Well, hello, glad to see you again, or
at least for you to see me.
This is the third session on the conference
on church and state.
If you haven't watched the first two sessions,
then I would suggest that you do watch
them before you watch this session, unless obviously
you're watching live.
Because they do lay the doctrinal foundation for
what we're going to speak about in this
third and last session.
So let's open in prayer.
Father, we come to you again in the
name of the Lord Jesus, and we do
pray for your help again.
We pray that you would help me to
deliver this very difficult message, but Lord, that
you'd also help each one of us to
understand and to receive the Word without prejudice.
Lord, it is so easy to come to
your Word with preconceived ideas as to what
it says and what it means.
Lord, we pray, Lord, that you'd help us,
that we might be able to take a
fresh look at your Word again.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
All right, so I'm going to begin with
a reading again as usual, and I'm going
to read from the book of Hosea, and
chapter 2, verses 1 through 13, or actually
chapter 2, verse 2 through 13.
Hosea is not a hard book to find.
It is the first of the minor prophets.
And so you have the major prophets ending
with Daniel, and then the next book is
Hosea.
And I'm going to begin reading in verse
2.
It is a long reading, and you'll see
the significance of this as we go along.
God is obviously speaking to Israel.
And slay her with thirst.
I will not have mercy on her children,
for they are the children of Harlotry.
For their mother has played the harlot.
She who conceived them has behaved shamefully.
For she said, I will go after my
lovers, who give me my bread and my
water, my wool and my linen, my oil
and my drink.
Therefore, behold, I will hedge up your way
with thorns and wall her in, so that
she cannot find her paths.
She will chase her lovers, but not overtake
them.
Yes, she will seek them, but not find
them.
Then she will say, I will go and
return to my first husband, for then it
was better for me than now.
For she did not know that I gave
her grain, new wine and oil, and multiplied
her silver and gold, which they prepared for
Baal.
Therefore, I will return and take away my
grain in its time, my new wine in
its season, and will take back my wool
and my linen, given to cover her nakedness.
Now I will uncover her lewdness in the
sight of her lovers, and no one shall
deliver her from my hand.
I will also cause all her mirth to
cease, her feast days, her new moons, her
Sabbaths, all her appointed feasts.
And I will destroy her vines and her
fig trees, of which she has said, These
are my wages that my lovers have given
me.
So I will make them a forest, and
the beasts of the field will eat them.
I will punish her for the days of
the Baals, to which she burnt incense.
She decked herself with her earrings and jewelry,
and went after her lovers.
But me she forgot, says the Lord."
A very, very harsh statement of God concerning
Israel.
And obviously he is dealing here with the
concept of Israel, who really was his wife.
And he says, you're no longer my wife,
I'm not your husband.
He deals with the issue of adultery and
harlotry.
And we're going to touch on some of
these issues in the session.
And so the title of the session is
The Kings and the Harlot.
And we're going to go a long way
around through various scriptures, and again through history,
because I want us to understand the context,
in the context of our modern world, and
how this applies to the church.
Now, the first principle that we need to
understand is that Satan has his counterfeits.
He very much wants to be God.
Remember the problem in the very beginning, I
will be like the Most High.
And so he has built his own counterfeit
trinity.
And he has counterfeits for so much else
of the things of God.
The counterfeit trinity, of course, instead of the
Father, you have Satan taking the place of
God.
Instead of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son
of God, you have the Antichrist.
Remember the word anti is not just against,
but also means in the place of.
And so in the place of Christ, the
second person of the trinity.
And then instead of the Holy Spirit, you
have the false prophet.
But in addition to those, you also have
the church.
The church is the bride of Christ.
And again, we're not specifically dealing with Israel
in this session.
But the church is the bride of Christ.
And so Satan has his counterfeit to the
bride of Christ, the great harlot.
And we're going to end up in the
book of Revelation, and we're going to look
at the great harlot when we come to
Revelation.
Now, the moment I mention the great harlot,
immediately we say, well, this is the church
of Rome.
And I will deal with that later.
But let's not just fixate on Rome.
Let me just tell you at this point,
so that we can try and clarify this
as we move along, that the great harlot
does not just represent Rome, of which Rome
probably is the great harlot, but she also
has daughters, those who come out of her
illicit relationship.
And that includes all false churches.
