At War With the Lamb: Revelation 17

The chapter is full of symbols and high drama. Each word seems fraught with deep meaning. No one person, or generation, can understand the specific references in Revelation 17.

Let's try to simplify it a bit.

The nations will go to war against the Lamb.

When you declare war against another nation, you are saying, in effect, that you want something about that other nation to change. In a true, complete war, the victor carries out its own wishes over the vanquished. Unconditional surrender is the mark of a war that has been conclusively won.

The world always has, and still does, seek the total elimination of God's will upon the earth. Don't we all know this? Even atheists get it! The world resists the true God. It tolerates false religions, but hates the true one.

Jesus (the Lamb) came, healing the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, adding value to every one with whom He came into contact. He raised the dead, and is the only way to eternal life. Yet the world hates Him.

It is hard to understand. But perhaps a look at defiant toddlers, whose first word is probably "no!", gives us a hint as to why this is.

I saw two brothers fighting. The younger, smaller, one, kept taunting the older, bigger one. I said to the smaller one: "Why would you do this? He's twice as big as you?" Why indeed? Why do we resist God? Why do we seek to overthrow our Creator? It makes no sense, yet it is so.

So the nations of the world, after throwing off the yoke of "the great whore" who tantalized and seduced them for ages (I will not go into her possible identities here!), are now intoxicated with the thrill of victory. Having defeated God's chief enemy (so they think), they now seek to take on the Lord Himself! It's the younger sibling, again, in the emotions of the moment, in the heat of battle, losing his senses and digging a deeper hole for himself!

The beast, however, still pushes all the buttons. The whore was just a religious agent of the beast, that led people astray.

They will go to war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them . . . 

Is there anger, or hate, directed at Christ, or His Church, today? Do we strive to throw off God's moral requirements of us? Do we seek our will (whatever feels good), rather than His? Do we go for what's culturally relevant, rather than what's eternally significant? Do we wish God would go away?

This is war with the Lamb.