"Babylon the Great", who is she?

by JH 35 Replies latest jw friends

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    cyberguy....I don't think either Narkissos or I ever identified the woman with the "seven mountains", but yes indeed, the image of her sitting on top of the seven mountains is exactly the image of Rome that was common in the first century A.D. I will post a full detailed message on this tomorrow.

    The "ten kings" (the former alliances of Rome) are still around in ch. 18 because they take part in the toppling of Babylon (cf. 17:16, "the time will come when the ten horns and the beast will turn against the prostitute"). This may reflect the first-century Nero redivivus myth which has Nero attacking Rome with the Parthian army (cf. ch. 9). However, the motif is also traceable to Jeremiah 51 which describes how Babylon would be destroyed by the northern hordes and nations (cf. especially 51:27). There is some tension in the text, however, between the nations destroying Babylon in ch. 17 and their mourning of Babylon in ch. 18. This tension is probably due to the mixing of sources; ch. 17 depends on Jeremiah, which has the nations attacking Babylon, and ch. 18 depends on Ezekiel (esp. 26:16-17 in this case) which has the "rulers" mourning Tyre.

  • Spook
    Spook

    It was Rome. The seven hills were of Rome. The ten kings are likely Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, and Titus. It is another bible prophecy that never did and never will come true.

  • cyberguy
    cyberguy

    Thanks Leolaia, I'm looking forward to a further explanation soonest!

  • Ianone
    Ianone

    Jesus Messiah Fellowship

    Light To The Nations

    THE GREAT WHORE OF BABYLON Is Israel & Old Pharisee Talmudic JudaismRome Or Catholicism is a daughter

    By Cohen G. Reckart, Pastor

    1.) Introduction
    2.) Mystery Babylon3.) The Mark/Seal/Emblem Of Antichrist4.) The Pharisees
    5.) The Snake Throne

    1.) INTRODUCTION:

    Volumes of books have been written about Mystery Babylon. Nearly all of them are directed at the Roman Catholic Church. This error began several centuries ago when Rome claimed that the Apostle Peter went there and founded Catholicism. This could not be proven by history or actual accounts in the Scriptures, so some method was needed to make the claim appear valid. This was accomplished by a crafty twist of Scripture found in 1Peter 5:13: *The Church that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and so doth Marcus my son.* Here, the word *Babylon* was mysticized into Rome. It is alleged that Apostle Peter went among the Gentiles and started a Church at Rome. But is this correct? In Galatians 2:9 we find this: *And when James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given unto me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the heathen, and they unto the circumcision.* Galatians was written about 60AD.

    This proves that as late as the conference in Jerusalem in Acts 15, the Apostle Peter was ministering only to the circumcision (Jews). This was about 50-55AD. Right after the Jerusalem Council, the Apostle Peter actually went unto the circumcision that was still living at ancient Babylon and there founded a New Testament Church. What became of it we do not know. To mysticize Babylon as Rome just to get Peter as the founder of Catholicism is not only a careful and fraudulent lie, the Catholic Church unwittedly contributed later to the Protestant accusation that she was indeed now identified as Mystery Babylon. Rome has not been able to shake that Protestant accusation since.

    2.) MYSTERY CONFUSION:

    The word *Babylon* means confusion. This means the place and orgin of language confusion or where having different speech that causes confusion began. Confusion or Babylon additionally meant not able to decide, determine, or think and understand according to one language or interpretation.

    At the time of this *confusion* in Babylon among the seed of Nimrod and his mystic cult, we find a small, almost undetected statement that in the days of Peleg, the world was divided. Peleg was a righteous King of the ancient partiarchial faith and lineage of Jesus. There was then a division between the mystery of Babylon and the Messianic Faith that came down to Abraham. With a new religious interpretation manufactured by Nimrod and his wife Simeramus, a new religious interpretation was started and this mystic gnostic system was behind the building of the tower of Babel. The confusion God made of this ancient evil religion brought chaos at Babylon.

    The word *Babylon* is now representative of religious confusion that is not in any way the original patriarchal Messianic faith. The cause of God bringing chaos then was to judge the work of satan in his attempt to interject into the world a false faith and a false religion not focused upon the Messianic Hope which was fulfilled in Jesus.

    Satan's religion and kingdom upon the earth remains embodied within these ancient mysteries of Mystery Babylon. These in turn are the core of all Mystery and cult religions that have since that ancient time, infused into the world cult beliefs, practices, and rituals. These are the cause of all religious confusion.

    At ancient Babylon the ancient faith of the Patriarchs was apostated or confused by Nimrod and Simeramus into gnostic mysticism. This new reinterpretation of the Messianic Hope was transfered via secret mouth to ear initiation and remains today in the practice of Talmudism (Jewish mysticism), Witchcraft, Wicca, Masonry, the Rosicrucians, Mormons, Woodsmen of the World, Eastern Star, the United Nations, organization, and other such fringe cults.

    Babylon started as a gate to God (Babel), and ended up as the gate to hell *confusion*. Babylon then is the source of all religious and abominable confusion. All religious *gates* to hell will lead back to Mystery Babylon. If any religion has a root of doctrine or practice associated with the apostasy of Mystery Babylon, it is not of God. GET OUT OF IT, separate yourself unto the LORD your God. You must take a stand on the issues of Mystery Babylon or be lost forever. You must be willing to forsake father and mother, relatives, friends, religious groups, houses, lands, and take up your cross and follow Jesus without any mental reservation or equivication. You are not joiong a cult, you are fleeing from the den of vipers and saving your soul from an everlasting burning Lake of Fire.

    Jesus pointed to the true religious focus of believers in Mathew 16:18 as the New Testament Church. Many use the word *Church* in their name, but inside they have several practices and beliefs that identify them as gates to hell, because several teachings and doctrines come from not from God, but ancient Mystery Babylon.

    When Jesus said: *I am the door;* and *enter the strait gate;* he was rejecting Mystery Babylon, Jerusalem, the Temple on Mt. Moriah, and any other mystery cult that existed or might spring up afterward that was part and parcel with Mystery Babylon.

    *BAREL* (Son of God), replaced *BABYLON* (gate to confusion). Jesus is the only gate or door to heaven. He is the fulfillment of the Messianic Hope. No religion, not even Judaism represented in Pharisee-Talmudism, has salvation or can bring it to the world. Jesus Messiah is the only gate or door to eternal life.

    Mystery Babylon then represents all the present gates to hell. Her religious perversion bring chaos, division, and confusion upon the minds and lives of her devotees. In regard to Christianity, Pharisee Judaism, now known as Talmudism, represented Mystery Babylon at the time of Jesus and the Apostles. In fact, the headquarters of Pharisee interpretation and education was at Babylon. It was here that the famous Masorertes had their birth and assisted in the perversion of the Old Testament Scriptures which enhanced and supported the Jewish adoption of this ancient apostasy. Only one system is called the temple of satan (Revelation 2:9; 3:9). Since the time of Jesus Messiah there exist three Judaisms now to follow: 1.) The original Messianic Hope and faith represented in symbolism in the tabernacle; 2.) The Babylonian replacement known as Phariseeism, Kabbalah, and Talmud; 3.)The third and Biblical choice is to believe Jesus Messiah fulfilled and replaced that given to Moses and totally rejected as satanic that of Phariseeism, Kabbalah and the Talmud. (Note: Phariseeism, Kabbalah, and the Talmud are the *Traditions of the Babylonian Elders* Jesus rejected).

    God is not the author of *confusion* or Mystery Babylon, meaning that with God it is either *black* (kingdom of darkness), or *white* (Kingdom of light). To suggest a *gray* area in any doctrinal discussion is *confusion* of darkness and light, ...or a mixture. Mixture is Mystery Babylon, Mystery Confusion. To mix *Truth* with *darkness* is then to fornicate and pollute the very nature and character of God. Israel was full of this Mystery darkness and professed that the *true Light* had come and those deceived by the darkness of satan's kingdom would not comprehend the Light then shining as the real *TRUTH OF GOD*. Mystery Babylon in the Jerusalem cult of the Pharisees fulfilled exactly the sin of Nimrod, and rejected the *true light*, the true revelation of Jesus Messiah predicted by Moses and the Prophets. How could Jesus leave the Temple *desolate* (Matthew 23:38), if he did not find it that abominable condition? He was rejected by the temple cult of darkness. In fact, Jesus said: this is your hour and the kingdom of darkness. Regardless of how many may try, no one will ever be able to apply this identification of the overspreading of the abomination over the Temple and Jerusalem. Jesus was crucified by the Temple cult?