So any form of false church, and I
don't include Islam or other things like that
in this, because they are clearly not in
the place of the church.
But every church that is not a true,
genuine church is part of the great harlot.
All right, so let's get back to the
foundation that I want to lay.
And probably I'm going to spend 60 or
70 percent of the time that we have
in laying a foundation and then getting to
the real point.
So forgive me for that.
So we have these concepts of adultery, fornication
and holotry.
I'm not going to deal with the difference
between adultery and fornication.
Clearly they are two different things.
Fornication is the overarching thing.
Fornication includes things like pornography and bestiality and
all sorts of perversions.
But a subset of fornication, and the New
King James uses the word sexual immorality, which
is actually quite a good...
When I first saw that, I really struggled
with that concept.
It was so different to fornication.
But it really does encompass all.
Pornia encompasses all sexual immorality.
And adultery is part of that.
Now we're not going to deal with that
so much today, but we're going to speak
about adultery and then holotry.
Prostitution, if you will, in modern language, but
using the biblical term holotry.
There is a difference between the two.
Obviously they are both sexual sins.
Both of them involve an illicit relationship.
And we're not going to be dealing today
so much with the issue of illicit sex.
We're going to deal with illicit relationships.
Because that really is what adultery and holotry
is.
The difference between the two, really in the
context of what we're speaking today, is adultery
is an illicit relationship outside of the marriage.
Holotry is selling yourself for money.
Selling yourself for money.
So there are two.
The one, adultery, may be based on so
-called love or whatever it is.
Holotry clearly is a selling of oneself.
And so we'll come back to that.
So we're dealing then with illicit relationships outside
of marriage.
Now in the context of Hosea, and let's
look very quickly at a couple of verses.
I'm just going to look at two verses
there, verses 5 and verse 8.
And I want us to see how this
now plays out.
For their mother, that's Israel really, has played
the holot.
She has conceived them.
Now we're going to speak about illicit children.
Because an illicit relationship produces illicit children.
Or as the old King James says, bastards.
I will have, sorry, verse 5.
For their mother has played the holot.
She who has conceived them has behaved shamefully.
For she said, I will go after my
lovers, who give me my bread and my
water, my wool and my linen, my oil
and my drink.
So she goes after her illicit lovers, because
they give her certain things.
This is cardinal to the whole message this
afternoon.
They give her certain things in exchange for
her favors.
But the Lord says in verse 8, She
did not know that I gave her grain,
new wine and oil, and multiplied her silver
and gold.
So instead of receiving the gifts and being
grateful for the gifts that she receives from
her husband, she forsakes that because her illicit
lovers are giving her something different.
And here is the heart of this whole
thing.
And if you can keep that in mind
as we now go through the rest of
the study, and particularly as we look at
the examples in a few moments.
Now the second thing that we need to
understand is that as much as Israel committed
adultery, against the Lord, was unfaithful to the
Lord, by entering into illicit relationships with all
sorts of things, but amongst other things the
idols.
And so instead of cleaving to the Lord,
they leave the Lord and they go back
to idols and to those weak and beggarly
elements.
And I'm just taking out of context a
statement from the book of Galatians.
Now this is also true of the church.
It is possible for Christians to commit adultery
in a spiritual sense.
In James chapter 4 and verse 4, James
says adulterers, now he's writing to Christians, adulterers
and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship
with the world is enmity with God?
They committed adultery because they entered into an
illicit relationship with the world.
And then he says, whoever therefore wants to
be a friend of the world makes himself
an enemy of God.
So Christians commit adultery against the Lord when
they forsake Him, and they enter into a
relationship with the world.
Now remember in the previous sessions we said
that there are only these two things, the
kingdom of God and the kingdoms of the
world, or God's kingdom and the world.
If we leave God's kingdom and we enter
into a relationship with the world, we are
committing adultery the same way as Israel committed
adultery when Israel forsook the Lord and got
into a relationship with the Baals.
Now just incidentally, very quickly, it's interesting that
we generally tend to think that Israel forsook
the Lord, and I should maybe not have
used that term, that they turned their backs
on God and followed Baal.
But in fact most of the times they
cleaved to the Lord and they worshipped Baal
at the same time.
Many times the altars would be next to
each other.
Many times the worship would happen almost simultaneously.
So they didn't entirely leave God.
They didn't entirely turn their backs on God.
