Whore or bride – who satisfies your longing?

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Whore or bride – who satisfies your longing?

Ulli Neuhausen

KAB, Frankenberg, August 21, 2022

Revelation 17

The reason for the theme of whore or bride is that this is one of the major defining images used in Revelation.
Actually a stupid question: “whore or bride, who satisfies your longing?” If I’m the bridegroom, then I really hope that I don’t get the idea that my needs, once I’ve married, aren’t with my bride , but to be breastfed in the brothel. That would be a weird idea that would probably prevent a wedding I think.
But, Revelation poses the question to us, and I hope I can make it clear what it actually wants from us.
In Revelation 17 this image of the harlot is introduced. So here comes an explanation of what that actually means. Verse 3-6:
3 Then the Spirit of God possessed me, and I saw myself transported into a desert by the angel. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast. The beast had seven heads and ten horns, and was covered all over with names mocking God. 4 The woman herself was clothed in purple and scarlet silk, and all about her glittered with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She held in her hand a golden cup overflowing with the abominations of her idolatry and the foul filth of her immorality. 5 A mysterious name was written on her forehead: “Babylon the Mighty, the mother of all whoremongers and the authoress of all abominations on earth .” 6 I saw that the woman was drunk, intoxicated with the blood of God’s holy people and killed because of their belief in Jesus.
Johannes expressly says that he sees a picture, not a real woman, and it also becomes clear afterwards that this picture is symbolic of many things. So this picture is a woman, the mother of all whoremongers, the whore of Babylon, as she is called. This woman is described as enormously chic and richly dressed, which is described here with pearls and gold jewellery, even the red clothes were seen to be very noble in antiquity. So a strikingly chic, well-dressed woman who obviously succeeds in seducing many, many people.
I said it’s a picture, one of the big pictures of Revelation, and I just want to show you where that goes, so you can sort that out in your head.
 
There are two great pairs of opponents in Revelation, one could also say two great pairs of opponents.
The first opponent pair is God and the Lamb in chapters 4 and 5 versus the dragon and the two beasts in chapters 11-13.
A big contrast. God and the lamb (by the way, a lamb is also an animal, now seen from the picture) What is meant here is Jesus Christ, i.e. God and his son Jesus Christ, and as a contrast the dragon and his two animals. The main question is: Who is worshipped?
The Lamb wins people by loving them. Love is the way to bring people into the dominion of the Lamb.
The devil and his animals make people worship them by exerting pressure. Revelation 13 says of the dragon and his two beasts:
“It was given them to make war with the saints and to overcome them, and power was given them over every tribe and people and language and nation. And all who dwell on earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world.”
So: the dragon, the devil, tries to get people to honor him. He wants to be God, he wants to put himself in the place of God. That’s one big pair of opposites. Adolf Pohl, a famous interpreter of Revelation, once said: “Revelation describes the struggle for worship.”
Who owns our heart, our recognition, our respect, our love.
There is a battle going on, the devil trying his ways to get men to worship him and his people and not God and the Lamb.
The second pair of opposites discussed today is the whore Babylon and the bride Jerusalem.
Bride, that is also a woman, like the harlot, Jerusalem is also a city of Babylon. You see the parallels. The whore Babylon stands against the bride Jerusalem. We’ll take a look at what that means later. Two women, and again Revelation declares that people are fighting for each other, that the powers are fighting for people’s hearts. And in a sense, even then, Revelation presents us with a choice and asks: What do you want, what do you hope for? What is it that you think is right and good and worthy of worship and to whom do you give your heart, God and the lamb, or the dragon and the beasts, the whore of Babylon, or the bride of Jerusalem?
That’s just for classification before we look at what it’s actually about.
– Gotteslästerung
– Reichtum
– Götzendienst
– Unmoral
– Macht
– Mordlust
– Hass auf Christen
The harlot, as said, is described as rich, said to have names of blasphemy, she practices idolatry, she is immoral, powerful, she is murderous, she lives by blood and she has especially Christians. The image here is not discriminatory, this is a barbie, but it kind of goes with the red clothing revelation. Please don’t take the picture too seriously.
So the whore is described with a lot of negative attributes and a little later, in chapter 17, it is also explained what this whore stands for. It says in chapter 17:9: The seven heads on which the woman sits are seven hills on which the woman is enthroned. The seven hills are up in antiquity.