    Jerusalem is called a city of *confusion* in Isaiah 24:10. Here the same evils that made Babel into Babylon had turned Jerusalem into a religious harlot. The same devil, the same apostasy, and the same confusion. What was once a gate to God in Jerusalem became a gate to hell and this is the cause of Jesus prophesying its destruction at the hands of Titus. Once confusion was set up in Jerusalem and a counterfeit religion replaced the original ancient Messianic Faith of the patriarchs, Jerusalem and the Temple became the successor of all the apostasy of mystery Babylon or mystery confusion. Babylon was a *mixture* of the pure with the profane and Jerusalem also duplicated that whoredom and fornication of sacred revelation and truth. That the religion of Baal Nimrod was practiced in Israel for several centuries and even in Jerusalem and in the Temple, is all the proof we need that Israel was indeed part and parcel with mystery Babylon. How can anyone explain the Babylonian Captivity and this judgment without confirming the very words of Isaiah, Jeremiah and the other prophets of that time, except with this understanding.

    The city of ancient Babylon at the time of Messiah had several hundred thousands of Jews still living there. It is said by scholars that more Jews lived in the metropolis of Babylon than that lived in all of Israel in the time of Jesus. Around the tower of Babel there are perhaps as many as a million or more graves of deceased Israelites who apostated and never went home. In fact, history records that the descendants of this large colony lived there until about 1054AD when an Arab King evicted them and they then migrated north into several other nations arriving in Europe slowly between 1100-1200AD.

    Because of the mixture of gnosticism and Jewish mysticism within the Catholic Church, similar to what was believed and practiced by Jews in Babylon, many migrating Jews joined the Catholic Church as Donemehs and such a person was Ignatius Loyola. The Jews preferred not to go home at this time because the country was poor and the riches of the Gentiles (Romans 11:12), was still the delusion used by satan to blind them not to receive Jesus Messiah? Only when they abandon this lust and return unto their LORD whom they rejected and crucified in the person of Messiah, can they be saved and grafted back into the olive tree which is the true Israel of God.

    This large colony living in ancient Babylon did not want to go back home. They and their ancestors had lived there nearly 630 years at the time of Messiah and many had no love for the ancient nation, its God, or its religion. They had totally assimulated into the Gentile fabric of the Syrians or Aramaeans until they spoke in the Aramaic language of Babylon and their race stock was polluted (mingled among the nations). The language of Babylon was carried back to Israel and replaced the ancient Hebrew, which few spoke in the days of Messiah. Not many make the connection that the Aramaic language (sometimes called *chaldee*), is really the official language of Nimrod's Mystery Babylon. Latin never was the language of Mystery Babylon. After the 70AD destruction of Jerusalem, several thousands of Jews fled to Babylon. For several centuries that followed, they could care less about the land of Israel. They even refused to aid or assist against Rome during several revolts of the second century. These Israelites could have gone home in peace mnay times over the next centuries but they loved Mystery Babylon. They chose instead to seek sin, pleasure, Gentile wealth, cult practices, and philosophy? According to the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia Volume 6, page 56 speaking of the two centuries after Messiah: *During this time period Babylon was coming into greater significance for the Jews, and was even called "the land of Israel."*

    It is this "dark hole" of missing knowledge in the history of apostate Judaism, that goads the unskilled to look at Rome Imperial or Rome Papal as Mystery Babylon. Then they splash this over Revelation chapters 17 & 18, and presto, they have the errors of dispensationalism allegedly proven as fact. They have no research material to cause them to look elsewhere. They reject any information that suggests they should look at Israel. And the Judaizers (Law-keepers would never look at Israel because law-keeping gives them an affinity with her that forbids that system could ever be Mystery Babylon or *antichrist*). Rome is their Babylon by law-keeping and default, since in their opinion, the Scriptures reveal no other spiritual whore that can fulfill that destiny.

    This error seemed to carry some weight when Attalus who was allegedly the heir of the Babylonian Imperial throne bequeathed his crown and dignity to Papal Rome (Two Babylons, Alexander Hislop, page 241). Supposedly the title *Pontiff* identified the Pope as the culprit of antichrist. And yet, Josephus as early as 60AD calls the Jewish High Priest a *Pontiff* and wearing *Pontifical* garments (Antiquities, Book IV, Chapter 4, paragraph 7; Ibid, Book XIII, Chapter II, Paragraph 3). It would appear that the Jewish High Priest had adopted the Babylonian mystical high-priesthood several centuries before Attalus was born to give Rome the same robes and titles. Before Attalus could give Rome a useless title of a defunct Babylon Imperial Kingdom, several Kings of Israel prior to 606BC and afterward, had already been anointed as vassal snake-throne rulers under Babylonian Kings (Jeremiah 52:31-32). Babylonian Judaism usurped and replaced ancient Judaism in the same sense that Catholicism usurped and replaced true Messianic Christianity. The Karites tried to throw off this yoke from Israel and were defeated by murder, persecution, and iniquity in high-places from Babylonian sources.

    After the gift of Attalus it was alleged that Rome inherited the infamous damnation of being Mystery Babylon by a will, rather than by practice. But is this valid? Will history and the Scriptures back up this hasty and necessary invention to draw attention away from the great whore of God? Israel was practicing the witchcraft and abominations of Mystery Babylon over nine centuries before the Catholic Church was founded in 325AD. Who could be a greater whore of God, Israel the divorced wife for her whoredoms and sorcery (Jeremiah 3:8; Isaiah 57:3), or Rome who never had a valid covenant or was the wife or Bride of Christ? Is Rome not a usurper? Can Israel after over 961 years from 606BC to 325AD and down to us today (2606 years), escape being the great whore of God and Mystery Babylon so easily? Can she be the great whore of God for the last eight hundred years of the Old Testament and all of a sudden in the New Testament she is lilly white, pure, undefiled, and still has an unfulfilled covenant with God after Calvary? Is God an adulterer, or a bigamist, or is the Church/Bride a concubine of God to Israel? Or did the Church/Bride replace Israel? What does the New Torah (Testament) say?

    3.) The Mark/Seal/Emblem Of Antichrist

    The word *mystery* identifies a secret religion known among the cults as containing *esoteric* knowledge or gnosticism. Esoteric knowledge or gnosticism is conveyed by oral tradition from mouth to ear to a select group of initiates. In the mysteries it is said that the serpent gave these gnostic secrets into the ear of Eve and she in turn taught them to Adam. Thus, the female is the greater teacher of the secrets and mysteries in witchcraft and cults. Within this mysticism of the serpent, there are hidden symbols for the public religion so that the ignorant common people worship by one set of ideas, while the secret society sees in the symbols an entirely different satanic meaning and worships accordingly. Only when a person knows the hidden knowledge (gnosis) of the symbols, can they understand the secrets of the mysteries and thereby claim special privilege with lucifer the light bearer of darkness (Illuminatti, Rosicrucians, Masons). This system of making darkness into light is found in all secret orders. Jesus identified this mystery religion that cloaks darkness as religious light in Matthew 6:23. Symbols such as the hex, solar serpent, ankh, pentagram, swastika, ying/yang, crescent moon with a star, pyramid, eye, circle with a dot in the center, compass/square, obelisk, tetragrammaton, the numbers 1, 3, 6, & 13, etc. etc. are used consistently by the kingdom of darkness (look at the back of your dollar bill). The greatest symbol of lucifer is the hex, which also is a secret symbol of the Sefiroth of the Kabbalah and its 32 paths of alleged wisdom through ten levels of a mystical godhead. And the satanic hex is the star of Israel? And it came from Babylon as a symbol of the sun god. It was even the personal sign of Ashtoreth the whore goddess that answers to Simiramus. How did this ever happen? What could better identify the great whore of God more clearly? Among those who practice witchcraft, the hex is lucifer's own personal sign of union or marriage with Israel. The interlaced black border triangle with a white border triangle represents sexual union. Is this not a symbol of adultery and fornication of Israel with satan? Is this not the star of their god Rempham (code for lucifer), that Stephen preached about in Acts 7:43 that got him killed? What other star is associated so deeply and devoutly with Israel? Why does mentioning this truth about the *hex,* the death mark (to hex someone), incite so many to instant hatred against the person revealing its satanic purpose and meaning? The hex has 666 within it in several ways. And the hex represents the name of a man!