No, they worshipped Him together with the idols.
And you remember that the command says that
you shall not have other gods besides me,
not instead of me, but next to me.
And so that is adultery.
The church can and does commit adultery when
it enters into an illicit relationship.
Now, let's have a look at a few
examples from Scripture and also from history.
And I've just taken, I don't know how
many I have here, it looks like about
ten, and there are many, many, many more.
I've just selected a few that just came
to the top of my head as I
was writing these things down.
The first one I want to look at
very briefly is Balaam and Balak.
You remember Balaam was the prophet to whom
the donkey spoke.
And Balaam goes and enters into an illicit
relationship with Balak.
Balak, the king, pays him money to curse
Israel.
And remember that he fails in cursing Israel.
And so he then goes to the king
and says, Well, look, what you need to
do is get your daughters to seduce the
Israelite men, and when they then seduce them
and get them to worship the idols, God
will turn against Israel and God will punish
Israel.
And so, of course, that worked, and we
have the warning in the New Testament that
we need to be careful that there is
not someone like Balaam amongst us who seduces
and teaches the church to enter into an
illicit relationship with something outside and something that
has been forbidden by the Lord.
And I trust that you can see how
this begins to fit together.
We have Israel and their kings.
Remember, God said, I want to be your
God.
I want to be your king.
He wanted them to be what we call
a theocracy.
He wanted them to be under His governance.
And Israel says, No, we want to be
like the other nations.
We want our own king.
This was a form of adultery.
Solomon and his many wives and concubines.
And we can say, Well, you know, it
was permissible to have many wives those days.
But remember that it was not permissible to
have wives of foreign nations.
And so, Solomon enters into illicit relationships.
They may have been sanctified by the culture
at the time in the sense that he
could have more than one wife, although God
never sanctifies that.
But the fact that they are a heathen
woman, that they are women who worship false
gods, is clearly forbidden by the Lord.
So he enters into those illicit relationships.
And that results in Israel being divided into
the northern and the southern tribes.
That is the beginning.
And while Solomon rode the crest of the
wave, and Israel achieved greatness like at no
other time, this was the end of the
great days, and Israel declined from that moment
on.
We have Ahab and Jezebel.
Jezebel was a Gentile woman.
And Ahab enters into a relationship with her.
And she seduces Israel again to worship Baal.
So we have the same principle.
And we have a warning in Revelation 2,
verse 20, that there are Jezebels.
Now, I'm not going to get into the
whole Jezebel spirit.
The Bible doesn't speak about a Jezebel spirit.
But it speaks about those who are like
Jezebel, who are teaching the children of God
to commit adultery.
The whole principle between Jezebel teaching Israel to
worship Baal is brought into the church, and
brought into the book of Revelation, the messages
to the seven churches, worshipping idols being taught
by so-called Jezebel.
Israel often entered into illicit relationships with other
nations when they felt that the enemy was
too big.
They didn't trust God.
They didn't rely on the Lord's ability to
deliver them, as He had delivered them so
many times.
And so, instead of trusting the Lord, they
trust in illicit alliances with foreign kings, and
with Gentile nations.
And the Lord judges them for that.
But you can see the same principle.
While it's not called adultery, it's the same
principle of an illicit relationship in order to
get something out of that relationship, and that
brings the judgment of God.
In the New Testament, we have the temple,
and we have the Sadducees.
And I'm really going to just cut to
the chase here.
But the Sadducees had entered into a relationship
with Rome, whereby they were appointed to be
the high priest and to run the temple.
Rome would then collect the temple tax and
then hand some of that over back to
the Sadducees.
And so the Caiaphas, the high priest, who
hands Jesus back over to Rome, is one
of the Sadducees.
And so they had set up a thriving
business, sold Israel, effectively, for money.
And so they would keep Israel under control,
they would keep Israel in check, make sure
there were no problems, and in exchange, they
would receive position and power and money from
the Roman government.
And this led directly to the crucifixion of
the Lord Jesus.
Because remember that Caiaphas said, it is better
for one man to die for the nation.
Now, he didn't mean that in an atoning
way, as we like to understand it.
He simply meant that Jesus needs to die,
because if he doesn't die, there's going to
be an uproar, and then the Romans are
going to come down on us, and then
we're going to have real trouble.
And so they sacrificed Jesus for political expediency.
