The Monster and the Whore

The Monster and the Whore
Revelation 17

I remember my excitement when, as a boy, I learned to read a map. Someone had given me a “maps made easy” sort of book, which explained how all the symbols worked. I remember being especially fascinated by the contour lines. Growing up as I did in a part of the country with plenty of hills to climb, I loved to imagine the gentle slopes with spaced-out contours and the steep or even sheer sides of the hill where the contours were so close together that there seemed no space, and sometimes indeed was no space, between them. And then there were the forests, the churches, the post offices and so on, all picked out with their own little symbols. Now, of course, you can go online and switch to and fro from a traditional style of map to an aerial photograph, and back again. That makes it easy, though no less fun. But the need for symbolic designs has not gone away. And the need to be able to interpret them remains...