    4.) THE PHARISEES:

    The Pharisees were a secret order who outwardly appeared to be orthodox Jews but inwardly they were of the mysteries of Babylon. That is why Jesus exposed them as hypocrites; that is having two faces. For in those days a hypocrite was an actor who played different roles by putting on different clothes to cover up his true identity. It would be totally out of character and wrong of Jesus to call them serpents and their father the devil, if behind those religious robes they were not secret members of the Mystery Babylon kingdom of darkness. Now, it is one thing to be a sinner and another to be an actual sworn member to a satanic cult that makes members take a blood oath and adopt pagan satanic symbols to wear. Are these not generational and congenital antichrist? The sinner is in the kingdom of darkness by default, the other is in the kingdom of darkness by blood oath and without mental reservation or equivocation. These sell their soul to the devil for *wages*, employment, business opportunity, political power, financial security, and lastly as a fraternity to cloak these schemes behind the tiled door, which in the secret mysteries is a substitute for the temple at Babylon (Jerusalem). Just check the 32 and 33 degree lines on the latitude and longitude of any world map, see what cities are close and get a revelation of the occult traveling oasis'. What does the Freemasonry cult say about their ancestors the Pharisees?

    *The character of their organization is interesting to the Masonic student. They held a secret doctrine, ...they met in sodalities or societies, the members of which called themselves chabirim, fellows or associates; and they styled all who were outside of their mystical association, yum hararetz, or people of the land (Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Albert G. Mackey, 1921, pp 560,561).*

    The Jews are not bashful or ashamed of their great mystical religious beliefs contained in the Babylonian Kabbalah. They even boast that the tarot and witchcraft along with magic are not evil. What is now called *orthodox Judaism* is fully a Kabbalah religion that has incorporated the tarot, witchcraft, and magic within it. Their own books boast of these mystical connections (See the Kabbalah by Charles Ponce; Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem; and Messianic Idea In Judaism by Gershom Scholem). These alleged orthodox worshipers are of pure Babylon descent. In order for the reader to understand this depth of satan and mystery of iniquity, he or she will have to study the Kabbalah and the Talmud on his or her own and see their inherent and congenital ties to black witchcraft and Mystery Babylon. In fact, no witch of any repute can achieve the high-priesthood of any cult without a through knowledge and practice of Kabbalah. Is Freemasonry connected to this Mystery Babylon?

    *Masonry is a search after light. That search leads us directly back, as you can see, to the Kabalah (Morals and Dogmas, Albert Pike, p 741)*

    5.) THE SNAKE THRONE:

    Scholars recognize that the first snake throne of the serpent was Nimrod's kingdom of Babylon. Baal of the Old Testament is none other than Baal-Nimrod. Asthoreth is none other than Simiramus. And Tammuz comes through with his original name. Baal-Nimrod is then Nimgod. Although Nimrod's serpent religion was scattered all over the world at the time of the dispersion of the races, the headquarters of the mystery remained in Babylon. The serpent moved his snake throne to Jerusalem in time to use the Temple cult against Messiah to fulfill Genesis 3:15. This answers why there were so many demon spirits in Israel when Messiah came, and why satan was there immediately after his baptism to begin his attack. Truly the Kingdom of heaven was suffering violence. After the first attack, the devil then moved his agents in the Temple to finish his plot to destroy Messiah. Jesus conquered lucifer, not in ancient Babylon, not in Rome, but in Jerusalem. Regardless of how hard many try, the evil deed of rejecting and plotting the murder of Messiah can never be attributed to Rome Imperial or Rome Papal. And, regardless of how hard some deny it, the Apostles always accused the Jews of this wicked and evil deed (Acts 2:23; 3:14-15; 7:52; 1Thessalonians 2:15; James 5:6). The Romans were trapped into this murder by the Sanhedrin and coercing Pilate with threats of reporting him to Rome for allowing another man in the Roman Empire to be called a King. The Romans were never blamed by the Apostles.

    Mystery Babylon is a three-fold serpent system: a profane Religious power, a profane Political power; and a profane Economic power (these are the principalities and powers of high places that wars behind the scenes against the Messiah and his Kingdom). The latter two profane powers are secretly controlled by the first. The first is controlled by a secret society of the ten or the minyan styled after the ten sefiroths of the Babylonian Kabbalah. These secret societies had their head in Babylon and switched it to Jerusalem. The work of every Freemason and Easter Star woman is to rebuild Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem with the Kabbalah as their guide (the tracing board). Solomon apostated to Mystery Babylon. God spoke to him twice and he refused to repent (1Kings 11:8-9). He died a male witch of the Babylonian order. Hiram of Tyre was his deceiver and damned his soul. Ezekiel was shown Solomon's secret cult that met under the Temple in Jerusalem in the tunnels and caverns (Ezekiel 8:1-18). This whole underground system of banquet rooms for the occult, was patterned after Mystery Babylon that had them first.

    Mysticism and satan's throne or *seat* through the ages up to Messiah was the entire focus of the metal-man in Daniel 2:32-44. It is against that kingdom that the stone comes out of the mountain (Calvary) and crashes into the clay feet to destroy it. The succeeding religious systems of the conquering empires would adopt the mysteries and pass them on to the next, finally arriving at the iron and clay feet. That the iron represents Imperial Rome is accepted, but the clay that is not of the Iron and does not cleave to it, can be none other than Israel (the clay of Jeremiah 18:1-6). All mystery religions of Babylon. Media, Persia, Greece, Rome, and Israel, would have as their head, Mystery Babylon. Only Israel the clay, would contain the headquarters of the mysteries at the end of the metal-man image. The image would last stand on clay feet. The devil moved his satanic throne from Babylon to Jerusalem and this proves Israel was the clay and why the Temple became an abomination of desolation (Septuagint Version Daniel 9:25-27).

    Where ever the snake throne was located, the devil would be there to protect it. Ever wonder why the devil and demons were hanging around Israel and in Jerusalem and able to go in and out to the Temple without any alarm to the official religious hierarchy? Ever wonder how Genesis 3:15 could be fulfilled by the Temple cult as the serpent's seed to bruise the heels of Messiah, and yet so many still want this very Babylonian Talmudic system revived in the endtime as a move of God to allegedly restore these so-called *elect* to salvation? The Pre-Tribs are now circulating a false doctrine that Jews and Christians can both offer animal sacrifices if done in faith, and these will be accepted by God! With this heresy being taught, *antichrist* will have no difficulty getting people to worship the image of the Beast (the Temple), and damn millions. Ever wonder what Jesus meant when he quoted Jeremiah 7:11: *Ye have made my house a den of robbers*. The word *robbers* here is translated *thieves* (Matthew 21:13), but the Hebrew word is *per-eets* from which we get our word *pirates*. What does a *pirate* do but steal something and make use of it for himself. Was Jesus identifying mystery Babylon here by using this word quoted from Jeremiah's *pirates*, or was he just concerned with money changers which were a public sign of a deeper apostasy lurking in the underground secret chambers?

    What makes this all so important is that according to Daniel in 2:44: in the days of a series of ten kings of Imperial Rome (Augustus to Vespasian), the God of heaven would set up a Kingdom, which shall never be destroyed, and it will consume and destroy all these prior Kingdoms and his shall stand for ever (1Corinthians 15:24). It is no secret that the stone out of the mountain will smite the clay feet and the whole satanic system destroyed. This stone is the Lord Jesus Messiah and his Kingdom brought to the earth, which we call the New Testament Church or the true Israel.

