Here we want to note who Jezebel is. Jezebel is a woman. The woman in Revelation 17 refers to the Roman Catholic Church. In Matthew 13:33 the woman who took the leaven and hid it in three measures of meal is also the Roman Catholic Church. Naturally, therefore, the woman in Revelation 2:20 also represents the Roman Catholic Church.

God never acknowledges the marriage between His people and the Gentiles as proper; God says that this is fornication. So Jezebel was not the queen; the coming together of Ahab and Jezebel was fornication. Fornication is confusion. What God sees is a woman who is confusing the words of God and the people of God. This woman brought in the god of the Gentiles. I have already said that the result of fornication is idolatry. The New Testament speaks of the conference at Jerusalem, the result of which was to exhort the Gentile brothers to abstain from meat offered to idols and from fornication (Acts 15:29). Here we see that the fornication of Jezebel brought idols into the kingdom of Israel.

Through Jezebel, Ahab was joined to the world. No matter where you are, it is apparent that the Roman Catholic Church unites herself with political powers. She sends out ambassadors and ministers to various nations, and in important world crises she stands up to speak. The uniting of the church with the world is the Roman Catholic Church. They claim that their first pope was Peter. But I think Peter would say that he was a disciple of the poor Jesus of Nazareth; the glory and honor of the world had nothing to do with him. Yet the Roman Catholic Church maintains her position in the world and commands respect from the people. The practice of the Roman Catholic Church within these more than one thousand years is, according to the James 4:4, the same as the greatest adultery. Here we see that the church has lost her virginity. Today there is a group of people who think that they can bargain with others since they have such a large membership. According to men it is a type of advancement for the church to be able to bargain, but according to God, it is sin for the church to gain what the world has gained.

What is the result? Idolatry. The facts are placed before us; there is not one church that is like the Roman Catholic Church with so many idols. We can say that the best class of idols is made by the Roman Catholic Church. I stayed in the city of Rome for one month. During that time I continually felt one thing: If theirs is the church, then ours is not; if ours is, then theirs surely is not. There is no middle ground for the two to come together. The remarkable thing is that they have fulfilled what has been prophesied in the Bible. There is an image of the Father and an image of the Son; there are images of the apostles and images of the ancient saints. They worship Mary; they worship Peter. Jezebel teaches the Lord’s servants to commit fornication and eat the meat offered to idols. Jezebel is spoken of because the church has brought in Gentile gods. We can see this in the book entitled Mystery by G. H. Pember. Catholicism takes in Gentile gods and hangs the signs of Christianity upon them. The most evident is the image of Mary. Some think that at least Mary is of Christianity. But the fact is that Greece has a goddess, India has a goddess, Egypt has a goddess, and China has a goddess; every religion in the world has a goddess, except Christianity. Since there must be a goddess, they bring forth Mary. Actually there is no goddess in Christianity—the origin of the concept of a goddess is the Gentiles. So this is idolatry on top of fornication. This is Jezebel bringing in the things of the Gentiles to the kingdom of Israel.

She calls herself a prophetess because she wants to preach and to teach. The position of the church before God is that of a woman. Whenever the church has authority to preach, that is Jezebel. The church has nothing to say; in other words, the church has no word. The Son of God is the Word; therefore, only He has the word. Christ is the Head of the church; therefore, only He can speak. Whenever the church speaks, that is the preaching of the woman. The Roman Catholic Church is the woman preaching. In the Roman Catholic Church, what matters is what the church says, not what the Bible says or what the Lord says. It is quite remarkable that God says that Jezebel is the prophetess and the woman who speaks. “My slaves” refers to individual slaves. Jezebel has the authority to direct every believer. The people in the Roman Catholic Church do not read the Bible, because they are afraid of misunderstanding what God means. Only the fathers can understand and only the fathers can speak; therefore, only they can decide all matters. Basically the Roman Catholic Church is the preaching of the woman who decides what the children of God should do. Many doctrines have been changed because she speaks for the church and people must listen to the church. She pays attention to the thought that people must listen to the church and pope, not that people must listen to the Lord.