The Revelation 17:6-8 | Episode # 1140

February 27, 2026

Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life

The Revelation 17:6-8

I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.

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Transcript

This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.

Hi, this is Chad Harrison and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.

I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.

I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up.

His word to you and allow you.

To see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today in Jesus name.

It says here, I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints.

Now,

if you go looking for books, there's a book called A Woman Rides the Beast. And there's other books out there that are out there.

And historically,

the Protestant church has taught that the woman that's drunk with blood is the Catholic Church.

Okay,

all right.

Well, that's. That's been the. That's been the understanding. All right. I'm telling you this for a reason, because the Catholic Church has killed a lot of Christians.

Okay, all right.

They've done that. All right, but remember, he's not talking about in the past.

He's talking about right then.

Okay.

And even though if you're, if you read a lot of books on prophecy, prophecy, especially books on prophecy that come from Protestant teachers,

they generally,

they generally try to tie this off to the Catholic Church,

but that's not the world religion that is. That is so tied to this paganism that is drunk with the blood of saints today.

What world religion is killing Christians by the thousands and the hundreds of thousands and the millions?

The Muslims.

Did y' all know that there's a nation in Africa? I think it's Kenya.

May not be Kenya.

I'm missing that one.

There's a nation in Africa where they're having a civil war and more than 100,000 Christians have been killed in the last decade in that nation.

Bokoram is the name of the,

The.

The Muslim governmental organization that conquering and converting by force.

And they've been doing it since the seventh century.

Okay.

That's a fact. That's not something that's arguable.

Okay.

The. The Roman Empire was converted to Christianity without ever killing anyone.

In fact, many Christians were killed by the Romans.

Okay.

I'm going to tell you that the Muslim faith,

98, 99% of their conversions are forced conversions by. By conquering territory.

Okay?

And that happened for about five or six centuries,

okay? Starting in the sixth and seventh century, you're going pastor. You're going to get kicked off Facebook. I know, but that's just history, okay? That's just history.

All right.

It says,

I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus,

Huh?

So he's talking about people dying for their faith, the martyrs.

So this false religion and its effects on human beings,

however you play that out,

has historically attacked and been against the Church,

the Church of Jesus Christ.

Are you with me?

It's a fact.

Whoever he's talking about is drunk with the blood of the saints.

He says here,

I marveled at.

He says, and when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. Now, I want you to hear me.

It's obvious that he's never seen this before because he says he marvels with great amazement at them all right?

Now,

the Roman Catholic Church was born out of Rome,

okay?

And in many ways,

when Constantine made the Roman Empire Christian,

as if he could,

okay?

The Christian Church began to take on the identity of Rome,

okay?

So it would be hard for me to say that John was amazed at something that he'd never seen before,

okay?

He had great amazement. It's wonder.

It's amazing. I've never seen it before.

If he's talking about the Catholic Church because he would have known Rome. He would have. He lived in. In Roman occupied territory. He ministered in Roman occupied territory, okay? He'd been arrested by John.

He arrested by the Romans. He'd been exiled to the Isle of Patmos by the Romans. He knew Rome.

And the Roman Catholic Church took on a lot of the pomp and circumstance of Rome.

And I can go in that to you, but I don't think he's talking about the Catholic Church here,

okay? My dad thought he was all right,

and my dad could be right about it, but I don't think he's talking about it because it's about a mystery.

And actually, when I read my dad's writings about this, he doesn't know because he doesn't expound on it. He just says this is a mystery to him.

Well, what's it a mystery for?

There's certain things that I do know and that I have seen and I do understand, and there's certain things that I don't know and I don't see and I don't understand,

okay? If I've seen it, then it shouldn't be mysterious to me, but it was mysterious to John.

Okay,

I'm just telling y' all that he says, but the angel said to me, why do you marvel?

Now, what the angel is saying is you need a little perspective on this,

okay?

It looks different than anything you've seen, but it comes from something that you know.

Why are you marveling about this?

Why is this marvel? Why does this make you wonder? Okay,

it may be couched in such a way that you didn't know it, but it's the same old thing.

Okay?

All right,

he says, here,

I will tell you the mystery of the woman and the beast that carries her,

which has the seven heads and the ten horns,

okay?

So he's going to tell you the mystery of the woman,

and then he's going to tell you the mystery of the beast.

Now, is John going to totally understand it?

No, he's not going to.

Why is he telling John this?

So John could write it down so we could see it.

Okay? That's why he's telling it. He says here the beast that you saw was and is not and will descent and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition.

All right?

Now,

the beast that he's riding, that she's riding is the devil.

Okay? We know that because we've already seen the dragon. We know he's got 10. 7 heads and 10 horns. We know all that stuff,

okay? We already seen it. We know that it's the devil,

all right? But remember,

you have the devil and you have the devil's plans. Now, I'm going to tell you this. And this is something my father thought,

and I'll give you that. And you go, why you talk about what your dad thought? Well, because we talked about this a lot,

all right?

And he was all fired up about the late, great planet Earth, okay?

