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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Steve Wohlberg  Weekend

Steve Wohlberg

01 Identifying the Bloody Woman

Dear Father in heaven, thank you so much for for the Sabbath and for the privilege of Gathering together even though it's on the on the internet.

We will be tomorrow But we are together in in cyberspace and we we know that you are with us no matter where we are and we pray for your Holy Spirit to be with us.

Please Father give us a rich Sabbath blessing and help us As we look at your word bring us closer to Jesus we pray in Jesus name.

Amen Okay, well I want to welcome everybody and By faith, I know you're out there even though I can't see you And Luke asked me just to give a little bit of background on myself I don't know how many of you are aware of our ministry White Horse Media My background is California this has been I guess kind of bittersweet to be back here.

I grew up in California, grew up in Los Angeles, I grew up in the Hollywood Hills, didn't grow up an Adventist.

I grew up in a very secular Jewish home and when I was 20 years old I started reading the Bible for the first time and it's a long story but I eventually watched it is written on television 1 time learned about the Sabbath found an Adventist church the pastor handed me a copy of the book the desire of ages I read that book in a dormitory room at Cal State Northridge my third year of college and my whole life completely changed after reading that book.

Gave my heart to Jesus, got on my knees, accepted him as my Messiah and as my savior, and I have not been the same since.

As I mentioned, bittersweet, my mother used to live just east of here in Palm Springs.

My dad in Glendale, just west of here, he died a couple years ago.

And I still have a few, I have 2 sisters that live in Los Angeles, my brother's in Indiana.

Being back here in California, certainly enjoyed the warm weather for a couple days.

I'm coming to you from Priest River, Idaho, where I understand we had about 2 inches of snow last night, so we're in the dead of winter still.

My wife lives there, up where we live, and my 13-year-old daughter, Abby, and our 16-year-old son, Seth.

And we have a ministry, White Horse Media.

We have a great team of people that we work with, and the Lord has just blessed us.

Even during this coronavirus pandemic, we've been doing a lot of programs.

We have a pretty frequented YouTube channel that gets a lot of action.

We just did a program just a couple days ago on Revelation 17 that is there now on our YouTube channel and our website is whitehorsemedia.com for those that would like to get more familiar with us.

And anyway I've decided to do a four-part series on Revelation chapter 17.

For 41 years I've been studying Bible prophecy.

I've been very captivated by the sure word of prophecy and that's really been my focus.

I give seminars on the topic and Revelation 17 has really gripped my attention.

And hopefully I can get, I can maybe share the screen here and put up some pictures and hopefully you'll be able to see this.

The book of Revelation is my favorite book in the Bible.

I've read it many, many times and Chapter 17 has recently really captured my attention and I've written a book on this topic.

There you see the picture on the screen called The Bloody Woman and the Seven-Headed Beast.

We actually found this lady that's there on the cover and she came into our studio and our producer and our designer photographed her for a photo shoot and put that cover together and She's just she reflects the kind of imagery that is in Revelation chapter 17 I've been studying this chapter for intensely for about 2 years It's been quite a journey for me as I've gone up and down in and out and all around trying to figure out the deep mysteries that are in that chapter.

It talks a lot about the woman, the bloody woman.

It talks about the beast with 7 heads and 10 horns.

It talks about 7 kings, 5 are fallen, 1 is and the other's not yet come.

And then it talks about 10 horns that eventually make war on the lamb.

And it also talks about God's final people who are faithful to Jesus, which is what I want to be.

That's the goal of my life, to be faithful to the Lord.

And so anyway, I have been wrestling with this chapter for a long time, and it took me quite a while to feel like I had enough of a handle on it in order to go public.

I certainly don't wanna write a book and put my name on it and send it out if it's going to be wrong.

I don't wanna Create a lot of controversy.

I want to teach the Bible I want the book to be a blessing and my my habit is not to preach or teach or write about things that I don't have certainty that this is really what the Bible says.

And so finally, after many, many months of looking at these different things from different angles and running into roadblocks and then having those roadblocks removed and then finally connecting all the dots and praying and praying and praying throughout this whole time that God would help me to put the pieces together, I finally went public with this book.

So what we're going to do this weekend is I'm going to walk you through what this chapter is all about and I'll have a lot of copies of my book tomorrow after sundown.

They're very inexpensive, a couple dollars, and the book basically goes through every single verse in Revelation chapter 17.

So for part 1, here we are Friday night, live from the Hampton Inn, from my little hotel room, we're going to talk about identifying the bloody woman.

So If you have a Bible, I invite you to open up God's book and let's just go through this.

Revelation 17, verse 1, and let me say that there's a lot of different interpretations of this chapter.

And 1 particular book had 9 different interpretations of the 7 kings, the 7 heads.

And so there's a lot of views within the Adventist church and other churches.