    The true New Testament Church will oppose Mystery Babylon, be persecuted, and at the end win big, when Messiah returns to destroy all who obeyed not the Gospel (2 Thessalonians 2:8).

    Here are the cold and unrefutable facts: Israel went to the land of Shinar as the great whore of God and there her wickedness was set upon its base (Zechariah 5:1-11). Rome is identified by many as Babylon by simularity, whereas Israel is identified as Mystery Babylon by her whoredom and living there for nearly 1600 years from 606BC to 1054AD, away from God in deep apostasy. Mystery Babylon was adopted by apostate Jews who incorporated the esoteric secrets of Shinar into the Mishnah, the Gemarah, the Babylonian Talmud, The Kabbalah, and the Old Testament by numerology, temura, and symbols (the Bible Code book is based upon Kabbalah numerology or as they claim the holy and sacred Babylonian Aramaic alphabet and numbers of God). They merged Babylonian gnosticism into the Kabbalah. This in turn became the foundation of the oral traditions that were claimed to have been given secretly to Moses and hidden from the common people.

    It was alleged that the ignorant common people worshiped by an exterior worship and animal sacrifices while secretly there was an entirely different interior worship that included human sacrifice. The latter by the mystical cult was based secretly upon the cosmos and universe (Josephus--Antiquities, Book III, Chapter VII, Paragraph 7; See also Philo's apostasy of Judaism, both proved to be pantheism). These Kabbalah secrets were further merged in the fabric of the Traditions of the Elders which Jesus openly opposed as making converts two-fold more the children of hell. In fact, the word *Kabbalah* means *Traditions*. And it was the exposing and confronting of these traditions of Kabbalah that had really replaced the laws of Moses, that got Jesus nailed to the Cross. The Jews used Jesus' claim of being a King as their cover to have him killed because he confronted and exposed the snake-throne in control of the Temple. With the High Priest sitting in it as God. The pope can never equal this!

    Only within Judaism remains today the fullness of the Mystery Babylon religion. The Catholic Church along with Islam and Protestantism have been infiltrated and caused to adopted these mysteries of Babylon. The Mother and her daughters now meet together in their secret world-wide lodges and pass their oral secrets and mysteries to one another by mouth to ear. The United Nations is totally a lodge of these members. The dome above the sacred general chamber is nothing but the eye of lucifer. They know what they are doing and not ashamed of the Kabbalah that guides their goals and purposes of a one-world government under the snake-throne of lucifer.

    Mystery Babylon is apostate Judaism in all of her adulterous fame. Only by Rome joining the secret societies through mystical connection to Judaistic gnosticism has she become a daughter of the great whore. Only by Islam also being brought into the family by joining the secret societies and producing Arabic freemasonry has she become a daughter. Judaism claims that she is the mother of both mystical Catholicism and mystical Islam. The whore and her harlot daughters are thus identified. The Whore of Mystery Babylon can not hide her endtime identity any longer. Several other facts will identify her:

    Israel is a whore, an adulterous rejected queen, and a witch practicing sorcery: *but draw near hither, ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore (Isaiah 57:3* (This is illegitimate Israel. The remnant of the Godly Israel all came into the New Israel, the New Testament Church).

    The city of Jerusalem became a harlot, full of murderers: *How is the faithful city become an harlot! It was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers (Isaiah 1:21)*.

    Israel was a fornicating wife: *But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and pouredst out thy fornication on every one that passed by; his it was (Ezekiel 16:15)*.

    Israel was old in her adultery: *Then said I unto her that was old in adulteries, Will they now commit whoredom with her, and she with them (Ezekiel 23:43)*?

    The judgment of the great whore: *And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither, I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth (is scattered) upon many waters (Revelation 17:1)*.

    The whore of Babylon further proven: 1.) Jeremiah 2:20-Israel played the harlot. 2.) Jeremiah 3:1-Israel played the harlot. 3.) Jeremiah 3:8-Israel is divorced per Deuteronomy 4:1-4. 4.) Ezekiel 16:15- Playedst the harlot and whore. 5.) Hosea 1:2-Israel a wife of whoredom. 6.) Hosea 1:9-Lo-Ammi, ye are not my people.

    It is obvious that there are two different views of Israel: First, that in all her evils and sins she can do no wrong and God cannot divorce her because he made a vow to Abraham that he must fulfill, or make himself a liar; The second view and Biblical, is that because of her evils and becoming the great whore, God divorced her (Jeremiah 3:8), and Calvary was the place where it was fully proven, by the Covenant sealed to a new Bride/Wife, the New Testament Church. That the vow to Abraham's seed was conditional and also fulfilled in Jesus Messiah (Galatians 3:29). Therefore, there is no covenant or vow to Abraham to be fulfilled to Israel apart from Jesus Messiah and the Acts 2:38 plan of salvation. This salvation which included securing the promises of Abraham, was to the Jew first and then the Gentiles.

    Mystery Babylon can not change, did not change, and her Mt. Moriah (one of the seven heads) that was wounded by a sword in 70AD, will be healed and arise again in the endtimes and the image of it (the Temple) speak once again and exert her claim as the spouse of God, claiming she is still the queen wife and Calvary did not make her a whore widow. The Catholic Church can never fit this role or this person.

    Perhaps no other easy proof can be forthcoming than to show Israel took the cup of spiritual whoredoms and damnation into her hands and made the nations drunk with the wine of her fornication:

    *For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to drink it (Jeremiah 25:15)*.

    Here, Jeremiah has been ordered to take the cup and cause all nations to drink. Babylon also was made to drink. Here the cup passes from Israel to Babylon and back again to Israel:

    *Babylon hath been a golden cup in the LORD'S hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad Jeremiah 51:7)*.

    The cup did not start with Babylon, but according to Jeremiah 25:15, was given to her to drink. Babylon drank and passed the cup on to other nations arriving at our time and being drank at the United Nations. The cup started in the hands of the great whore of Israel. Jeremiah gives us the purpose and the scope of this bloody bowl that will return vengeance from God in seven bowls or vials of wrath, seven times to her evils. Although Rome is a bloody killer, she is not the whore of Mystery Babylon, she is instead her harlot daughter! Like mother, like daughter!

    This then agrees with Revelation 17:2 to identify the great whore of God:

    *With whom the kings of the earth (Gentiles) have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth (Gentiles) have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication Revelation 17:2)*.

    Why would God care if the Catholic Church committed spiritual fornication if this system never was a part of the true New Testament Church or a part of old Israel? And if the word *wine* is here spiritualized into *doctrine*, would not Rome's secret mystical doctrines that are rooted in Judaistic gnosticsm and mysticism, make apostate Israel more the Whore mother than the Catholic Church that obtained her *false* teachings from a prior apostate woman?

    Has there been no effort among the Jews to correct this Babylonian evil? Yes. The attempt was made by the Karites, but they were defeated with murder, secret schemes, plots, and infiltration until they were reduced to extinction. At present there is no movement anywhere within Judaism to bring these evils into focus and to condemn them. If there are willing hearts, there may yet arise from Jewish Messianism a voice of protest and truth. We await with expectation and wonder.

    Can Jews be saved today? Absolutely! They are not cast away. But they have no special entitlements because of race. The are equal to the Gentiles. The wall between the Jews and the Gentiles was torn down by Jesus Messiah. The only threat of Christianity to Judaism is that the Law has been replaced by *Grace*. Since Babylonism has replaced original Judaism, there should be no complaint about the original law of Moses being eternal. But as Paul said, they are blinded by their traditions not to see the end of the old Covenant. Another reason why many Jews refuse to accept Jesus Messiah is because of the hatred taught to them and because the Catholic Church was very cruel and sponsored hate crimes against them. The first Messiahians did not do this and the endtime Messiahians will not do it. Any Jew or Gentile however who reviles Jesus Messiah and rejects him as a Saviour because of the Catholic Church, cannot turn and say that mentioning their spiritual apostasy is antisemitism. Such is not a valid cry. Although true Christians will tell the truth about the mystery of iniquity in Judaism, they would never encourage or participate in any form of physical injury to any person. The conflict between Judaism and Jesus Messiah is theological and will continue until the very end of this present age. It is our prayer that any Jew or Gentile that has not received Jesus Messiah as Lord and Saviour according to Acts 2:38, do so without delay. Mystery Babylon and all who are in her will be lost. Come out from among her my people that ye be not partakers of her sins and of her plagues.