It really got him into prophecy. I.

He says the beast, the beast was,

or this manifestation of the beast was and is not and comes out of the pit, for he's from perdition.

That's what he says was,

is not,

and then rises out of the pit,

and he describes him as being from perdition.

Okay?

Yeah. Tom Hanks did a really good movie called Road to perdition back about 10, 15 years ago. If you never watched this really good movie,

it's about the mob killing and all kinds of stuff. It was really good, really good book.

It's drawing the idea you don't hear the word perdition used except in church. And perdition is hell.

Okay,

all right,

now you need to hear this because it's really, really important.

All Right. There's only two people in scripture that are called the Son of Perdition.

All right?

The first person is called the Son of Perdition by Jesus himself,

and that is Judas.

Okay?

Judas is called the Son of Perdition.

All right? The second person called the Son of perdition is the beast out of the sea,

okay? He.

Not only the beast that he's described and is.

All right,

I know, I know. So remember.

And. And that's the whole point of this. Of prophecy.

Look. Yeah, and you need to hear this.

You can have symbolism about something and you can read the symbolism,

and then it might go back to it to give you an idea of what it's talking about.

But whatever it's talking about is something that comes from that symbolism and is something different.

Does that make sense?

Okay. All right.

You know,

Well, I. What. What I would say to you about that is this.

The.

The understanding and seeing how God describes something and then seeing that manifest itself in the world.

Those manifestations come from the original thing that he's doing.

Okay?

All right.

Well, whatever he's talking about, whatever beast he's talking about here is a manifestation of that original beast that we see that we know to be Satan.

Okay?

And I think that's really, really important because we do know. We do understand that what Satan. Satan's trying to do, and he's trying to give us. Give us some insights into it.

What Satan's trying to do is to set himself up as God.

Now, you got to remember this about Satan.

Satan is not creative,

okay?

He does not have the image of God.

The only creature that God has made,

okay, that is alive,

that's creative, is mankind.

Humanity is creative. Why?

Because we were made from his image and his likeness.

So.

Well, he's not creative in how he fools you. He just watches and he knows what's going on, and he uses what he knows.

He's not creative in how he fools you. He's just wise.

And remember, wisdom has nothing to do with creating or making anything. Wisdom has to do with understanding and being able to see things from how things actually are.

Okay? All right, so. So knowing that is important.

No, knowing that is really, really important.

All right?

So this beast, whatever this manifestation is,

I know it's not Satan. And the way I know it's not Satan is,

Satan still is.

But whoever this is, was and is not,

and then comes out of the pit.

Now, you take that for what it means because remember, he's going to tell us. He's going to tell us a lot of stuff in this chapter. And remember also when God teaches, especially in prophecy,

each one of these chapters that we read is a story or an understanding unto itself.

And that story and understanding might run over a year or two years or six months or a day.

And then the next chapter might give you an understanding that understanding might be three years.

And so the chapter before was during that three year period.

So if you were going to write out, and I've seen this done by a pastor one time,

all across the stage,

he had a timeline of how things were going to take place.

Okay,

Now I want you to hear me.

Nothing wrong with that. He's trying to map it out. Everybody tries to think of it in their own way,

but. But the problem with that is,

is that a lot of the timelines in Scripture of when things happen overlap with each other.

If I read what Jesus talks about in the Olivet discourse, and then what Paul talks about in second Thessalonians, and then what John talks about In Revelation, chapter 17, there's going to be time lapse over what's being described.

And so it's not easy to put together a timeline unless you've got a lot of depth to the timeline.

Does that make sense to you? I.

I know that the timeline of Satan is that he was created that in some way he had. He had authority over the earth that he desired to be God.

And he said, I'm going to ascend up and I am going to be as God is.

When that happened, there was a war in heaven and he was cast out.

He was cast to the earth and God. And as a part of that process,

God's creation became marred.

And that is called the gap that takes place in Genesis, chapter one, verse two,

because it says in the beginning God created the heavens, the earth.

Verse 2 says this.

And the earth became formless and void. And we know from the book of Isaiah because Isaiah said God did not make the heavens and the earth formless and void.

So we know something had to happen to make it formless and void. Why? Because if you have an action,

you have to have an initiator,

right?

And if God didn't make it formless and void, and God didn't cause it to be formless and void, something had to cause it to be formless and void. And I believe that was the fall of Satan.

Okay,

so we start in verse three. And what happens? God reforms the heavens and the earth.

Now remember, how does God do that?

The Father wills it.

You got to get this because you are in the image of God and you will never really understand who you are until you get this. I've heard so many pastors say, well, when you talk about the Trinity and the image of God, you can't understand it.

And I want you to hear me.

If you, if you hear that from someone,

shut your ears, because I'm telling you, you can't understand the Bible until you understand that.

All right?

God exists in three persons,

in three.

In three persons in three,

three ways. He manifests himself.

He is the Father, which is the will. And the per. Best way for describing. He is the personality of God.