Rom

This is always the mental picture for Rome today. Rome is built on seven hills. The picture here doesn’t quite show it. I’ve also been to Rome twice and thought, where are the seven hills here? You don’t see them straight away, but when you walk through Rome, you keep going up and down. That’s when you realize, ok, Rome is built on hills and ancient tradition says that Rome was built on seven hills.
So the woman is the city of Rome. Why Rome?
Well, the text was written in the first century, and at that time Rome was the center of a huge empire. The Roman Empire had taken over the entire Mediterranean basin and was the greatest superpower that existed on earth at that time. The Romans conquered one country after the other, of course not just to conquer countries, but to plunder these countries and then make them tributary, i.e. to collect taxes. And that means the city of Rome, the center of the Roman Empire, became incredibly wealthy. The money of the whole world flowed into this city, and not only the money, treasures, looted goods, everything could be found in Rome.
The whore is a picture of incredible wealth, extravagance and a prosperity that attracts the whole world and brings it to Rome. And so it was. Where the money is, that’s where the dealers go, that’s where the people who make the money want to be, and Rome was the center of it.
In chapter 18 the woman is described like this (here we are already talking about the destruction of Rome):
11 Business people all over the world will also weep and mourn for them because nobody will buy their goods anymore: ( Here comes a list of goods that were traded in Rome, and it sounds like an antique department store. That’s why I have a here department store, so you must imagine an antique department store.) 12The gold and the silver, the precious stones and the pearls, the robes of fine linen and silk, the purple and scarlet fabrics, the sandalwood, the carvings of ivory, the objects of precious wood, of bronze, of iron, and of marble, 13the cinnamon and the cardamom spice, the perfumes, the anointing oil and the incense, the wine and the olive oil, the fine flour and the wheat, the oxen and sheep, the horses and chariots; and all human trafficking will then come to an end.
What a list! When you read that, you think, well, that’s not a problem in itself. What is this woman’s problem? Why is this a problem? And to do that, we need to think a little more about the image of this woman, the whore. What does it mean that Revelation uses such an image, what does the harlot stand for as opposed to the bride?
Well, it stands for the very quick fulfillment of our longings without any obligation except maybe the money that you have to give for it. The whore is the casual sex, the opportunity to get satisfaction without really committing to anything. One could say that this is the immoral, non-binding satisfaction of our needs.
What does this have to do with us here today? I’ve thought about it a lot and also talked about it and I think you’re already discovering what that means in our culture. We had the two contrasting images of God and the lamb as well as the dragon and the two animals, and I said the devil and his people try to force people to worship him by putting pressure on them. Many, many Christians around the world experience this, above all through persecution. OpenDoors says that around 200 million Christians worldwide live in situations of persecution. This is the compulsion, the pressure that is being exerted. An unbelievable amount in an unbelievable number of countries.
The other way the devil uses to win people over is not persecution, but deception. When I now look at our country, Germany, I notice a strange ambiguity in our culture and society.
On the one hand, we Germans are known all over the world as the country with orderly people, they are punctual. We were just in Kurdistan, in Turkey, and when people talked about Germany, the comment came: Everything was incredibly clean in Germany, they are all nice, honest people, very peace-loving (I hope).
Our country is actually a fantastic country, but there is another side to the image of the whore, and that is very, very painful. I want to give you some statistics on that. It is now said (the last statistic was in 2021) that around 40 – 43% of the traffic (links clicked) on the Internet relates to pornographic content. So almost half of all users of the Internet worldwide use it for pornographic content. About a quarter of this half of all clicks comes from Germany.
I read a book by a doctor, not a Christian book, a sex therapist who said we Germans are world champions in consuming pornography. It is now assumed that more than half of all men and more and more women in Germany also consume pornographic content – regularly. Incidentally, it is also assumed that in Christian circles and communities at least 30-50% of men regularly consume pornographic content. This is the dirty side of the clean Germans.
Due to our lax legislation in Europe, we have become the hub for human trafficking in the field of sex slavery. Thousands of women from Eastern Europe are brought to Germany under false pretenses and forced into prostitution here. Our legislation now blocks the possibility for the police to investigate and uncover it. Even in France, which is actually morally considered the loosest nation, prostitution is forbidden, only here it is officially allowed as long as the prostitutes pay taxes.
We are, and this is even sadder, a growing child pornography business. I recently spoke to a police officer from Cologne, who heads a whole department against child pornography, who said: “Uli, we are uncovering more and more, but the market for child pornography is growing many times faster than we can uncover and arrest the perpetrators .” This is the dark side. Behind the child pornography are really abused and mistreated children.
The number of sexual offenses against children has increased enormously. I have a 2x to 3x increase here on the 2021-22 numbers. It is now believed that there are up to 40,000 cases per year. We are a good, orderly and clean nation with a dark, dirty side.