    "FOR ALL GENTILES HAVE DRUNK OF THE WINE OF THE WRATH OF ISRAEL'S FORNICATION, AND THE KINGS OF THE GENTILES HAVE COMMITTED FORNICATION WITH HER, AND THE MERCHANTS OF THE GENTILES ARE WAXED RICH THROUGH THE ABUNDANCE OF HER LUSTS" (Revelation 18:3 BJV).

    Cohen G. Reckart, Pastor

    Bibliography:

    King James Version (KJV); Beth Jesus Version (BJV); Josephus; Philo; Encyclopedia of Freemasonry by Albert Macky; Morals and Dogmas by Albert Pike; The Kabbalah by Charles Ponce; The Messianic Idea in Judaism by Gershom Scholem; Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop; Kabbalah by Gershom Scholem; Septuagint Version Old Testament; and The Babylonian Talmud Rabbi Dr. I Epstein, London England, The Soncino Press.

  • proplog2
  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Cyberguy,

    The allegory of Rome as a woman (either a rich matrona or a goddess), especially in the sitting posture, is quite frequent in Roman iconography -- I have one example in mind from a 1st-century ceramic plate, but I haven't found online pictures (yet). (There's such a mass of bs on the Internet about anything related to Revelation that it becomes difficult to find anything valid: too bad there's no software to shift out fundamentalistic and/or sectarian/cultic material as there is for porn.)

    My take is that the ?woman? is not Rome, but rather, the ?Christian? amalgamation of Church and State. She isn?t the ?seven mountains,? Rome, but she ?sits on top? of the "seven mountains" (Rev. 17:9?this seems like a different entity from the "woman"). I realize that early ?church fathers? may have believed her to be Rome, but take another look at the context! Another point to consider is that, when she falls, Rev. 18:2, the ?kings of the earth,? are still in existence (Rev. 18:3).

    I think it all boils down to personal decision, about (1) whether the author and the first row of readers understand at all what is being written and (2) whether the future can be written at all.

    Without some fairly "rationalist" decisions on the above presuppositions, anything can be said, but nothing can be demonstrated.

    The general context of Revelation as it stands is one of persecution of at least some Christians by at least some Roman authorities (especially around the issue of imperial worship). A "Christian" amalgamation of Church and State is something the first "interpretative community" of Revelation could hardly dream of, not to mention the destruction of such an amalgamation.

    And, yes, Rome did not fall when and as Revelation hoped. Paradoxically, to me that's the mark of "true prophecy": when a "prophecy" perfectly fits history (such as Daniel 11, down to v. 40) it is history under the disguise of prophecy: as soon as the author really tries to write the future the text essentially departs from history (although there might be some minor coincidences).

  • City Fan
    City Fan

    Narkissos,

    too bad there's no software to shift out fundamentalistic and/or sectarian/cultic material as there is for porn

    That would be great. Every time I do a search on these kind of subjects I get countless websites by end time nuts and fundies.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Here is a summary of the evidence that "Babylon the Great" is a representation of Rome and not Jerusalem or the nation of Israel.

    (1) The most obvious and conclusive piece of evidence is Revelation 17:18, in which the interpreting angel makes the identification with the capital of a world empire: "The woman you saw is the great city (hé polis hé megalé) that rules over the kings of the earth". As Narkissos points out, the present tense is used here (estin "is", ekhousa basileian "having rulership") which indicates that Babylon the Great is not a future entity (e.g. such as the Holy Roman Empire or Christendom) or a past one (such as Jerusalem in her glory before the destruction of AD 70), but the "great city" that is presently ruling over all the "kings of the earth". That city, obviously, was Rome at the time when Revelation was written. In no sense could the pillaged and subjugated city of Jerusalem be depicted as having dominion over the kings of the earth. She was under the thumb of the same capital that had authority over all the other cities in the region: Rome.

    It is true that the phrase "the great city" is also used to refer to Jerusalem in an earlier vision in ch. 11: "Their corpses will lie in the main street of the great city (tés poleós tés megalés) known by the symbolic names Sodom and Egypt, in which the Lord was crucified" (11:8). But there is no reason to insist that there could only have been one "great city". In Revelation, we have two distinct cities in two separate visions: the "great city" in which the Lord was crucified in ch. 11, and the "great city" which rules over the kings of the earth in ch. 17. Only by very strained reasoning could the city in which Jesus was crucified be equated with the city that rules over the earth. Since Revelation frequently recycles language from the OT, it should be noted that the phrase "great city" is applied to both Jerusalem and Ninevah in the OT. Jeremiah 22:7-8 refers to Jerusalem as a great city: "Concerning the house of the king of Judah ... many nations will pass by this city; and they will say to one another, 'Why has Yahweh done this to the great city (té polei té megalé)' ". Revelation 11:8 may have thus been influenced by Jeremiah. On the other hand, other scriptures refer to Ninevah and its environs as "the great city" (cf. Genesis 10:11-12, Jonah 1:2, 3:2, 4:11, LXX); the allusions in Jonah, for instance, pertain to the time when Assyria had authority over other nations as an empire. In the case of Rome, it was widely called "the great city" by classical writers (cf. Dio Cassius 76.4.4-5; Anth. Pal. 9.236; Dion Perigentes 352-56; Athenaeus 1.208b, 3.98c; Procopius, Goth. 3.22; Vergil, Aeneid 1.601-6, 7.272-82; Ecologues 1.19-25; Livy 1.16.6-7; Ovid, Fasti 5.91-100, Metamorphoses 15.439-49; Manilius 4.686-95, 773-77; Pliny, Natural History 3.38; Silius 3.505-10, 582-87; Martial 1.3.1-6, 10:103.7-12; Ammianus Marc. 14.6.5-6). Note for instance that Porphyry (De Abstinentia, 2.56.9) and Aelius Aristides (Or. 26.3) refer to Rome as "the great city" (hé megalé polis) and Horace (Carmina, 4.3.13) called her "the greatest of cities" (princeps urbium).

    Most importantly, Jerusalem is not given the symbolic name of "Babylon" in Revelation 11:8. Instead she is called "Sodom" and "Egypt". The different symbolic names reflect the fact that a different city is here meant.

    (2) In harmony with the above, Babylon was also depicted as a city of great wealth and power. In Revelation 18:10, we hear the lament: "Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power (hé polis hé iskhura)". The strength and might accorded to Babylon in this verse recalls 17:18 (which refers to Babylon's present dominion over the kings of the earth) and is wholly inappropriate for subdued Jerusalem. The wealth and luxury of Babylon is also mentioned four times in ch. 18 alone (18:3, 9, 16-17, 19), and is associated especially with mercantile trade: "The merchants of the earth became rich from her excessive luxury....Woe! Woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth" (Revelation 18:3, 19). Of course, this fits perfectly with Rome whereas Jerusalem was not a center of a world market and ship-based international trade. Rather, Revelation 18 is literarily dependent on Ezekiel 27-28 which concerns the Phoenician capital of Tyre which, in Ezekiel's day, was an international center of trade (cf. especially Ezekiel 27:9-25). Aelius Aristides described how Rome was the locus and primary consumer of the mercantile trade:

    "Here [at Rome] is brought from every land and sea all the crops of the seasons and the produce from each land, river, lake, as well as of the arts of the Greeks and barbarians, so that if someone should wish to view all these things, he must either see them by traveling over the whole world or be in this city. It cannot be otherwise than that there always be here an abundance of all that grows and is manufactured among each people. So many merchant ships arrive here, conveying every kind of goods from every people every hour and every day, so that the city is like a factory common to the whole earth. It is possible to see so many cargoes from India and even from Arabia...Your farmlands are in Egypt, Sicily, and all of Africa which is cultivated. The arrivals and departures of ships never stop, so that one would express admiration for the harbor, but even the sea.... So everything comes together here, trade, seafaring, farming, the scourings of mines, all the crafts that exist or have existed, all that is produced or grown" (Oratio 26.11-13).

