Babylon the Great

by Godlyman 121 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  Fisherman

  If Jerusalem did not represent the kingdom of God, why did Jesus say, "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."

  As we at JW see it, Jews were first in line to rule as king priests with Jesus. At Pentecost, the church began to be chosen by God consisting of Gentiles thus rejecting natural Israel.

  Jerusalem’s kings ended with Zedekiah circa 607 BCE, the last king of Judah. Thereafter, Jerusalem was trampled by the nations and did not rule kings. —Nor rule at all all over anybody,
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  Vidiot

  Babylon the Great is hot.

  😈
• 

  Fisherman

  Babylon the Great is hot

  She was once. Now she is an old girl.
  
  
• 

  Vidiot

  The OG cougar.
• 

  Jeffro

  Vanderhoven7:

  The "Woman" of Revelation, who is the "Great City" that "reigns over the Kings of the Earth" can only be Jerusalem.

  Entirely wrong. Despite all of the tedious cherry picking and wishy thinking, Babylon the Great definitely referred to 1st century Rome, 'a city with a kingdom over other kings' that 'sits on 7 hills'. Additionally, Jerusalem didn't have any remarkable status with the 'merchants'.

  There are two 'women' and two 'great cities' in Revelation. The 'great city'/'woman' in chapters 11 and 12 (Jerusalem, where Jesus was executed, and which purportedly 'gave birth' to the 'kingdom') parallels the other 'great city'/'woman' (Rome) in chapters 16-18. In the story, it was expected that retribution would be brought against the latter great city (Rome) after the destruction of Jerusalem (i.e. the 'great tribulation', which explicitly happens prior to Jesus' 'presence', whereas the destruction of 'Babylon the Great' was expected to happen after Jesus' 'presence' began).
  

  Despite the intentional ambiguity of apocalyptic literature, this isn't really that complicated. It is essentially because the superstitions of 1st-century Christians were simply wrong that people are so desperate to make up alternatives.
  
• 

  Jeffro

  Additionally, the 'woman' representing Jerusalem that fled to the 'wilderness' is later depicted in Revelation as the 'bride' and identified as both "Jerusalem" and "New Jerusalem" (Revelation 21:1-2, 9-10), and clearly is not the same as 'Babylon the Great', which was by that time meant to have been destroyed.
  
• 

  TD

  ....Babylon the Great definitely referred to 1st century Rome, 'a city with a kingdom over other kings' that 'sits on 7 hills'.

  ^^This^^

  Seriously, the symbolism would have been blindingly obvious at the time.

  Rome was already viewed as a "Greater Babylon" for having conquered Judea just as Babylon had done centuries earlier.

  Rome was already personified as a goddess, which the Jews hated for obvious reasons.

  This goddess was already commonly depicted as sitting upon seven hills
  

  The pagan, bare right breast / naked justice motif was already offense to the Jews and invited the term, "whore"

  (Fundamentalist Christians are offended by this symbol even today. Some might remember Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding that the larger than life statue of Lady Justice standing on the dais at the Justice Department be covered up)

  All of these themes came together on a number of silver and bronze coins depicting the goddess Roma as a conqueror:
  

  
  

  Apocalyptic can be prophetic, but it was often not. And the farther you stray from anything familiar to the immediate audience, the farther down the rabbit hole you go.
  
• 

  Fisherman

  Rome was already viewed as a "Greater Babylon" for having conquered Judea just as Babylon had done centuries earlier.

  That doesn’t prove their views were right. Nothing stops people from misinterpreting Bible prophecy or having erroneous conclusions about what the Bible means.

  In Revelation 16:19 she is described as a city of the nations and not identified as a nation or an empire. In Revelation 17:5 she is described as the mother of disgusting things of earth. That isn’t secular. In the Hebrew bible it identifies idols. So the mother would not be a world government or empire—which also has a different destruction in Revelation. Throughout human history humanity till this day including nations practice heathenism, some emperors like in Japan also idolized. The Roman empire doesn’t fit cinderella’s shoe. Neither did Rome have the same ending as BTG pictured in Rev.

  Given the book of Revelation is from God, it is non sequitur that the BTG was Rome because Rome was not destroyed like BTG, Constantine and the Roman Catholic Church till this day, no Roman Empire today, and still waiting for BTG whatever her identity is to suffer the fate told in Revelation. It makes a lot of sense to me that idolatrous lies and its mother identifies the religious entities of the world.
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  Jeffro

  Fisherman:

  Given the book of Revelation is from God, it is non sequitur that the BTG was Rome because Rome was not destroyed like BTG,

  Nope. Begging the question. No reason whatsoever to preemptively grant that the book is magical.
• 

  Jeffro

  Fisherman:

  In Revelation 16:19 she is described as a city of the nations and not identified as a nation or an empire

  You couldn’t be more wrong. 😆 Rome was specifically a city that governed an empire with authority over its various client kingdoms. The description in Revelation very accurately describes first century Rome.