of ease language like this can seem inappropriate, but in desperate situations the thought of a mighty avenger can seem almost sweet to the abused and the downtrodden.
 
    But more than this, God uses such language as a motivator in some circumstances.  He knows that we often want to do the right thing, but we need some sort of prompting to pull it off.  The sense of negative consequences can go a long way toward changing our behavior.
 
    A high school principal faced a problem of motivation one day.  It seems that a number of the girls thought it was great fun to coat their lips with lipstick and then plant a big kiss on the mirror in the girls' bathroom.  The sight of all the lip marks seemed too hilarious for words.  This, however, increased the janitor's workload greatly, as the oil-based substance was quite difficult to remove.
 
    So the principal made it a rule: no kissing of mirrors in the girls' bathroom.  Did it stop the practice?  Of course not!  Now there was not only the fun of smudging the mirror, but also the thrill of breaking a rule.  So the lip imprints on the bathroom mirror increased rather than decreased.
 
    The principal then levied a fine on the behavior, which made it even more attractive.  Not only did the girls have the excitement of breaking a rule, but also the challenge of avoiding punishment.  So that didn't work either.
 
    Finally he came up with an idea.  Clearing the girls' bathroom one day, he called in 10 of the most talkative female students for a demonstration.  He would show them how hard it was to remove all the lip smudges.  So with the girls looking on he called on the janitor to wipe down the mirror in front of them.  The janitor dipped a sponge in the toilet and began to wipe the mirror.  Needless to say, within two or three days the kissing of mirrors had stopped in that school.
 
Lord, I need a little extra motivation today.  Help me to apply the principle of consequences to everything I do.  May my choices result in a brighter future.

And he gathered them to the place that in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon.  Rev. 16:16.
 
    Texts such as Matthew 24, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Revelation 13 speaks about a great end-time deception.  According to Revelation 16:16, the place where it occurs is Har-Magedon, Mount Carmel.  In the original event at Mount Carmel Elijah takes on the prophets of Baal.  It was a showdown between two claims as to who was God--Baal and Yahweh.  After a time of failure by the prophets of Baal (and a whole lot of mocking from Elijah), Yahweh responds of Elijah's simple prayer and sends fire from heaven to confirm that He is the one and only true God.
 
    But the end-time version of the Carmel confrontation has one problem.  The fire from heaven falls on the wrong altar!  Instead of confirming the identity of the true God, the evidence of the senses will imply that the counterfeit trinity is the real thing.  It will be a devastating shock to the human race.
 
    Imagine the following scenario, one that many believe today.  You get up from a restless sleep and peer past the living room curtain into the street.  A jet-black 2007 Corvette has jumped the curb across the street, skidded across the lawn, and wiped out most of Charlie's prize petunias before embedding itself into a retaining wall.  Homer is out inspecting the wreck and the damage to the retaining wall.  But he can find no sign of Charlie or of any occupants of the Corvette, which is too heavily damaged for anyone to have extricated themselves from its remains.
 
    It turns out that this is only one of several such mishaps on your block.  As neighbors cluster around the wrecks you notice that none of the born-again types are around.  Charlie talked a lot about a "rapture" in which all the born-again Christians vanish, leaving chaos behind.  You remember him telling you to watch some TV evangelist, but you never got around to it.
 
    Now is a different story.  You flip on the satellite TV and turn to the Christian Broadcasting Network.  Chaos fills the screen, people milling back and forth.  Finally one of them comes to the anchor desk to inform you with a trembling voice that apparently the "rapture" has come.  One of the televangelist vanished in midsermon.  Airplanes have been crashing in midflight, minus pilot and/or copilot.  The entire world has come to a standstill!
 
    Would an event like that get your attention?  Would you wish that you had spent a little more time studying your Bible and a little less on soap operas and the latest game show?  And this scenario is probably mild compared to whatever the real thing will be.  However it turns out, the end-time Mount Carmel experience will be very disorienting.  It will deceive many.
 
Lord, help me to trust Your Word rather than my feelings.  I want to be prepared for whatever may come.

 And he gathered them to the place that in Hebrew is called Har-Magedon.  Rev. 16:16.
 
    The word "Armageddon" has become famous because of its role in the King James Version as the location of the final battle of earth's history.  The word appears only once in Scripture, right here in Revelation 16:16.  The Greek has a little breathing mark above the a that indicates an h sound precedes Armageddon.  So the actual word in the Greek is "Harmagedon."  According to the text, it is a word with a Hebrew background.
 