That’s Whore Babylon, that’s what Revelation means. It’s not about accusations and condemnation. That’s not what it is about. It’s just a matter of knowing that if we follow Jesus Christ, we are in conflict. Life is not just a comfortable, relaxed approach or walking happily behind Jesus, but it is always a struggle because there are opponents who want to take from us exactly what we have: trust in God and the courage to walk with Jesus . And that includes this side, and if we deny it and pretend it’s not, then we’re in grave danger of falling for it.
We can confess and clear any sin we do at any time. Even if we’ve done it 10 or 50 or 100 times.
God accepts when we come with an honest heart and say, “I’m sorry, I really want to get out of here.” He accepts every step toward the cross. God affirms that. It is only one step out of sin, even if the battle with sin continues and we may fail a hundred more times. We’re allowed to come out every time. But what the devil wants, Bonhoeffer says in his book ‘Living Together’: The devil wants us to be alone with sin as much as possible, so that if we slip into it, nobody will find out, that just none of the elders or pastors will find out anything about it is happening to me, or even worse if my wife, my children, or my parents find out.
We can break the power of sin at any time by confessing it to God, and if we find we are not free, it is to someone we trust. We can break sin at any time.
So it’s not about threatening or saying, “Woe to you if this happens to you, no, it’s an invitation: “If this happens to you, come out, break with sin, It’s easy to break with it , but she’ll ruin you, and that’s the picture of the whore Babylon, she’ll ruin you if you try to hide her and keep living her. You will go down with it.
The whore of Babylon is destroyed in the course of the story’s telling in Revelation! She’s going under and has no future. There is of course much more. Everyone has their own kind of temptation and we will all struggle and I’m sure each of us will fail too. The Apostle John says this in 1 John 5-8: Whoever claims that he has no sin is a liar. Don’t be a liar, I don’t do it myself. Of course, I know my weaknesses, I know my sins, I know my failures. It’s never been an issue for it to happen. The challenge is: Break it, expose it! Bonhoeffer says: “Confess it”
Bonhoeffer, although he is a Protestant, has a very strong plea for confession in his book. He says: “Go up to someone and tell them what happened. Do it honestly and openly, break with sin! Sin destroys relationships: with your neighbor, with your partner and also with God. Break with sin! Because that, and that’s what’s special, what’s behind it isn’t just, I’d say, that you have certain quirks, certain weaknesses, a tendency to think or feel certain things that are wrong. What is behind it is actually the power of the devil himself, and not because he doesn’t want you to enjoy the pleasures of sin, or because he wants you to enjoy yourself. But because he only wants one thing, that you alienate yourself from God and at some point you no longer know why you believe in God at all. That’s his goal! You can’t handle this power, the devil is smarter than you! Unless you go to the cross and to your brother, to your sister and say, “I want to get rid of them.” John says (1 John 1:9):
But if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Unbelievable right? No matter what we have done: If we confess it, then not only is it forgiven and there is a stupid feeling of dirt, no, it is also cleansed. God looks at us as if this sin never happened! But we need this step of confession.
As I said, this applies to all areas of sin, not just the one I mentioned. But that’s important to me because this kind of, let me put it this way: dirt that washes into our hearts now happens without us even noticing it.
I know many years, decades ago, I had someone in counseling for pornography. Whenever he went home from work, he passed a kiosk. He went in there as if under external control and bought a pornographic magazine. My advice to him was just go home another way, go somewhere where there is no kiosk.
That’s ridiculous today. Today you can access pornographic content on any device, on any mobile phone, at any moment. This is available non-stop, everywhere. That’s what makes it so difficult today.
I don’t know if you know what the starting age for pornography is today. It’s 11 years! That means it’s not just about us, it’s also about our children! We really, really need to help them not get off track here. You know, and so do secular scholars, not just Christian, who starts doing this in their teens , primes their brains for the satisfaction of imagery like a drug addict being drugged. He’s going to have an incredible amount of trouble ever getting out of this, and please, that’s exactly what the sex industry wants. The business with these images is a billion-dollar business. And that is exactly what an entire industry is aiming for, to create ties and dependencies as early as possible. Experts say these addictions are the same as addictions to alcohol, heroin, and other drugs. There is no difference. Therefore: if you have people who are in these dependencies, be patient. It’s a long way to get out of there. It just doesn’t work that way. That requires a lot of support, a lot of patience, a lot of friendliness, but also constant dialogue and openness to lead people out of it. There are now also secular organizations trying to get people out of their dependency. You can find a whole page on the Internet at institutions such as the Technikerkrankenkasse, which explains that you can get medical help for it and even money from the health insurance company.
Let’s protect our children and ourselves too, and if you are in there yourself or know someone who is in there: be inviting to help them out of there or, if it is you yourself, then have the courage and open it up and think no, that’s a shame, I don’t want to tell anyone. If you don’t open that up, if you don’t talk to someone about it, then you won’t become free.
The whore certainly stands for much more. I’ve picked out this topic now because I’m actually very moved by it right now and I’m a bit afraid for our nation , our country, because I think: God, how long are you going to put up with the fact that we abuse children, how much longer will you be able to stand what we do to people? When will you make us face it, when will you judge us?
I pray for our country that we get out of this mess.
Now I want to move on to the Bride, so it doesn’t just sound like a harsh statement, because the Bible gives us a wonderful antitype here: the Bride!