And So we'll do our best to go through this and I'll share what I believe are some insights that God has given me.

And I'm not just to let you know, I don't consider myself to be a speculator.

I try not to focus on, you know, being original or anything like that.

My goal is to understand the Bible and to teach what God says so that the focus is not on me, it's not on man, but it's on Jesus and on his word.

So let's start with verse 1, Revelation 17, 1.

He said, there came 1 of the 7 angels, which had the 7 vials.

This is very important that the context of Revelation 17 is 1 of the angels, 1 of the 7 angels who has the 7 vials, and These are the vials of the wrath of God.

These are the 7 last plagues that fall upon those who get the mark of the beast, which is described in chapter 16.

And then in chapter 17, John goes into how 1 of the 7 angels who had those plagues came over to him and talked with him in a vision.

And this also tells us that the context of this chapter is down near the end of time.

This is a revelation from 1 of the 7 last plague angels.

And I'll build my case that the context of this chapter is not the first century.

He's actually taken far into the future to the time before the 7 last plagues.

There came 1 of the 7 angels who had the 7 vials and he talked with me.

And he said to me, can you imagine 1 of the 7 angels walking up to you and having a conversation with you.

He talked with me, this angel, and then he said to me, come here.

Now this is important that the angel didn't go back to where John was.

He came over to John and he said, come here to where I am.

Again, he's 1 of the 7 last plague angels.

And I will show to you the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters.

As I pondered this it has impressed me that what this chapter is dealing with is a great whore.

And she's not a little whore, she's not a small minor player when it comes to prophecy.

And she is the great whore, which is a harlot, a prostitute, who seduces, she's a seducer.

And the angel said, I will show you the judgment of the great horror.

There's a judgment that is actually starting to come upon her in this chapter and will continue and finally drop on her when the 7 last plagues fall.

02 Identifying the Seven-Headed Beast

Dear Heavenly Father, what an awesome privilege it is for me to be back in California, to be in my home state, to be not far from where I went to school, to see some old friends, people I haven't seen in a long time, and above all to have an opportunity to open the holy book, the Bible, and to share with this group what you have put in my heart, how you've helped me as I've wrestled and studied and tried to understand Revelation chapter 17.

And you've opened this door, not only here, but these messages will be on audio verse.

We thank you for the technology that you've made available to spread your message in these last days, these closing hours of history.

Today's focus, this morning's focus is on the seven-headed ten-horned beast.

Identifying the seven-headed ten-horned beast.

So let's look at our Bibles and let's look at verse 8.

The angel just said in verse 7 he's going to explain the mystery of the woman and the beast.

Verse 8 says, the beast which you saw, this was the seven-headed ten-horned beast that John saw earlier and the woman was riding on this beast.

He said, the beast which you saw was and is not and shall do what?

He shall ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition.

And they that dwell upon the earth shall wonder whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world when they behold the beast that was and is not and yet is.

Tell you, people have been reading this passage and pondering it and trying to figure it out for a long, long time.

I recently read a book that gave 9 different interpretations of the 7 heads.

So there's a lot of views out there, a lot of theories.

I've wrestled with the different theories trying to understand this myself.

And I'll just let you know a little bit about me.

I am not a person that relishes speculation.

I'm not here to just try to give you a whole bunch of human opinions.

I think that there's a place in certain areas of life for human opinions, but when it comes to scripture, we need to try to put aside human opinions and see what the Lord has to say.

And so my goal in my book and our ministry, White Horse Media, is not to just come up with all kinds of ideas, but it's to direct people to what God says.

I wrestled with Revelation 17 for a long time.

And when I was wrestling with this, I kept thinking to myself, I can't put this into a book unless I really know what I'm talking about.

I don't want to put something out and put my name on it and send it out and give white horse media black eye.

I don't want to create a whole bunch of controversy.

I want to help people to understand Jesus and the Bible in a way that makes sense and brings conviction to the heart and brings us low at the foot of the cross and helps us to open up to the Holy Spirit to change our lives.

So anyway, I've wrestled with this and certain things have finally come together enough, the dots finally came together enough where I felt like it was time to go public and to put it in a manuscript and to send it out.

So you'll be the judge as a result of the next couple of meetings and you can see whether you think this is biblical or not?

Okay, now 1 thing that really has impressed me in trying to understand these mysteries is the fact that in verse 8, we have a beast that goes through a series of phases.

And yet he will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go into perdition.

So phases, This has really convicted me that we need to understand these phases.

We all go through phases of life in our lives.

We have the little baby phase and then we grow up.

When we go to college, go to a university, then we have, you know, later on, if we get married, we have the children phase, professional phase, and then the declining phase as we get older.

I had in my life, there was the sunny Southern California phase when I used to, as a teenager, go down to Zuma Beach and go swimming and lay out in the sun.