He is the, he is the goodness. He's the, he's the glory. He's the, he's the love and the grace and the mercy and the justice and the holiness of God.

Jesus is the physical manifestation of God.

Jesus takes who God is and makes the physical.

So when it says,

and God said, let there be light, or Adonai said, let there be light,

that's talking about the Father.

When it says, and the Lord God formed this, this, the birds out of birds and the fish and the plants and man,

that person that's forming it, doing it in the physical,

that's Jesus.

And the Holy Spirit is the eternality and the power of God.

And when you were made in the image of God, I say this all the time. And you go, why do you go over this? Because I've learned that you have to tell people about 10 or 15 times before they get it or more,

all right? And this is so important that if you don't get it, there's no, I, I don't know how to teach you some of the things that you got to learn.

I, I, I really, I, I, I, he is, he's the one that taught it.

I'm sitting there going, I mean, I, if, if that's the only way I understand it,

okay?

You have a soul.

That's the true you. It's your personality,

it's your passions, it's your thoughts, it's who you are.

That's why God says in the Book of Psalms, your soul, have I loved.

Does he love our bodies?

No, he's gonna,

he's gonna ball them up and throw them away. Sometimes I feel like he's doing it already before I'm dead,

right?

Is it my spirit?

Well, no. And you go, well, how do you know that? Because when Adam died in the garden. What Died? His spirit died.

All right? Did God cease loving him because he loved his spirit and his spirit was dead? No,

he still loved Adam. He didn't love his Flesh. But he loved his soul.

And every human being that's ever existed, God loved.

He loved their soul,

okay?

He made them.

Now, knowing that is really, really important.

And so when I think of my heart and my mind, my soul, I think of who I really am,

and I think how bad sometimes I am and how corrupt I am and how terrible I am. When I think of my physical flesh, I think of how it used to be a whole lot better,

and it's not now.

And sometimes I think it's getting worse and worse every day.

And then when I think about the Holy Spirit, I realize that I have a spirit, the power of God alive in me, which holds eternal life.

Jesus said, those whom the Father give me, I give them eternal life. Present tense. Those who the Father give me,

I. Present tense, Give them eternal life.

All right?

I have that life inside of me.

And so when I think about these things,

I always filter it through that perspective.

What did Satan want to do? Well, he's not creative, so he didn't come up with his own way of doing things.

He came up with a plan to create his own one world religion. I want you to listen to me.

He's going to be God.

He's got a beast out of the sea who runs everything,

okay? God's, Satan's, the will.

The beast out of the sea is the physical manifestation.

And then he has another beast out of the land which is called the false prophet who operates like what?

The Holy Spirit.

Notice he's just counterfeiting God's plan,

right?

And then what does he do?

Well,

it's like that guy that went to God and said, God, I can. I'm a scientist. I've learned all kinds of things. I've studied things. He said, I can make life and I can create life.

God said, I tell you what,

got some dirt over here.

I'll make a life and you make a life.

God went over there and he made him out of the dust of the ground.

Body he breathed into him. He ruha into him, the spirit of life.

And he became a living soul,

body,

spirit,

soul.

The man said, okay, well, I'm going to take this dirt, I'm going to do it myself. And God said, get your own dirt.

Are you following me?

He that's why John says,

everything that was made was made by him,

and nothing that was made was not made by him. I want you to hear me. John walked with Jesus. He knew body, soul and spirit.

All right,

so what did Satan do?

Well, Satan makes this idol that appears to have life in It.

We've already read it a couple chapters before.

Who does that represent?

Man.

So he's going to make his own creatures to worship him.

Why? Because he tried to make us worship him.

Y' all know that, right?

He tried to trick Eve in the garden,

okay?

And he thought if evaded the fruit of the tree and gave it to Adam, and Adam ate of the fruit tree that they would be under his control.

So when Satan fell, you had God's will.

And you had Satan's will.

And he thought when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of that tree, that they would be under his will.

But he was wrong.

Once they ate a fruit of that tree, you had God's will,

Satan's will,

Adam's will.

And God knows his wife was not under his will. His wife's will, right? Amen, baby. Amen. That's right. All right.

You just got to learn to love it, right?

All right.

When you're. When you get. First get married, you think you're going to make them the way you want them to be.

After about five years and your head's got all kinds of knots on it, you figure out this ain't gonna work, we're back up and do something else. Why? Because you can't make somebody else's will.

You can't make them choose you.

Okay?

You can't.

But you can provide for the choice which God does.

All right?

That false religion is being dis.

Is Judas.

Well,

maybe,

maybe not.

I don't know who this beast is because I don't know what beast was and is not and then is going to come out of predition.

I don't know that.

I can't tell you that.

I don't have an answer for that,

Preacher. I thought you were supposed to teach us everything. I don't. There's certain things you don't know.

And you're better off saying you don't know it than saying it's going to be this way. And then everybody going, that didn't work.

All right?

That's right. Let the Holy Spirit teach you.

As you go today. I pray that the Lord will bless.

You and keep you you. That he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.