I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Revelation 17-19.

    Today’s passage contains a description of a woman sitting upon a beast. The beast is described similarly to the first of the two beasts, but I think it is actually a different beast (or perhaps a better way to say it is that in this vision the symbolism of the beast is different than in the previous one). The woman represents a powerful and wealthy city-state/nation which has power over much of the world. The scarlet beast represents another nation or confederacy of nations which is dominated by the woman. If this vision applied to the world today, the woman would be the United States and the scarlet beast would be the European Union (there are many reasons to make those connections, but there are ways in which those connections do not quite fit). The scarlet beast hates the woman and wants to see her overthrown. However, when the fall of the nation represented by the woman happens, those who worked for its fall will discover that the world is a much worse place because of that fall. Nevertheless that fall will come because those of the nation represented by the woman were willing to benefit from the suffering of others. We as followers of Christ must separate ourselves from the worldly pursuit of wealth and pleasure that the woman represents. We must be wary when our nation begins to believe that it has power that can never be threatened. We must not fall into the worship of self, or of the nation state, which presages the fall described in today’s passage.