Now I'm in the cold phase of North Idaho living in temperatures that can get down to 0.

Phases are very important in people's lives and it's the same with Revelation 17.

In order for us to understand this chapter and Who this beast is we have to understand that there are phases 1 phase the was the is not and then the ascend phase Now another critical point that I've discovered and I call this the Revelation 17, 13 connection.

And that is that Revelation 17 verse 8 that we just read is a perfect parallel to Revelation 13.8 and I've concluded that 1 of the best ways to understand Revelation 17 is to connect it to chapter 13.

So let's just let's turn back a couple of pages to chapter 13 and look at verse 8.

Verse 8 says, All that dwell upon the earth shall worship him whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

17.8 talks about the beast that was and is not and when he ascends the whole world will wonder after him whose names are not in the book of life.

And then chapter 13 verse 8 talks about the beast and how the whole world will wonder after the beast whose names are not in the Lamb's Book of Life.

So 17 8 and 13 8 parallel perfectly and when you look at chapter 13 we also see a series of phases if you look at verse 1 13.1 John said I stood upon the sand of the sea and I saw a beast rising up out of the sea having 7 heads and 10 horns and upon his horns 10 crowns and upon his heads the name of blasphemy." So here's a beast rising up out of the sea.

And in verse 3, John wrote, I saw 1 of his heads as it were wounded to death, And then his deadly wound was healed and all the world wondered after the beast.

We see this beast rising up and there's a time when he's ruling and then he gets wounded, a deadly wound, that's another phase, and then the wound is healed and the whole world wonders.

So clearly we can see these different phases.

17.9 says, Here is the mind which has wisdom.

The 7 heads are 7 mountains on which the woman sits.

I've pondered this verse a lot and looked at different verses, different views on this and I've come to a number of principles that I've adopted.

Last night when I talked in the Zoom meeting about the clues of identifying the bloody woman, I've concluded that 1 of the principles that I've adopted is I call it the weight of evidence principle.

That you don't just look at 1 piece of evidence or 2 or 3, but you look at all the clues in chapter 17 of who this woman is and then you're able to put the pieces together correctly.

I have another principle that I've adopted which I call the symbol to literal principle.

That principle is that when a symbol is used in prophecy, in Daniel and Revelation, and then when an angel or a prophet interprets the symbol, we find over and over and over and over again that the symbol is interpreted literally.

Symbol to literal principle, and I'll show you this in chapter 17 verse 15.

1715 The angel said to John, the waters which you saw where the whore sits.

The great whore is described in 17.1 as sitting upon many waters.

And now here the angel is saying that the waters, which is the symbol where the horse sits, are, and here's the application, they are people and multitudes and nations and tongues.

So hopefully you can see that principle there that if We go from symbol to literal, right?

The symbol is the water and the application is the people, multitudes and multitudes of people who ultimately support and who are deceived by the bloody woman that's sitting upon the beast.

So now that principle is mentioned many many times or actually illustrated many times in the Bible I'll just quickly give some of these to you.

In Daniel 2 Nebuchadnezzar had a dream of a metal man with different different metals and Daniel the prophet interpreted these metals to represent literal nations 1 by 1 which we apply to Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome.

Daniel 7, Daniel had a dream of 4 great beasts, a lion, a bear, a leopard, and a dragon-like beast with 10 horns.

And in verse 23, Daniel 7, 23, the angel said the fourth beast is the fourth kingdom upon the earth.

Daniel chapter 8, Daniel had a dream of a ram and a goat and then the angel came and interpreted that dream or that vision And he said that the ram represents the kings of Media and Persia, and that the goat represents the king of Greece.

And I believe we see the same thing in chapter 17, verse 9.

If we follow that principle, Scripture says here is the mind that has wisdom, the 7 heads, that's the symbol, are, and here's the application, They are 7 mountains on which the woman sits.

So first of all, I interpret this literally.

The Greek underlying word for mountains, if you look it up in Strong's Concordance, you'll find that it can be translated as mountains or hills.

03 And There Are Seven Kings

Dear Father in heaven, thank you for providing a place for us to meet.

The wind is blowing hard outside, but that has not stopped us from having a meeting.

Thank you for the chance to be here and we pray for your blessing.

I Pray Lord that you will be the teacher Above and beyond anything that I say that that ultimately your voice will be heard My goal is direct people to direct people to you and to your word.

May the Holy Spirit enlighten us and give us discernment as we look at the word of God in Revelation chapter 17.

Okay, well, I hope you can tell after last night's meeting or this morning's meeting why many people have been captivated by Revelation 17.

And the more you read it and just digest it and memorize it and think about it I think you will sense that there is tremendous power in this chapter and I'm convinced that a better understanding of Revelation 17 is going to help us to get ready for Revelation 18 which is the final loud call, or we call the loud cry, that goes out to the world right before Jesus comes.

