Doug Goodin

"Like vinegar to the teeth and like smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him." (Prov. 10:26) If you've ever stood at a campfire when the wind shifts, you know the feeling. Everything stops. Your eyes water. That's what it's like to depend on a lazy person. So be careful who you trust with important work. But ask the harder question too: am I the sluggard? Your choices today shape the life you'll be living in five, ten, and twenty years. Do not play the victim. Own it. And then change it.

Most of us were handed a list of "bad words" and never told why they're bad. "Profane" comes from the Latin: pro, outside of, and fanus, temple. Profane means taking what's sacred and treating it as common. By that definition, calling out Jesus's name in casual frustration is far more profane than anything on the usual list. And when Paul says "let no corrupt word go forth out of your mouth" (Eph. 4:29), corrupt means rotten. Speech that doesn't build up and doesn't give grace. You can keep a clean vocabulary and still tear down your wife and kids. Truth survives examination.

How should we read the visions in Revelation? Here's a principle that helps me. Isaiah 7: "The virgin will be with child." Fulfilled exactly, through Mary. "His name shall be called Immanuel." His name was Jesus. The prophecy wasn't false. Some prophecies are directionally true: they communicate the shape of what's coming, not an exact photograph. Revelation 17 is full of mixed metaphors. The woman sits on many waters, then on a scarlet beast, then on seven mountains. She's a woman, then a great city. Don't press any one image too narrowly. Let the text's own explanation drive. I believe 16:19 marks a transition. Revelation was given to show "the things that are and the things that must come after these things." The judgment on Jerusalem has been shown. Now the vision turns to Rome. The kings make war with the Lamb, "and the Lamb will overcome them." That's the same word used throughout the letters to the seven churches: to the one who overcomes. The message is consistent. Faithfulness wins, not Rome. Then the ten horns turn on the whore. Rome tore itself apart, from the Year of the Four Emperors after Nero's death through the slow unraveling of its power. God put it in their hearts. Even Rome's self-destruction was his instrument. (From my Revelation series.)

On the woman's forehead in Revelation 17 is written: "Mystery — Babylon the Great." We hear "mystery" and think puzzle. That's not what it means here. It means a revealed secret: something previously hidden, now disclosed. And chapter 17 gives us the clearest explicit interpretation in all of Revelation. Let the text's own explanation drive. More at noon.

Who is Mystery Babylon in Revelation 17? We don't have to guess. The angel tells John. "Here is the mind that is having wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits." Every Christian in Asia Minor knew which city sat on seven hills. Rome was universally known as the city on seven hills. That's not a riddle. Those are the hills of Rome. And the angel's bottom line: the woman is the great city that reigns over the kings of the earth. That doesn't describe Jerusalem in 66–70 AD. I have tried to read these chapters with Jerusalem as Babylon. It does not cohere. Revelation does use "great city" for Jerusalem in chapter 11, but the same phrase carries different referents in different contexts. This is Daniel's fourth kingdom. In Daniel 2, a stone cut without hands strikes the statue, and "in the times of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed." The ten horns make war with the Lamb, "and the Lamb will overcome them, because he is Lord of lords and King of kings." Then the turn: the horns hate the whore and burn her with fire. "For God put it in their hearts to carry out his purpose." Even the instruments of Rome's destruction are in God's hands. That's why I stress that we still live in the year of our Lord. Jesus crushed that empire not by military might but by the blood of his martyrs and the word of their testimony. (From my Revelation series.)