Whore or Bride

And the two are phrased in very opposite terms. If you compare:
Revelation 17:4 Description of the harlot: The woman herself was clothed in purple and scarlet silk, and all about her glittered with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand…
And now in chapter 21 the bride Jerusalem is described as a city. There it says: 21:11 God’s glory filled the city, so that it shone like a jewel of great price; she sparkled like a diamond.
The whore wears diamonds, the bride is made of diamonds!
18 The wall was built of diamonds, and the city itself was of pure gold, shimmering and shining like cut crystal.
The whore wears gold, the bride is made of gold!
21 The twelve gates of the city were made of twelve pearls; each gate was formed from a single pearl. And the broad street that ran right through the city was of pure gold and translucent like crystal.
The whore wears pearls, the bride is made of pearls!
The bride has gates made of pearls. By the way, when I imagine it, a goal like that is maybe 20 meters high and 20 meters wide. This is of course an image, but when I picture it: a pearl in size!
Revelation introduces these two women to us and makes it absolutely clear: If you can’t wait for the bride and take the whore, you’ve lost something and missed the most beautiful and best thing. The bride is so much more fantastic than anything the whore can ever give you, so much more beautiful, so much richer.
Of course, that has a lot to do with the fact that the text encourages, yes, as a Christian you have to make sacrifices, as a Christian you have to give up sometimes. It may cost you something, even a lot, as a Christian, but it’s worth it! What you have in the end is so much more, is so much more valuable, so much more beautiful, so much more fulfilling for your longing, everything that life here can ever offer you. And I want to give just one example here.
I also talk to my students about pornography and I would sometimes say, “If you can’t deal with the subject, and I’ll be frank with you, we also have students at the Bible School who are stuck in there and have trouble getting out of it, If you can’t deal with the issue, then sell your mobile phone and terminate the contract. Sometimes I feel like they’re going to say, “It would be ok to pluck out my eye, but sell my phone?”
You see, sometimes following costs something! Because I draw conclusions and because I say: Being networked and being present in social media is not worth as much to me as what I get when I’m waiting for the bride, when I’m waiting for what God will give me. I definitely don’t want to lose that.
whore or bride? Actually logical – bride, what else?? The whore can’t compete at all with what the bride is going to give me. What the present promises you now will never keep up with what God is about to give you!
That’s the challenge here. I can do without because I know something much better and nicer is coming.
The woman, as I had just read, is dressed in purple and silk. It says of the bride:
Revelation 19:7 Let us shout for joy and give him glory, for now the marriage of the Lamb is celebrated! His bride has made ready for the feast; 8 she was allowed to clothe herself in pure, brilliant white linen. (The white linen represents the good done by those who are of God’s holy people and conform to God’s will.)
Let’s let this picture sink in for a moment, the bride’s wedding dress. I started today by telling you how I went about buying my daughter a wedding dress and I let you in on a secret that goes through a man’s mind. A thousand euros for a dress that you only wear once… and the shoes many more euros, even though you don’t even see them.
Forgive us, you women, what we men think is not meant in a bad way, and we keep our mouths shut, we don’t say anything. We don’t understand something, but then we understand it emotionally. Why does a woman do this? Why is she investing so much money in an instant?
Well, I would say it’s about the one point where the bride’s father leads the bride into the church. The groom is standing at the front of the church and has not yet seen the bride. She is beautifully prepared with the dress, the shoes, the hairstyle and so on and the groom sees her and thinks: “There is no such thing as marrying the most beautiful woman in the world.”
For the smile on the groom’s face when he sees her, that’s all worth the money, that’s the point. That’s why I find this image here of the bride’s attire, the good deeds, the good works she’s doing, so powerful.