So God has given us this chapter for a reason.

He wants us to study it, he wants us to learn it as much as we can to understand what it says and to understand what's happening in the world.

And the main reason ultimately is that It would help us, help us spiritually, bring us closer to Jesus and help us to get ready to stand when the final winds blow, when the final storm hits.

Okay, so we've just read verse 10 and verse 11.

Again, the angel told John that there are 7 kings and 5 have fallen, 1 is and the other 1 has not yet come.

And then he also refers to the beast itself, that the beast was and is not and yet he will come back and he will go into perdition.

Now I'm going to share with you my view on this.

I realize that there's a lot of different views out there in the world and I feel confident that what I'm going to share with you is solid information.

If I didn't, I wouldn't be talking about this subject.

So I'm gonna share with you the results of my study and hopefully it will be a big blessing to you.

Now earlier today in part 2 I zeroed in on verse 9 the verse right before verse 10 and 11 and verse 9 says here is the mind that has wisdom the 7 heads which are the symbol are 7 mountains on which the woman sits.

And I talked about earlier what I call the symbol to literal principle that when in the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, there's a symbol used And then there's an interpretation.

We see this in Daniel 2, in Daniel 7, in Daniel 8, in Revelation 17.

We see it again and again and again that a symbol is interpreted literally.

And so I've done that with the 7 heads are 7 mountains.

And as I mentioned, the Greek word for mountains can also be translated hills.

And historically, the seven-hilled city of Rome has been famous or infamous, and it's a fact that the different phases of the Roman Empire, whether it's Imperial Rome, it sat there in Rome, whether it was Papal Rome during the Dark Ages, sat there in Rome and even Today, the Roman Catholic Church, its headquarters is still inside the city of Rome.

Now here's another very interesting point that I've discovered and I think it is solid.

This is another principle that I've come to adopt in my study.

I mentioned earlier the weight of evidence principle where you look at all the clues and try to come to a conclusion.

I also believe in what I call the Daniel and Revelation principle that when we're studying especially Revelation 17 which is a portal to Revelation 13 that we should stick with the prophecies of Daniel and Revelation to try to put the pieces together.

And then we have the symbol to literal principle and here's another principle I call this the dual application principle.

And just to clarify, I do not apply the dual application principle to the time prophecies, to the 1260 years or the 2300 days in Daniel 8 or the 490 days in Daniel 9.

We do know that Jesus used this principle in Matthew 24 when he talked about the destruction of Jerusalem and how then he also applied that to the end of the world.

What happened to Jerusalem is gonna happen in a larger sense around the world.

We see that principle many times in the Old Testament.

And let me show you where it is in the book of Revelation.

Now it's very interesting if you back up to verse 7.

Revelation 17, 7 says, "'The angel said to me, why did you marvel?

I will tell you the mystery, remember that word mystery, of the woman, and that woman is a false church, and of the beast that carries her, which has 7 heads and 10 horns." So notice we have a mystery, we have a church, and we also have the number 7.

Now I've discovered in my Studying Revelation, if you go back to chapter 1, Revelation chapter 1, we also find another mystery, another church, and another set of sevens.

In Revelation chapter 1, Jesus is seen by John in a vision and he's walking in the midst of who remembers what?

John sees Jesus walking in the midst of the 7 candlesticks at the beginning of the book.

And in verse 20, Revelation 1 verse 20, Jesus begins to explain what John just saw.

And he says he's going to explain the mystery which we read in Revelation 17.

And in Revelation 17 is the mystery of pointing to an evil power.

The mystery of the 7 stars, which you saw in my right hand, and the 7 golden candlesticks.

And then Jesus said, the 7 stars are the angels of the 7 churches, and the 7 candlesticks, which you saw are, and what are they?

So there's the symbol, the 7 candlesticks, and the application is they are, literally, 7 literal churches.

Now, as I was studying this, it hit me that when you look at Revelation 1 and Revelation 17, you have 2 mysteries, right?

Mystery in chapter 1, mystery in chapter 17.

You have the true church of God, and then you have the bloody woman, the apostate church in chapter 17.

We have 7 heads on the beast and then we also have 7 candlesticks and 7 churches.

2 mysteries, 2 churches, 2 sets of sevens.

And when you look at the 7 churches in verse 11, Jesus specifically refers to those churches.

In verse 11, Jesus told John, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, what you see, write in a book and send it to the 7 churches, which were where?

And they were, if you look on a map in Bible days in the first century, you'll discover that there were literally 7 real churches there in Asia, or Asia Minor, which is now the area that we call Turkey, or that's called Turkey.

So the 7 candlesticks were literally 7 literal churches.

And you can look at the map and you can study history.

Series

Steve Wohlberg Weekend

01 Identifying the Bloody Woman

Transcript

Parent Series

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Recorded

02 Identifying the Seven-Headed Beast

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