    In Hebrew the word har means "mountain" and magedon is a frequent translation of the Hebrew Megiddo in the Greek Old Testament (Joshua 12:21; Judges 1:27; 2 Chron. 35:22).  So the most natural understanding of this enigmatic term is "Mountain of Megiddo."
 
    The region of Megiddo was an ancient battleground.  There the armies of Deborah and Barak defeated Sisera and his Canaanite army (Judges 5:19).   Later the same place was the scene of the final struggle between Josiah and Pharaoh Necho (2 Kings 23:29, 30; 2 Chron. 35:22).  This was such a memorable event in Israel's history that Scripture recalled the mourning for Josiah years later (Zech. 12:11).  If the author of Revelation was alluding to this ancient battleground, it is an appropriate background to the final battle of earth's history.
 
    The problem with the text is the reference to the "mountain" of Megiddo.  The Old Testament speaks several times of a city of Megiddo (Joshua 17:11; Judges 1:27, etc.), a king of Megiddo (Joshua 21:12), a valley of Megiddo (2 Chron. 35:22), and waters of Megiddo (Judges 5:19).  But it never mentions a "mountain of Megiddo."  Scholars have offered a number of solutions to this problem but most don't work unless you alter the text in same way.
 
    The best understanding of the phrase, therefore, would seem to be as a reference to Mount Carmel, a 20-kilometer-long ridge running from Haifa southeast toward the Jordan River.  The high point of the ridge is in view from the ruins of the ancient city of Megiddo.  There on Carmel Elijah the prophet precipitated a showdown with the prophets of Baal (1 Kings 18:16-45).  He called fire down from heaven to prove that Yahweh rather than Baal was the true God (cf. Rev. 13:13, 14).  And there he defeated the false prophets of Baal (cf. Rev. 16:13-16).
 
    By alluding to the Mount Carmel showdown, John indicates that the Battle of Armageddon is a spiritual conflict over the issue of worship (Rev. 13:4, 8, 12, 15; 14:7, 9-11).  It is a struggle for the mind (Rev. 16:15; 17:14).  Everyone in the world must make a fateful decision with permanent results.
 
Lord, I know that every day a battle is going on in my mind.  Help me to recognize the decisive moments of that conflict in my life and in the lives of those around me.

 Behold, I come as a thief!  Blessed is the one who stays awake and hangs on to his garments, in order that he might not walk naked and they see his shame.  Rev. 16:15.
 
    This is a very important text because it demonstrates that the battle of Armageddon (Rev. 16:14, 16) is a struggle for the hearts and minds of real people.  It is not about Middle Eastern oil or the kinds of fighting we have seen in that part of the world recently.  Right in the middle of the passage describing the battle of Armageddon is a call to the people of God to stay watchful and faithful as the end-time approaches.
 
    What is particularly interesting is the connection between this text and the message to Laodicea in chapter 3.  We find four words in this passage ("garments," "naked," "see," and "shame") that appear together in only one other place in the Bible, Revelation 3:17, 18.  At the decisive end-point of history God reminds us of the letter to Laodicea.
 
    The key problem with Laodicea is inauthenticity.  What she says about herself and what she is are two different things.  According to the text, Laodicea has put on a mask of riches but lives in poverty.  She dons a disguise of beautiful clothing but cannot escape the reality of her nakedness.  And she claims to be living on easy street, but she is actually wretched and homeless.  I can relate to her condition.
 
    Some 30 years ago I was visiting the Riverside Church in New York City one Sunday with a couple friends.  It has one of the five largest classical organs in the world.  Being an organist myself at the time, I never got enough of it.  The organist that day was Fredrick Swann.  Internationally famous, he had dozens of recordings.
 
    When the worship service concluded, I took my friends up on the platform to get a closer look at the organ.  And since I knew quite a bit about such things, I began to explain some of the organ's different features.  As I talked about the organ, the audience began to grow.  It was fun having a bigger audience.  So I began to expand on the story a little.  And the audience got even bigger.  Then suddenly I began to realize that the people weren't looking at me anymore.  They were watching something behind me.  When I turned around I stood face to face with Fredrick Swann himself.  Looking me in the eye, he said, "You'd better get your facts straight, sonny, before you open your mouth."  Then he turned and walked away.  I wish I could have been teleported to another planet instantly!  That day I learned a very painful lesson in authenticity.
 
Lord, I confess that sometimes I don't even know how much I try to be something that I'm not, or attempt to polish an image of me that isn't real.  Help me to find my security in You so that I can give an authentic witness to the reality of Your presence in my life.