    This is just how Babylon is depicted in Revelation 18. As mentioned above, Babylon is the source of the wealth of "the merchants of the earth" and "all who have ships on the sea" (18:3, 19), and when she is destroyed, no one is left to buy the "full stock" of their cargoes (18:11). The "sea captains and every seafaring man, the sailors, and all who earn their living from the sea" are all present at Babylon as she is burnt and mourn the destruction of "so much wealth" (tosoutos ploutos, v. 17), and the contents of their cargoes are numerated in v. 12-13. This list emphasizes the international character to Rome's commerce, such as "silk" (sirikou) exported from China through Parthia, "citron-wood" (xulon thuinon) and "ivory" (elephaninon) from north Africa, and "amomum" (amómon) from India. These are goods procured through Roman trade routes. The last item on the list is also very distinctive of Roman trade: "slaves, namely human beings" (sómatón kai psukhas anthrópón). Jerusalem had no such slave trade, but Rome had the greatest of all slave markets and the number of slaves in the Roman Empire in the first century AD has been estimated at around 10 million, and slaves were frequently shipped as chattal by ship -- to great profit for traders (cf. Artemidorus, Oneirocritica, 3.17). The Periplus Maris Erythraei contains a list of trade goods highly reminiscent of Revelation 18:12-13, which lists slaves as cargo last on the list: "Both ports of trade export to Barygaza and Arabia pearls in quantity but inferior to the Indian, purple cloth, native clothing, wine, dates in quantity, gold, and slaves (somata)" (36; cf. also 8). Rather than Jerusalem being the primary beneficiary of the slave trade, Josephus (Jewish War, 6.420) shows that instead it was victimized by it, for 97,000 Jewish prisoners of war were enslaved during the AD 66-73 Jewish revolt.

    The "great city" described in ch. 18 thus fits Rome to a tee (cf. also 18:23, "Your traders were the princes of the earth, all the nations were under your spell") and cannot be identified with Jerusalem since the latter was not accessible by ships, was not the center of a world market, was not famous for her splendor and making merchants wealthy, and was victimized by the slave trade rather than profiting from it. The luxury of Babylon denounced in Revelation is best illustrated by the "articles of citron-wood" in v. 12, which commanded very high prices in Rome. Pliny (Natural History, 13.100) claimed that "few things supplying the apparatus of a more luxurious life rank with this wood" and Cicero (Verr. 4.37) described how wealthy Romans prized citron-wood wine tables. Cicero supposedly paid 500,000 sesterces (= $2,500,000) for one table and Gallus Asinius reportedly paid 1,000,000 sesterces (= $5,000,000) for another. This was the level of luxury found in Rome.

    (3) The identification of Rome with Babylon had special meaning for Jews because like Babylon, Rome was the center of a world empire that had beseiged Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. It was thus perfectly natural to refer to Rome as Babylon. The language in Revelation 17-18 is tellingly dependent on OT texts about the prophesied fall of Babylon (not Jerusalem), especially Jeremiah 51:6-13 but also Isaiah 21:9 and 47:1-15. Pseudepigraphal books contemporaneous with Revelation in the apocalyptic genre frequently discussed the recent fall of Jerusalem at the hands of Rome in the guise of Nebuchadnezzer's attack many centuries earlier (cf. especially 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra). The fifth book of the Sybilline Oracles (written between AD 70 and 132) also explicitly refers to Rome as Babylon and attests a version of the Nero redivivus myth:

    "The poets will bewail thrice-wretched Greece when a great king of great Rome, a godlike man from Italy, will cut the ridge of the isthmus. Him, they say, Zeus himself begot and lady Hera. Playing at theatricals with honey-sweet songs rendered with melodious voice, he will destroy many men, and his wretched mother. He will flee from Babylon, a terrible and shameless prince whom all mortals despise....But when after the fourth year a great star shines which alone will destroy the whole earth, because of the honor which they first gave to Poseidon of the sea, a great star will come from heaven to the wondrous sea and will burn the deep sea and Babylon itself and the land of Italy, because of which many holy faithful Hebrews and a true people perished. You will be among evil mortals, suffering evils, but you will remain utterly desolate for all ages yet, despising your soil, because you desired sorcery. With you are found adulteries and illlicit intercourse with boys. Effeminate and unjust, evil city, ill-fated above all. Alas, city of Latin land, unclean in all things, maenad, rejoicing in vipers, as a widow you will sit by the banks, and the river Tiber will weep for you, its consort.... Be silent, most lamentable evil city, which indulges in revelry. For no longer in you will virgin maidens tend to the divine fire of sacred nourishing wood. The desired Temple had long ago been extinguished by you. I saw the second Temple cast headling, soaked in fire by an impious hand" (Sibylline Oracles, 5:137-170, 394-399).

    Here clearly "Babylon" is used to refer to Rome, for it is the city that the emperor Nero abandons and is found in "the land of Italy" and later referred to as "city of Latin land". Thus, it is not mere speculation that "Babylon" was used as a code-word for Rome at the time Revelation was written; it is a confirmed fact, as the fifth Sybilline Oracle shows. Rome is also described in language very reminiscent of the whore in Revelation 17. Thus the "city of Latin land" is depicted "as a widow" sitting "by the banks, and the river Tiber will weep for you". Similarly, the whore in Revelation 18:7 says "I am the queen on my throne, she says to herself, and I am no widow and shall never be in mourning", and in v. 17-19 the captains and sailors on ships stand at a distance (presumably on the river Tiber) as the city burns, weeping. Both texts are influenced by Isaiah 47 which depicts Babylon as a woman at the riverside, "wading through the waters" naked (47:2), who says "I shall never be widowed, never know loss of children" (v. 8-9), but who is left berift as a widow.

    (4) In Revelation 17:9, the interpreting angel informs John that the woman Babylon rests on seven hills. As Narkissos points out, the list Ianone provided of seven hills at Jerusalem is an ad hoc enumeration and no such listing of seven distinct hills exists in literary sources. The eastern hill is traditionally divided into Mount Moriah (where the Temple Mount was located) and Mount Ophel (the lower half where the City of David was located). "Acra" is not a biblical name but occurs in Josephus (Jewish War, 5.4.1) as a name for Ophel; it is clear that Ophel is meant because Josephus describes the hill as amphikurtos "gibbous-shaped", and described the Hasamoneans as lowering the height of Acra so that "the temple might be superior to it". Josephus also uses "Ophlas" (that is, Ophel) as the name of the area (presumably on Mount Acra) where the city wall extends to the eastern side of the Temple (5.4.2). It is thus erroneous to locate Acra elsewhere -- such as to the northwest of the eastern hill or north of the western hill -- and Ianone's list essentially counts two names of the same area as two separate hills. The fourth and last hill mentioned by Josephus, Mount Bezetha, was the "new city" district of Jerusalem in the first century and originally lay outside the boundaries of the Judahite city, and it is unclear whether the Mount Gareb and Goah of Jeremiah 31:39 (describing the ideal future extent of restored Jerusalem) correspond to the western and eastern halves of Bezetha (as suggested by some) or denote some other location in the environs of the city. This uncertainty is because Gareb as a toponym is known only from Jeremiah 31:39 and Goah is placed near one end of the Valley of Hinnom (e.g. to the south of Jerusalem) in Zechariah 14:5. One suggestion is that Goah is the modern Abu Tur to the south of the Valley Hinnom (aka the Mount of Evil Counsel), lying definitely outside of the city, another is that it corresponds to the western hill currently known as Mount Zion (the OT suggests that "Zion" originally referred to the eastern hill). In either case, it is clear that the ad hoc list of "seven hills" combines OT names of hills and locations in the environs of Jerusalem (such as Ophel, Gareb, Goah, Moriah, etc.) with Roman-era names (such as Acra and Bezetha) without much concern for overlap and inclusion of hills outside the city (other hills in the area include the Mount of Olives, the Mount of Offense, and Mount Scopus). No such list of seven hills is known in ancient sources; Josephus only mentions four hills comprising Jerusalem (Zion, Acra, the Temple Mount, and Betheza).