As a Christian you might ask yourself: “Why do I actually have to do good works? I’m redeemed, I’m saved, I’ve practically booked heaven” What do I have to work for? Why should I love my neighbor now? I am already loved by God and yet I don’t have to do anything more, no longer have to perform. That’s correct. It’s about that one moment when you see Jesus, and I personally have that, when I see Jesus, he kind of has a smile on his face and says, ‘What a beautiful bride you are, or let’s be like that Congregation say, “We have a longing as a congregation that when Jesus sees us, He says, ‘Nice that you’re here, you’re so beautiful!’ That’s why I want to do everything, not just me afraid of falling away from Jesus and falling into terrible dirt, but also to do really positive things, to do good, to love my neighbor, to invest love. I want when I see Jesus, my church with me, that we are beautiful. That he says: “Wow, what a beautiful dress.” I don’t want to stand in front of him torn and dirty, I want to stand in front of him clean, beautiful, with the most beautiful dress on the market.
I’ll show you another picture. It’s a really good key for me. I don’t know if anyone has any idea what the picture represents.
It’s Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol. Maybe someone knows that, it also came on TV before. Mister Skrutsch , a curmudgeon whose whole life consists of grabbing money and never spending it again. Here you can see Mister Skrutsch on the one hand, and a former colleague who was just as stingy as he was and who has since passed away. He appears as a ghost. You can see that he’s wearing chains, and you can’t tell that exactly, cash boxes and account books and the like are hanging on the chains. But he is chained to his wealth. And what I find strong, Charles Dickens put it wonderfully, this spirit is begging and saying, if only I could be on earth just one more time for a very short time to do at least one good work! That is, the mind perceives this lack of good works as the worst deficit.
Well I don’t believe in ghosts etc don’t worry it’s just a fairy tale but I find it incredibly strongly put. We have here only a few years, eternity awaits us. This here, 40, 50 or 90 years, that’s a short time. The Bible says: that about the time, like a steam, immediately over again. If you want to try it, turn on a kettle at home and you will see the steam come out and then go away again. In the light of history as a whole, we are only here for a very short moment. But we will be with God for eternity!
The good works we can do, the challenges we face, we can solve now. In heaven, I suspect, that’s not a problem. Everyone does anyway, but the challenge here is to love even when we’re not loved, to be generous even when we don’t have to expect back, to be hospitable, to show love and patience to people who actually annoy us to visit our neighbor who is lonely, love to invest. We can do that here, in heaven it’s nothing special anymore. Here is the part of the gorgeous wedding dress. That’s why I find it so strong that in this fairy tale the spirit calls out: “If only I could be on earth just once, for a very short time, to do at least one good work! I guess we’ll be happy in heaven for every act of love we’ve done, for every chance we’ve had.
Jesus says: “Loving those who love us is nothing special. It’s special to love those who don’t love us. Right there, where we would most like to say: “Oh go home, I don’t want to deal with you anymore, you annoy me. Just to do the opposite and to love. That’s probably the subject in heaven that we’re going to talk about and say, hey, how were you on earth? We no longer talk about illness or how we liked the service or whether the sermon was too long or what music we liked . There will be the topic: Where did you have a chance to practice love?
It’s not a requirement to go to heaven, but it’s actually what we’ll find out later, which is our heart’s deepest longing. Don’t be greedy, just do good. Don’t perish with Babylon, by the way, that’s the ruins of Babylon. Babylon was destroyed before New Testament times. This is just a symbol of revelation.
The groom who is waiting for the bride or the wedding does not go to the brothel until the wedding is finally over. Then he has a problem and so does his bride. He renounces. If he then says yes to his bride, he is also saying no to four billion other women. A yes to the bride is a no to all other alternatives.
Here you can see a picture of today’s Jerusalem.
Don’t perish with Babylon but live with Jerusalem. I would like to give you a few more questions, just to think further or to ask the questions to someone else:
1. Waiting means giving up. Renunciation is only possible with one goal in mind. Waiting must be worth it. Do you know why it’s worth it for you?
2. “Whore” is different for everyone – what is it for you?
3. You have already made compromises, have you already failed? Start over, make a fresh start with Jesus. Find someone to help you with this. You don’t have to stay in there. And I would say if there’s a place where you can have the courage to talk to someone you trust, to reveal your sin, it’s here, in church. Here you can talk about sin, because we don’t expect anyone to be there other than just male and female sinners. We have no other expectation because the Bible says so. Here you can unpack, do it! Don’t get stuck, let yourself be freed.
God bless you. I hope that the picture of the bride will motivate you.
God strengthen you!