   Behold, I come as a thief!  Blessed is the one who stays awake and hangs on to his garments, in order that he might not walk naked and they see his shame.  Rev. 16:15.
 
    Falling asleep is the perfect metaphor for the way many of us live our faith.  We go through the motions of religion, make it through worship songs without remembering a word, and sometimes even pray and read our Bibles in a daze--as if a fog prevented any of it from making an impact on our lives.  But we don't have to stay in a fog spiritually.  God has a ready antidote.
 
    A lifelong Catholic named Dan found Vicky Nelson to be extremely irritating.  He could hardly stand to be with her on the job.  Why?  Because she was so calm all the time.  She emanated a rare glow of serenity.  Peace radiated from her like a spiritual tranquilizer!  To him it seemed as if she were on drugs or something.
 
    "Why are you so calm all the time?" he asked her one day.
 
    "My faith," she answered  peacefully.
 
    "What faith?" he stammered.  "I have faith--I'm Catholic!"  (He claims to have been the world's worst Catholic at the time.)
 
    "My faith," she repeated.
 
    "What do you mean?"  He's always believed in God but felt that anyone who called themselves "born again" must be nuts.  When Christians called his radio show he played the theme from The Twilight Zone behind their voices.
 
    Vicky dragged him down to a Bible bookstore.  He bought a Bible and took a little pamphlet called "The Four Spiritual Laws" from her.  Among other things, the booklet had a drawing of a throne with a little man sitting on it.  The caption said: "Take yourself off the throne, and put the One who made you on it."
 
    H'mm, Dan thought.  Makes sense so far.  He got down on his knees and said, "OK, God, if You're really up there, come into my life and do Your thing!  Amen."  He then crawled into bed and read most of the book of John.  But he fell asleep before he finished, because he already knew how it ended.
 
    The next morning he woke up feeling as if had drunk 10 cups of coffee or something.  The reason was simple.  He realized that he now believed in God!  Suddenly he had a craving to read the Bible.  And it made sense to him!  Only the Lord could do a miracle like that.  The antidote to being asleep spiritually is to "ask and it will be given to you" (Matt. 7:7, NIV).  It is simply to "taste and see" (Ps. 34:8).  God is real and is waiting to show Himself to us.
 
Lord, I invite You on the throne of my life today.  Let nothing separate me from You.

 And I saw, out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs.  For they are the spirits of demons, doing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole inhabited world to gather them for the battle of the great day of God Almighty.  Rev. 16:13, 14.
 
    This passage parallels Revelation 13:13, 14, in which the land beast calls fire down from heaven to deceive those who live on earth.  Here the deceptive trinity (dragon, beast, and false prophet) sends out unclean spirits to perform miraculous signs in order the deceive the leaders of the world so that they can enlist them on their side in the final battle of earth's history.
 
    For many, deception seems to imply that those deceived are somehow not responsible for what they didn't see or understand.  But the reality is that people open themselves to deception because of greed or envy or some other selfish motivation.  Being deceived then, is not an excuse--it is a consequence, a fact illustrated by an entertaining Jewish joke.
 
    The story relates that in the early 1900s an old Jew was traveling alone in his compartment on the Trans-Siberian Railroad.  The train stops, and an officer in the czar's army gets on.  He and the Jew travel for a while in silence.  Suddenly the officer grabs the Jew by the lapels and demands, "Tell me, why are you Jews so much brighter than everyone else?"
 
    Silent a moment, the Jew then responds, "It's because of the herring we eat."
 
    The officer quiets down, and the trip resumes.  Soon the Jew takes out a piece of herring and starts to snack on it.  The officer asks, "How many pieces of herring do you have?"
 
    "A dozen."
 
    "How much do you want for them?"
 
    "Twenty rubles."  It was a large sum of money.
 
    The officer takes out the money and gives it to the Jew.  The old man hands him the herring, and the officer takes a bite.  Suddenly he stops.  "This is ridiculous," he exclaims.  "In Moscow I could have bought all this herring for a few kopecks."
 
    "You see," the Jew replies, "it's working already."
 
    Now, obviously we laugh at this joke because of where it stops.  Had the situation continued, the Russian officer would probably have attacked the Jew or thrown him off the train.  But in the story we see how the old man exploited the other's envy and greed to relieve him of his money.  In the last days Satan will employ our weaknesses to deceive us away from our faithfulness to God.
 
Lord, I don't want to give Satan even the slightest point of entry into my life.  Guard me with the infinite power of Jesus' blood.