    In contrast, the phrase "seven hills" was prolifically used during the first century BC and the first century AD to denote Rome, and it would have been "instantly recognizable" as a metaphor for Rome. It was popularized by Varro (De Lingua Latina, 5.41-54), who referred to Rome as the Septimontium, and enumerated the seven hills as: (1) Capitaline (2) Palatine (3) Quirinal, (4) Caelian, (5) Aventine, (6) Esquiline, and (7) Viminal. The same list occurs in Strabo, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.31.3-4, 1.34.1, 2.62.5, 3.1.5, 3.43.1, 3.69.4, 4.13.2) described how the urban growth of Rome gradually subsumed the seven hills within Rome's "boundaries" (pomerium). The phrase "seven hills" occurs in such sources as Juvenal, Satires 9.130; Propertius 3.11.57; Horace, Carmen Saeculare 5; Ovid, Tristia 1.5.69; Pliny, Natural History 3.66-67; Claudian, Bell. Gild. 104; Tibullus 2.5.55-56; Livy 1.44.3. According to Suetonius (Domitian 4.5), the Roman emperor Domitian revived the Septimontium festival which was limited to residents of the "seven hills". The phrase of "seven hills" was thus a frequent cliche of Rome and the description of the "great city" of Babylon resting on "seven hills" in Revelation 17:9 is clearly of the Roman capital.

    (5) The angel then provides a second interpretation of the seven heads of the beast in Revelation 17:10, claiming that they represent seven kings. Of these, five were described as fallen, one was currently ruling, the seventh was to come for a short while, and an eighth (corresponding to the figure of Nero redivivus) was to follow the seven. Attempts to identify these kings with historical Roman emperors has proven to be notoriously difficult. This is because there was some disagreement over who was the first emperor (e.g. Suetonius and Josephus regarded Julius Caesar as the first emperor, while Tacitus and Vergil regarded Augustus as the first emperor), and whether the three short-lived emperors of AD 68-69 (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius) count or not. Sybilline Oracles 5:35 and Josephus, Jewish War 4.491-99 mentioned Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, but Suetonius (Vespasian, 1) terms the three emperors' reigns as the "rebellion of the three princes" (rebellio trium principum), suggesting that their brief tenure were mere interregna between the reigns of legitimate emperors. Another uncertainty is whether the short-lived seventh king of Revelation 17:10 was intended to correspond with the three emperors of AD 68-69, with one of them, or with the relatively short reign of Titus (AD 79-81). One attractive and popular interpretation is to posit Augustus, Tiberius, Gaius, Claudius, and Nero as the first five emperors, Vespasian as the sixth emperor who "is" (skipping over the three interregna), Titus as the emperor "who must stay for a short while", and Domitian as the final emperor, Nero redivivus. However, Jewish and Christian sources otherwise seem to start with Julius Caesar as the first emperor (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 18.32, Sibylline Oracles 5:12, 4 Ezra 12:15, Barnabas 4:3-6, Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, 3.27), so this solution may well not be correct. It may also be the case that such approaches are somewhat forced since "seven" is a highly symbolic number in Revelation, and so it may not be reasonable to expect a perfect correspondence here.

    The important point here is that the reference to "seven kings" is wholly inappropriate for Jerusalem while befitting of Rome. Aside from the brief Hasamonean period, Jerusalem did not have her own kings during the post-exilic era. The allusion to a king presently ruling in 17:10 ("one is here now") is especially pertinent. Whoever this king may have historically been, there certainly was not a king of Jerusalem ruling in the period following the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. The reference (especially in its association with the "seven hills") clearly must be to Rome.

    (6) Another crucial piece of evidence linking Babylon with Rome is the description of her as a whore sitting upon the seven-headed beast. It is true that Israel or Jerusalem is described in the OT as a "whore" or a "adulteress" (cf. Isaiah 1:21, 57:3; Jeremiah 2:20, 3:1, 8; Ezekiel 16:15; Hosea 1:1-9). But this in no way demands that the Babylon of Revelation must be identified with Israel or Jerusalem, because other cities were condemned as whores or immoral women as well. Isaiah 47:8 personifies Babylon as a woman, referring to her as "voluptuous" or "wanton" and this passage is itself utilized in Revelation 18:7. Tyre was characterized as a whore very much in the manner of Babylon the Great: "At the end of the seventy years Yahweh will visit Tyre. Once again she will begin to receive the pay for her whoring. She will play the whore with all the kingdoms on the surface of the earth" (Isaiah 23:17). This passage is significant for Revelation because it is utilized in 17:2 ("the one with whom all the kings of the earth have committed fornication") and the description of Babylon's trade in ch. 18 is heavily based on the description of Tyre's commerce in Ezekiel 27-28. The metaphor is trade = sexual intercourse, and Revelation 18:3 links Babylon's fornication with kings with her commerce: "Every king in the earth has committed fornication with her, and every merchant has grown rich through her debauchery". The connection between trade and prostitution is also latent in Revelation 17:4, which describes the whore's apparel: "The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and glittered with gold and jewels and pearls". These are among the wares traded with the "great city" of Babylon by shipping merchants: "gold and silver, jewels and pearls, linen and purple and silks and scarlet" (18:12). The decadance of the whore is thus due to mercantile commerce, and her gaudy apparel clearly depicts the "luxury" and "wealth" alluded to repeatedly in ch. 18. Plutarch (Pericles 12.2) used the same metaphor to deride a city's expensive luxuries: "We are gilding and beautifying our city, which like a shameless woman adds to her wardrobe precious stones, with costly statues and temples worth millions". The trade = intercourse metaphor, and the connection with Tyre in Revelation 18, suggests that Babylon's whoring is along the lines of Isaiah 23:17. There is no hint in Revelation 17-18 that Babylon's whoring is along the lines of Israel's, e.g. as an unfaithful adulteress. Nowhere is Babylon ever placed in such a role as God's spouse or bride in Revelation, and Israel is not depicted in the OT explicitly as servicing "all the kings of the earth". The depiction of Tyre as a whore servicing all the kings of the earth in Isaiah shows that the OT trope of Israel as a "whore" is not necessarily what is most relevant to Revelation 17.

    The description of the whore in Revelation 17 moreover is strikingly similar to that of the goddess Roma, the mythic personification of Rome. The Dea Roma cult has a special connection with Revelation because it originated in Asia Minor and most of the cities John wrote to in ch. 2-3 had active cults of the goddess Roma. The earliest-known temple of Roma was established in Smyrna in 195 BC (Tacitus, Annals 4.56), and Augustus Caesar established temples in Pergamon, Ephesus, Nicea, and Nicomedia (Dio Cassius 51.20; Tacitus, Annals 4.37). Dea Roma was frequently depicted in cult statues, bas reliefs, and coinage as a seated (e.g. enthroned) goddess. Coins minted in Pontus and Bithynia in Asia Minor from around 60 BC depict a seated Dea Roma with a Nike in her right hand, while a sesterius minted in Asia Minor in AD 71 during the reign of Vespasian depicts Roma in military garb sitting on Rome's seven hills with a parazonium in her left hand and with the river god Tiber standing by her left foot.

