The Great Whore

The sermon opens by framing the Christian life as spiritual warfare and thanking God for Scripture and the Holy Spirit. Odle then warns against a movement that elevates feelings, generalized love, and visible unity above doctrine. His thesis is that love is never permission to receive teaching that contradicts Christ.

Odle reads Revelation 17 as a description of an enduring religious-political system. He emphasizes the woman’s relationship with rulers, her influence over peoples and nations, the seven mountains, her wealth and ceremonial colors, and her guilt in persecuting Christ’s witnesses.

The sermon compares Revelation’s purple, scarlet, gold, jewels, cup, and maternal imagery with Catholic clerical garments, ornate vessels, Vatican wealth, and titles applied to the church and Mary. Odle argues that the parallels are cumulative rather than accidental.

Odle presents the Protestant Reformation as a call to leave a system of doctrinal error and return to the authority of Scripture. He argues that the Counter-Reformation sought to regain influence over those who had departed Rome, first through open conflict and later through institutional and cultural influence.

Francis Chan becomes the sermon’s principal contemporary example. Odle objects to Chan’s positive engagement with Catholicism, his meeting with Pope Francis, his association with Jonathan Roumie, and his teaching about the Lord’s Supper. The larger warning is that gracious language, personal warmth, or an appearance of humility cannot replace testing doctrine.

The sermon devotes extended attention to the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation: the belief that the substance of bread and wine becomes the literal body and blood of Christ when consecrated by a priest. Odle rejects this teaching and views Eucharistic adoration as worship directed toward a created object.

Odle surveys twentieth- and twenty-first-century Christian leaders whom he believes helped soften Protestant resistance to Rome. His examples include Kathryn Kuhlman, David du Plessis, Billy Graham, Kenneth Copeland, Tony Palmer, Pope Francis, Mike Bickle, and Francis Chan. His concern is not ordinary contact with Catholics but public recognition of Catholic doctrine and leadership as though the Reformation’s disputes had been resolved.

The sermon connects Mike Bickle and IHOP with Catholic contemplative writers and the spiritual exercises associated with Ignatius of Loyola. It criticizes repetitive phrases, guided visualization, imagined encounters, breath-centered meditation, and attempts to produce altered spiritual states.

The sermon reaches its central application in Revelation 18. Odle rejects the idea that Christians should remain within or unite with a system he regards as idolatrous. The command is separation: leave its doctrines and practices so as not to participate in its sins or judgment.