That's what happens when we enter into these
illicit relationships.
Now, if we go beyond Scripture, I'm going
to take a few examples quickly.
We have Constantine in A.D. 300.
Constantine becomes the emperor of Rome, and I
was blessed to be in York, and probably
our friends from York are watching today, or
from Yorkshire are watching today, and it was
quite something to see the York Minster, where
in the original building, Constantine was crowned.
But when Constantine became emperor, he married church
and state.
And in fact, the very first church councils,
particularly the Council of Nicaea, Constantine chaired that
meeting.
Here is an unbeliever.
I know some people like to think he
was a Christian.
No, he was far from a Christian.
But here is this unbeliever, a Roman, who
for political expediency married the church and the
state.
And so he sits in the chair, and
he chairs the meeting of the Council of
Nicaea.
And in fact, he had tremendous influence on
the final creed that the council produced.
Now, you need to think about that, because
many people put their total trust of their
doctrine in the Nicaean creed.
But remember that this was produced, and remember
what these relationships produce.
They produce illegitimate children.
They produce bastards.
And so the council produces this document, and
he has a casting vote, and he changes
some significant things in the Nicaean creed.
And of course, out of that we know
comes the Church of Rome.
And so we're going to talk about that
again a little later.
Later on, we have the Reformation.
And we say, well, this is a great,
wonderful thing.
And I'm not going to get into the
Reformation.
But we spoke earlier in one of the
previous sessions, we spoke about the relationship between
the magistrates in Geneva and Calvin, this relationship
between the church and the state.
And in Calvin's Geneva, the church and the
magistrates, or the state, they empowered one another.
The one gave power to the other, and
the other one looked after the interests of
the other.
And so we have exactly the same thing
operating at that time.
And this continued for a long, long time.
This was common in Europe at that time.
So that Arminius, who opposed some of the
teachings of Calvin and many modern Christians like
to call themselves Arminians.
I'm not an Arminian because I don't follow
Arminius.
I follow the scriptures.
But during Arminius' time, and one of the
things that Arminius stood against the Calvinists on
was that Arminius perpetuated the popular idea at
that time that the civil government would appoint
the church officers.
In other words, pastors and whatever other important
officers they had in the church at that
time, these were appointed by the civil government.
And you'll find a modern representation of that
still in the United Kingdom today.
And so Arminius, and then the other states
in Europe, until very recently, and I think
in fact still some of the Scandinavian countries
still take the church tax, which is then
paid over to the church.
And so you can see this relationship between
church and state.
Now because we're speaking mainly to, or not
mainly, but from an English base in the
sense that the conference is hosted in the
United Kingdom, we have to speak about the
Church of England.
Now just think about what we spoke about
yesterday.
There's the church, and there's the state.
When you have a church and state even
married in their name, the Church of England
or Anglican Church, and for my American friends
here it's called the Episcopalian Church, so it's
all the same thing.
And we know the history, how that Henry
VIII couldn't get an annulment of his marriage
from the Pope, and so he broke from
Rome, and he said we're going to have
our own church, and he was self-appointed,
appointed himself the head of the church, and
we know that that is even true today,
that the Queen still is the head of
the church, and that the senior bishops are
appointed by the government rather than by the
church.
Now obviously the church advises the government, but
the appointments come from the government.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, when he retires, becomes
a lord and sits in the House of
Lords.
So you have this relationship, and forgive me
if I have the history a little bit
wrong.
As I said yesterday, my perspective is from
an American and South African one, but you
have this intimate relationship between the church and
the state, and we're going to come back
to that again in a few minutes.
In South Africa, we spoke about that yesterday,
this relationship between the Dutch Reformed Church and
the nationalist government in South Africa, ruled for
many years, the same relationship.
The church empowered the government, the church kept
the people behind the government, and the government
protected the church.
The church, in fact, created a theology that
would support the government's agenda and the whole
apartheid system.
They designed a complete, total theology around that.
And so again, you see this illicit relationship.
I said to you in the earlier session
that any major event would be opened in
prayer, and we'd say, well, this is a
wonderful thing, look how religious we are.
But in fact, it is more than that.
It's a statement of this relationship between the
church and the state, between the church and
the government.
And then we come to the United States
of America, and this is where it gets
really, really hairy.