    A second example is a statue in Corinth depicting Dea Roma seated or standing on the seven hills of Rome; there is no question of the identity of the hills, for the statue includes an inscription enumerating them: "PALATINUS / MONS, ESQUILINUS / MONS, AVENTINUS, MONS, CAELIUS / MONS, COLLISVIMINALIS, [QUIRINALIS], CAPITOLINUS / MONS". Considering the popularity of the Dea Roma cult in Asia Minor, the motif of Roma sitting on the seven hills may have been a common one in artistic depictions. This brings us to the description of Babylon in Revelation 17. Just like Dea Roma, "the woman is sitting on ... the seven hills" (17:9), and next to where the woman was sitting was "the waters" (17:15), which recalls the placement of the River Tiber beside Roma's feet. The mythic significance of Tiber is that he is the consort of Rome (cf. Sibylline Oracles 5:170). It was on the Tiber that Rome carried on her mercantile trade. In Revelation, the "waters" represent nations and peoples (17:15) and the prostitute has intercourse with "all the kings of the earth" represented by the horns of the beast -- the same beast that rose from the waters (13:1). In the coin depicted above, Roma is also depicted as a she-wolf nursing Remus and Romulus. The Latin word lupa "she-wolf" interestingly had a derogatory connotation of "prostitute", which recalls Rome's depiction as a whore in Revelation 17. Moreover, it was also noticed by the Romans that ROMA spelled backwards is AMOR "love", and a graffito in Pompei (destroyed in AD 79) links the two words together into an acrostic square.

    The common image of both Babylon and Roma sitting on the seven mountains of Rome suggests that Revelation 17 may indeed be a caricature of the Dea Roma cult. In Revelation, idolatry was metaphorically referred to as "fornication" (cf. 2:14, 20-21), and the portrayal of Roma as a prostitute highlights the idolatrous nature of the cult. The similarities have led some critics to treat Revelation 17:1-18 as an ekphrasis, a common literary genre in Hellenistic literature consisting of a life-like description of a work of art. It has long been noted that unlike most of the other more dynamic visions in Revelation, this passage consists of a static description of a seated figure without anything really happening until v. 16. The vision would thus take as its point of departure a very common depiction of Rome in first-century Asia Minor but it then subverts it into the image of a gaudy prostitute for polemical reasons.

    (7) One final piece of evidence is the concept that Babylon has a secret name. The name on the whore's forehead "Babylon the Great" is described as a "mystery" (mustérion) in Revelation 17:5. This is just what we find about Rome in classical sources which depict Rome as a deity with a carefully-concealed name (Plutarch, Quaest. Rom. 61; Pliny, Natural History 28.4.18; Macrobius, Saturn. 3.9.3). Servius noted that "the Romans wished to keep secret the identity of the god who cared for Rome, and therefore their priestly regulations decreed that the gods of Rome should not be invoked by their proper names that they might not be enticed away" (Comm. in Verg. Aen. 2.351). Aelius Aristides (Roman Oration, 8) suggested that Rome's secret name was Amor, which as noted above is Roma spelled backwards and is attested in a first-century Pompei graffito.

    These are some of the lines of evidence that establish Rome as the Babylon of Revelation 17-18. Babylon the Great is explicitly identified as (1) the great city ruling over the kings of the earth, as (2) a great city of power and wealth accessible by ships, the center of international trade (including a slave trade which Rome obivously specialized in) that made merchants rich, (3) Babylon was an effective metaphor for Rome because the city had beseiged Jerusalem and destroyed the Temple like the original Babylon, and "Babylon" was definitely used as a symbolic name of Rome in other Jewish works from the same time period, (4) the city was depicted as resting on "seven hills" which very frequently was employed as a cliche of Rome, (5) the city had a succession of kings, including one currently ruling, (6) the characterization of Babylon as a whore is consistent with Isaiah 23:17 and 47:8 and parodies the Asia Minor cult of Dea Roma which personified Rome as a woman sitting on seven hills and as a she-wolf (lupa, "prostitute" in slang), and (7) like Babylon, Rome also had a name that was a "mystery".

  • Narkissos
    Narkissos

    Leolaia,

    Thanks for the great research and summary.

    It would be nice to have this post (and a few others btw!) indexed somehow (perhaps in the "Best of" category), as this is a major issue in the mind of many xJWs.

    The most problematic (although secondary) issue imo remains the exact connection between Rome/Babylon in 17--18 and "the great city" of 11:8.

    One might note that within chapter 11 "the great city that is prophetically called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified" is contrasted with "the holy city" (v. 2); on the other hand, the earthquake that strikes her (v. 13) is reminiscent of 16:18f where "the great city" is juxtaposed (though not explicitly identified!) with "Babylon"... The apocalyptic symbols are overloaded with excessive and ever interacting meanings, which cannot be reduced in linear, term-to-term interpretation; in this case, the reader can't help hearing overtones of "Babylon-Rome" in "the great city" of chapter 11, even though Jerusalem is in view.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Because of the composite and complex text of Revelation, it is not realistic to expect language in separate visions or passages in the book to agree perfectly (each should be taken on their own terms). We just don't always know which is the result of later redaction and reinterpretation and what are elements of an original pre-Christian apocalypse. The perfect example of "overloading" symbols with meaning is the interpretation of the seven heads of the beast which is given two completely different interpretations (17:9-10). The interpretation of "seven hills" is likely more original to the ekphrasis while the "seven kings" has the appearance of a secondary reinterpretation.

    If the "great city" is indeed contrasted with the "holy city" in ch. 11, one possible solution is to regard the short clause "in which their Lord was crucified" in 11:8 as an interpolated gloss. The symbolic names Sodom and Egypt (signifying the fact that the city has rejected God's messengers and oppresses the saints) could apply to either Jerusalem or Rome, though Rome and its leadership more specifically is blamed in Revelation for the martyrdom of the saints (cf. 13:7-10, 15, 17:6). But I'm not sure that a contrast is meant. Moses and Elijah were sent to prophesy during the same time period during which the "holy city" is trampled (11:3), but did they prophesy in the same city that was being trampled or elsewhere? It looks like it could go either way. The "great city" in v. 8 looks like it is being introduced anew, as if it was separate from the "holy city" of v. 1-3, yet it could also be that the city was given the names of Sodom and Egypt as a result of the treatment of Moses and Elijah. As noted above, there is an OT precedent for calling Jerusalem "the great city" (Jeremiah 22:8), and equally important is the fact that the term is applied to Jerusalem in Sibylline Oracles 5:154, 226, 413. Interestingly, the same Sybilline Oracle also regards the destruction of Jerusalem as the handiwork of Nero redivivus (= "the Beast"), and the parallel account of the "two witnesses" in the Apocalypse of Elijah (there they are identified with Enoch and Elijah) also places the Beast and the two witnesses in Jerusalem. (Of course, this work has been so thoroughly interpolated that it is impossible to tell whether this is a feature of the archetype lying behind Revelation 11 or was itself influenced by Revelation, tho I suspect it is the latter). Moreover, the apocalyptic material in 2 Thessalonians also places the unveiling of the Son of Perdition in the Jerusalem Temple, and Revelation 11:7 describing the war between the Beast and the two witnesses depends on Daniel 7:21 which concerns the assault by Antiochus against the saints in Judea. This makes it somewhat attractive to suppose that the confrontation between the Beast and the two witnesses occurs in Jerusalem (in parallelism to Antiochus' actions), and yet it is far from certain whether such a concept really underlies the present text. A confrontation between the Beast and the saints in Rome could well involve a reminiscence of the Neronic persecution of AD 64. This might be the case with Ascension of Isaiah 4:2-4 which has Beliar, in the guise of Emperor Nero, "persecuting the plant which the twelve apostles of the Beloved will have planted, and some of the twelve will be given into his hand".

    It is interesting that the second earthquake in ch. 16 (which also claims Babylon) is far greater in magnitude than the one in ch. 11. Might a goal of the redactor be to indicate that whatever happened to Jerusalem would happen to Rome on a far greater scale? BTW, I took a look at some of the various proposals of source criticism of Revelation, and while there is great diversity of opinion as a whole, many seem to regard ch. 11 as older than ch. 17-18 (e.g. such as near the time of AD 70). It may well be that earlier material originally referring the Jerusalem was later applied to Rome. Of course, ch. 17-18 as a unit is quite explicit and consistent in its reference to Rome, and most of it was composed with Rome specifically in view (e.g. the focus on trade, ship-bound commerce, the authority it has over the kings of the earth, the image of Rome seated on the seven hills, etc.). The relevant contrast seems to be between Rome and New Jerusalem, which effectively replaces Rome as the seat of authority on the earth, and the bejeweled splendor of New Jerusalem outshines the gaudy whore jewelry of Rome.

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