This devotional is one day of a 365 days devotional book entitled Living Hope for the End of Days that explores Revelation, the final book of God's Word; and is available at http://www.dtbm.org/

Understand the True Bride of Jesus

(Revelation 17)

As the end of days approaches, you can find hope as you understand the true bride of Jesus!

THURSDAY: What Is the Mass?

… not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another—He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

—Hebrews 9:25-26, emphasis added

The harlot is a woman wearing purple and scarlet with wealth beyond calculation, but the most graphic telltale mark is that this woman, this harlot, is wicked in spiritual adultery.

If we apply the first law of interpretation of the Bible, we will reason: What did the apostle John think about when he heard those words? (Not: What do those words mean to us today? And not: How can we somehow shoehorn somebody to fit into this standard?) All the way through Revelation 17, you have to remember that this is the apostle John who is on a sun-baked island out in the middle of the Aegean Sea as a prisoner of Rome. When he saw purple and scarlet, he saw the Roman Caesars and Legionnaires. When he saw inestimable wealth, he saw the city of Rome. When he saw the city that ruled over the nations of the world, he was looking at the city of Rome.

I find it interesting that the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Egyptians, and the Greeks came and went. However, the Romans came and they have never gone. Did you know that the Roman Empire was never defeated or destroyed? It just broke up and dissipated. But there have been efforts to regather it: Napoleon, Bismarck, and Hitler all have tried. When John saw it, he saw a kingdom that had not been destroyed and is going to come back. But when he thought of this “golden cup” with the “abominations and the filthiness of her fornication,” he was not talking about peep shows and pornography shops. From God’s perspective, he was speaking of spiritual abominations, spiritual adultery, and spiritual fornication.

The harlot is wicked (17:4): The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. This woman in purple and scarlet has a golden cup in her hand. This is the holiest instrument in Roman Catholicism: the golden chalice of the Eucharist. No doctrine in the world is more damnable than the Doctrine of Transubstantiation (re-crucifying Jesus at every Mass in every church around the world every day). This cup is a picture of a false and vile counterfeit of true communion with God. The golden chalice is filled with the filthiness of her abominations. Did you know that this is what they teach? They transform the “host” into the real body of Jesus; then they symbolically crucify it again. They pour out His blood again because they do not believe that His blood was sufficient when He shed it on behalf of the sins of the world—past, present, and future. Thus, they have to repeatedly re-offer Him.

The biblical view of the sacrifice of the Mass, the very heart of Roman Catholicism, is a denial of the completed work of the cross, which states that “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:28a). Verse 28a does away with Romanism: not once an hour in the big cathedrals; not once a day at all the other ones; not all day long at those chapels surrounding St. Peter’s Cathedral, the largest Roman Catholic Church in the world, but ONCE FOR ALL. This is the stake in the heart of Romanism. To those who trust in that once-for-all sacrifice, and eagerly wait for Him, He is going to appear—but not to those who are looking to be saved by crucifying Him over and over again. Do you see why this teaching is so important?

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am not against Catholicism: I am against Romanism—the Mass, purgatory, confessions, sacraments, Mary, penance, extreme unction, beads, robes, cathedrals, and Popes. True Catholicism is Peter, Paul, Jesus, John, and the New Testament. I love born-again Catholics, and all Catholics everywhere, but I hate any false teaching that denies salvation, as does Romanism.

Most people don’t realize the dominant role the Roman Catholic Church has had. Did you know that the calendar of the world (except for the Muslims, Hindus, and Jews) was instituted by the Pope? The reason why there is a French Canada and a Catholic South America is a result of Papal edicts. The reason we are here in protestant North America is due to a miscalculation of the Pope. So many things in the culture of the world have been decided by the Roman Catholic Church, which has exerted incredible control over civilization for 2,000 years. However, they are not the only culprit.

The harlot is a system (17:17): “For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled.” This will occur when false world religions are united. As we saw in Revelation 13, the beast will change all religions into the worship of Antichrist. What is amazing is that the Roman Catholic Church is just a part of this whole system Satan has built. This is the system that substitutes God and His way for Satan’s way, and God’s truth for Satan’s lies. The whole system evolved into a religion and, as we saw in Pergamos, when Rome conquered the world, they moved the center of the Babylonian’s worship, including all the altars in Babylon, and brought them to Rome. Today, you can go through a building called the Pantheon (“all gods”) that houses all the gods brought by people in the Roman Empire. That Pantheon is now a Roman Catholic Church.⁵ not quoted, the ideas I first saw in this source

The problem is not just that they utilize those little temples, but that they worship the same way. Until the Roman Church began its domination under Constantine, there were no robes, no beads, no rosaries, no venerated images, no scapulas, no holy artifacts, no feast days, no confessions, no penances, no indulgences, no sacraments, no candles, no saints, and no Lent. Those things were assumed or developed after they took over the Babylonian traditions.

The harlot is a city (17:18): “And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.” The “great city” is Rome. No other existing city in the world has a three-thousand-year history of continuous inhabitation, once ruled the world, and once headed a worldwide empire that has never been destroyed—only Rome. So John was shocked because he saw the church he loved, and had given his life spreading the gospel for, merge into one with the Roman Empire.

Should this city of rebellion that is to come discourage us? No, we must always remember what city we are to be looking for. We should not spend our lives looking for the city that will be destroyed, rather, as Hebrews 11 instructs us, we are to look for “… the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God…” (v. 10). We ought to live each day seeing it “… afar off…” (v. 13), and be trusting our great and faithful God who has “… prepared a city…” (v. 16) for all who believe in Him and seek Him here on earth (v. 6).