And I know that there's a certain percentage
of those who are watching right now who
are going to turn off at the end
of this, and who will probably send me
all sorts of nasty emails and stuff.
But in America, in the last six years,
the church, the evangelical church, has entered into
a relationship with the government, with the Republican
Party.
Anyone will tell you, doesn't matter which side
of the fence they're on, will tell you
that Trump was brought to power as a
result of the religious right.
The so-called religious right, particularly the evangelical
church.
The evangelical leaders crowned him at his inauguration.
They were there to put the seal on
his inauguration, to pray for him, to bless
him, and to prophesy to the nation that
this man is the man of God.
Now, I'm not going to get into the
whole issue of whether he's saved or not.
That's not the point.
But we have a relationship now between the
government and the religious right, and the church.
It's a symbiotic relationship.
Because what happens is that the church empowers
and gives power to Trump.
And Trump, in exchange, gives favors to the
church.
Can you see this?
Can you see how this is the same
pattern that we have seen right from the
beginning, from Balaam right up to where we
are today?
Now, I know people say, well, you know,
we want a government that will protect the
church.
We want a government that will stand against
abortion, that will stand against homosexual marriage.
We want a government that will restore the
rights of the church.
But here's the problem.
Who is it that protects the church?
Who protects the church?
Jesus said, I will build my church, and
the gates of hell will not prevail against
it.
And the day that the church entered into
a relationship with the government, whether it's in
America or in England or wherever it is,
the day that happens, you are committing adultery.
Because you are saying, the Lord cannot protect
His church.
The Lord cannot keep us.
The Lord cannot promote our agenda and our
cause.
The Lord cannot promote righteousness.
We have to enter into a relationship with
the Gentiles and with the heathen, so that
we may be preserved and that we may
preserve our values.
Folks, this is incredibly serious.
This is incredibly serious.
This has nothing to do with who you
vote for, whether you're Republican or Democrat.
I'm not getting into that.
But the moment we begin to enter into
a tacit relationship with the government, and we
receive favors from the government, and the government
receives our support and our vote, we have
an illicit relationship.
Now I'm not saying that you can't vote
according to your conscience.
And if you want to vote for a
conservative candidate, whether it be conservative in England
or Republican here, that's fine.
But there's a difference between performing your civic
duty and entering into a relationship and beginning
to look to that man, and beginning to
promote that man as the Savior, as the
man who's going to save America, and particularly
who's going to save the church.
Because in that process, you're committing adultery against
the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so here's the principle.
We've established this over and over.
I want us to get this.
The principle is that the woman looks to
the man, the false man, for help, for
protection, for promotion, and sometimes for finances.
In exchange, he looks to her for favors,
for support, and for affirmation.
Now just by the way, I want to
just take a little detour for a moment
here.
Because of what the church has done, the
church has ruined its testimony in the face
of the world.
The church can no longer preach the gospel
to a Democrat.
And I'm speaking in general terms.
Because when you speak to a Democrat about
the gospel, they say, no, that is the
religion of the Republican Party.
Can you see how that you have married
into a relationship which now closes the door
and the opportunity to speak prophetically, and to
preach the gospel to those who are not
of your political party.
For that reason, the church must always be
independent of the state.
Independent of either parties, or whatever parties there
are in your particular country.
Because the gospel is to everyone.
It is not just for Republicans or for
Conservatives.
It is for Labor, and it is for
Democrats, and for whatever parties are in your
particular country.
The church must remain independent in order to
retain its witness, and in order to retain
its right to speak prophetically in the time
in which we are living.
Now let's have a look at the fruit.
And I want to look quickly at, because
we've spoken about the fruit of these relationships,
and the fruit is always very, very clear.
You see, because we've, particularly in America, put
so much confidence in the present government, and
hoping that this is going to turn America
back to greatness, is going to make the
church great again, is going to restore morality,
is going to get everything, is going to
be great.
But folks, here's the problem.
This relationship between church and state has in
various shapes and forms been there for 250
years.
And if it hasn't been there explicitly in
250 years, it's been there explicitly in the
last 50, 70 years.
And what has it produced?
Has the church grown?
No, the church is dying in America, and
we have to face the facts.
Has it made society more moral?
No, society in America has become more immoral.
Has it turned people to God?
No, people have turned more and more away
from God.
And we can speak about the United Kingdom
the same way.
This relationship between the king and the church
has existed for 450 years.
And what has it produced?
It hasn't produced a more moral and just
society.
In fact, on the contrary.
It hasn't produced a healthy church.
In fact, the contrary.
And so we can go on and on.
You see, and all that comes out of
that are illicit children.
And so in a so-called Christian country,
like America or the United Kingdom or Zimbabwe,
any of the Western countries, you have millions
of illicit children.
People who grow up believing that they are
born again, that they are saved because they
were born in England or in Scotland or
wherever.
They are half-baked.
They are half-Christian and half-not-Christian.
That's all it produces.
In fact, here's the other side of the
coin, and then I'm going to turn to
the book of Revelation.
The church only thrives in difficult times.
Because in difficult times, when the church is
being persecuted by the government, when the church
is being persecuted by its society, it knows
where to run.
It knows that its help comes from the
Lord, that He is the only one who
can keep.
He is the only one who can protect.
And there is no compromise.
And it's under those conditions that the church
does well.
We have a wrong understanding of this whole
thing because we don't want...
I don't want persecution.
I want to live in a civil society
where Christians can...
where we can meet openly and where we
don't have to meet in secret, where we
don't have to go to prison.
But it's changing.
And it has to change if the church
is going to be purified before the coming
of the Lord Jesus.
All right.
Let's go to Revelation chapter 17 and now
let's see how this whole thing comes together
in Revelation and in the end.
So, Revelation chapter 17 and I'm just going
to look...
The whole chapter is relevant as much as
Revelation chapter 13 and part of chapter 18.
But we don't have the time to go
there.
So I'm going to look at the first
six verses and I'm going to look at
them...
I'm going to touch on some of them
as we go through.
I'm not going to read it through and
then come back because that's going to take
too much time.
We have limited time left.
So, verse 1 of Revelation 17.
Then one of the seven angels who had
the seven bowls came and talked with me
saying to me, Come, I will show you
the judgment of the great harlot who sits
on many waters.
Now if you go down to verse 15
he says, Then he said to me, The
waters which you saw where the harlot sits
are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues.
Now, the harlot is a religious figure.
She sits on nations.
Verse 2, With whom the kings of the
earth have committed fornication.
Can you see this idea?
You can see the same pattern running right
through Scripture from Balaam and Balak to the
end.
So the kings of the earth have committed
fornication.
They've entered into an illicit relationship with her.
Now, think Rome.
And I didn't use Rome as one of
those examples because I want to focus on
that.
But we know that this relationship between Rome
and the church, the church of Rome and
the governments has always existed right from the
beginning.
The kings needed the blessing of the Pope
and the Pope needed the finances and everything
else that came from the government.
And remember that the reformers did exactly the
same thing.
Luther was protected by the princes and so
on.
And so, the kings of the earth committed
fornication with her and the inhabitants of the
earth were made drunk with a wine of
her fornication.
They were put into an altered state of
consciousness.
Their thinking was affected.
And so, he carried me away in the
spirit into the wilderness and I saw a
woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was
full of names of blasphemy having seven heads
and ten horns.
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.
Now, I'm sure that you've heard many messages
speak about this as being Rome and the
purple of the cardinals and the scarlet of
the cardinals and the gold cup of the
abomination of the Eucharist and all of those
things.
And I think there may be truth in
that.
But she is sitting on a scarlet beast,
the Antichrist.
We don't have time to go there.
You can make the connections for yourself.
But she sits on the Antichrist.
In other words, he carries her.
The government carries the false religion.
Same principle that we've seen all along.
Now I want you to look at verse
5.
And on her forehead a name was written,
Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots
and of the abominations of the earth.
You see, even if the great harlot is
Rome, and I'm not saying it is.
I lean in that direction, but I'm not
saying it is.
But even if that is Rome, what you
have is that she has daughters.
The mother of harlots.
So she produces children.
And those children are prostitutes.
Those children are harlots.
Because they're entering into the same relationship.
Now just think about that.
Unfortunately, many churches today tie themselves back to
Rome through the Reformation.
They are daughters of the Church of Rome
even though they may be Protestant today.
And I know that opens a whole can
of worms.
I'm not going to develop that thought.
You can go there for yourself.
And then verse 6.
I saw the woman drunk with the blood
of the saints and with the blood of
the martyrs of Jesus.
And when I saw her, I marveled with
great amazement.
You see, here's the other thing that happens.
And that is that the great harlot, the
false woman, will always persecute the true woman,
the bride of Christ.
Don't we have examples of that in Scripture?
Isn't there a principle that runs right through
Scripture that the false persecutes the true, even
beginning with Cain and Abel.
And then there are several examples of women
where the imposter persecutes the true wife.
And folks, today we are not quite seeing
this yet, but I believe it's begun.
There's been a persecution that has been unleashed
against true Bible-believing, born-again, God-fearing
Christians by other Christians of all sorts and
all kinds.
This is what the book of Revelation is
speaking about.
When we begin to persecute one another, and
when some of us are not the real
thing, because we've been born out of adultery,
we've been born out of an illicit relationship.
And I'm particularly concerned about Christians who defend
civil governments and become uncivil in their attack
on Christians who say what I've been saying
in these last three sessions.
We stand on the Word of God.
Our relationship is with Jesus Christ and with
Him alone.
He is the only one who can save.
He is the only one who can protect
us.
He is the only one who can promote
us.
And unless we get it at the hand
of the Lord, we have entered into an
adulterous relationship.
When you're looking to man, when you're looking
to business, or when you're looking to politics
or to politicians to help the church in
whichever way, it is adultery.
And I'm going to close with Revelation chapter
18 because this is the continuation.
Do you remember she's called the Babylon and
verse 2 says, and he cried mightily with
a loud voice saying, Babylon the great is
fallen and has become a dwelling place of
demons, a prison for every foul spirit and
a cage for every unclean and hated bird.
That's terrible.
But that's the conclusion.
Those who will enter into illicit relationships and
become part of the daughters of the harlot
will become a habitation for demons, foul spirits
and a cage for every unclean and hated
bird.
For all the nations have drunk of the
wine of the wrath of her fornication.
The kings of the earth have committed fornication
with her and the merchants of the earth,
you see business gets into it.
It's all big business today.
The merchants of the earth have become rich
through the abundance of her luxury.
And here's the bottom line.
And I heard another voice from heaven saying,
come out of her my people.
Come out of her my people lest you
share in her sins and lest you receive
her plagues.
The Lord is preparing for himself a bride
that is without spot and without blemish, that
is pure, that is devoted to him and
loves him and trusts in him alone for
everything they need.
Now we've spoken about the church and I'm
a couple of minutes over time.
But I want to ask you personally, who
are you looking to for your help, for
your promotion, for your salvation?
Are you looking to money, business, the world?
Are you hoping that the next government will
be a righteous government that will do the
things that you want them to do?
Or are you looking to the Lord?
Come out of the world.
Forget about the world.
Turn to the Lord Jesus with all your
heart.
Build your hope and your confidence and your
faith on him and him alone.
We're living in a time of sifting and
God is purifying for himself a people.
But in this process, many are proving to
be tares.
Many are proving to not be real children
of God.
And they're falling by the wayside, left, right
and center.
Oh, may the Lord help us that we
may remain true and faithful to him, that
we may come out of the world, that
we may cleave to him.
Remember this principle right back in the book
of Genesis, that we leave, we cleave.
Let's leave the world.
Let's leave Babylon.
Let's leave false religion.
Let's leave whatever it is that we're finding
comfort in out there.
And let's cleave to the Lord Jesus Christ
with all of our heart.
Father, I pray that you'd help us.
Lord, that we may not put our trust
and our confidence in princes or in horses
or in the legs of a man.
But Lord, that we may put our trust
wholly and totally in you.
Lord, I pray that you'd help us.
Lord, that we may get our thinking straight.
Lord, forgive us for promoting.
And Lord, there are those who may be
watching today who've been promoting some political party
or some politician.
Forgive us, Lord, that we may be those
who are known that we promote the Lord
Jesus Christ and the gospel of salvation.
And that is what we are known as.
We're Christians.
We're followers of Jesus.
We're not conservatives or liberals or democrats or
republicans.
We are born again.
We are his children and his people.
And we receive from his hand alone.
We pray that you'd help us, Lord.
Pray that you'd burn this message into our
hearts.
Lord, that you would change the attitude and
the mind of so many Christians who've been
caught up in the politics of this time.
And Lord, that we may be caught up
in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.
We ask these things in Jesus' name.
Amen.