Babylon: The Spiritual & Economic Harlot, Part 1
Babylon: The Spiritual & Economic Harlot, Part 2
Is the USA in end times prophecy? Perhaps the most asked question after, 'are we in the end times now?' I admit I go back and forth on the answer. I cannot dogmatically say one way or the other because as far as I can tell from my limited studies, the bible doesn't say one way or the other.
For a long time I believed that the US was not a specific player in end times prophecy, any more or less than any other nation that is on the earth, except for the biblically identified nations in last times prophecy in the Middle East. After all, Iraq is home to Babylon, Israel is the navel of the world, Egypt is ancient, Damascus is 4000 years old. America as Americans know it is less than 300 years old. Why should we of all places have any part in this ancient drama?
But then there are some things that trouble me in attempting to resolve. Babylon is the focus of Revelation 17 and 18. Rev 17 Babylon is the fall of Spiritual Babylon and Rev 18 is fall of Economic Babylon. The city itself is also mentioned. Revelation 18:9b mentions it twice as a city, as does verse 16, 18, 19 and 21. It is said seven times to be a city in Revelation 18. So Babylon is not just a spiritual false religion and not just an economic system, it is an actual city, too.
Babylon in Iraq exists. It is partly abandoned but before Saddam Hussein was killed he was rebuilding it. He actually thought of himself as a modern king Nebuchadnezzar and had bricks made that one one side had the name Hussein and on the other side had the name Nebuchadnezzar imprinted. Some have speculated, including myself, that after the Iraq war ends the investments and money flowing to the city would propel it to prominence.
However there are some details that do not make sense in thinking of the Iraq Babylon as the prophesied city. In Revelation 18 there is much mention of ships seafaring cargoes and sailors and captains. Babylon Iraq is 375 miles from the Persian Gulf. Merchants are mentioned, commodities, but why sailors and seafaring cargoes? The verse says:
"For in one hour such great riches came to nothing.’ Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like this great city?’ “They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.’ (Rev 18:17-19).
So the sailors stand off at sea watching the demise of Babylon the city... The verse goes on with this title punctuating the story:
"Finality of Babylon’s Fall"
"Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore." (Rev 18:21).
So the finality of Babylon's demise comes from the sea. How can this be if Babylon is the desert Babylon? Just because we can't picture it now does not mean it won't come to pass the way described. The Tribulation is full of devastating earthquakes and perhaps one of them cracks the land enough so that Babylon becomes waterfront property.
But another notion comes to mind. I am speculating here. Perhaps Babylon is New York City.
Revelation 18 is all about the fall of the evil economic system. The world's current economic woes began when Lehman Brothers fell, sparking an economic panic and decline that continues to this day. Wall Street is home to the brokerage houses that caused the economic panic and global decline. The world's reserve currency is the US Dollar, and NYC is home to all currency at one point or another. NYC drives the world's economy.
NYC is also home to the United Nations, thought to be a progenitor of the home to the one world government prophesied to come in Revelation 13. NYC is a busy port. Within one generation, the US has been both the strongest ally to the new nation of Israel and its biggest betrayer. Islam calls us two the Great Satan and the Little Satan. Here, Patrick Heron makes a case for Babylon the city being NYC.
The first rule of biblical understanding is to take the bible literally where it is obvious it should be taken literally. Babylon was and is a city in Iraq. I'm still inclined to believe the prophecy will culminate in the literal place the bible tells us it will, but I am throwing out this a possibility to chew on.
Read for yourself in the bible, and read widely. Revelation is not the only place that the final judgment of Babylon is discussed. Jeremiah 50 & 51, and Isaiah 13 are but a few examples. The idea is to read and pray for understanding with open mind. We can't be dogmatic about the details when the details are not given.
True believers in the church will not be on earth when the final judgments occur, and certainly not be here to witness Babylon's fall. However, we will praise the Lord for its death! Revelation 18 shows the earthly lament for Babylon's fall, but Revelation 19:1-6 shows the heavenly praise for the Lord's final sweeping away of the curse that Babylon is! There is a "Fourfold Hallelujah"!!
"After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying,
“Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; BECAUSE HIS JUDGMENTS ARE TRUE AND RIGHTEOUS; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and HE HAS AVENGED THE BLOOD OF HIS BOND-SERVANTS ON HER.” And a second time they said, “Hallelujah! HER SMOKE RISES UP FOREVER AND EVER.” And the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who sits on the throne saying, “Amen. Hallelujah!” And a voice came from the throne, saying,
“Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants, you who fear Him, the small and the great.” Then I heard something like the voice of a great multitude and like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, saying,
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns."
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 1, here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 2 here
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Showing posts with label babylon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label babylon. Show all posts
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 2
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 1, here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
God will judge Spiritual Babylon in Revelation 17. Nimrod, Noah's great-grandson, and his wife Semiramis, brought the first organized false religion to man. His city, Babel, was the place where the Tower was built. The tower was a monument to man and what man could do, not a monument to God and what He can do. God stopped the building of the tower but that did not stop the growing of the false religion. It still grew. Babylon is therefore forever known as by full name: "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth". (Revelation 17:5)
So where is Spiritual Babylon today? Does she still exist? Yes, she exists. Technically, Babylon the Mother of Prostitutes is the mother of all false religions, starting with Nimrod and his wife, Semiramis, who called herself Queen of Heaven. The Queen of Heaven is mentioned in Jeremiah 44:15-19. The Queen of Heaven's counterparts in different cultures are Ishtar and Isis. All false religions that spawned from her are the harlot daughters of the original. But there is one religion that can be said not to be a daughter of the original Harlot Babylon but is still the Mother herself: The Catholic Church. Mary is the Catholic's Queen of Heaven.
I bring Catholicism into this discussion because of the prophecy in Rev. 17:9, "This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits." Rome is known as the City of Seven Hills. I do not know dogmatically that the city of 7 hills refers to Rome. I do not believe that the Harlot of False Religion is only the Catholic Church, I believe that it refers to ALL false religions in the world. The prophecy in Revelation shows us that though all false religions are tolerated by the Beast (Antichrist), in the middle of the Tribulation the Beast puts a stop to them all, and any semblance of ecumenism goes out the window. Catholicism will not be tolerated. Wicca will not be tolerated. Judaism will not be tolerated. Islam will not be tolerated. The Beast insists all worship HIM and him alone. (Revelation 13:11-18).
But...since the antichrist will emerge from the revived Roman Empire, it behooves us to look at its capital, Rome and the nation nesting inside Rome, Vatican City.
The Fuel Project Series explores the coming New World Order from a Biblical perspective. In this part, it discusses how Catholicism was created by putting a Christian facade on Mystery Babylon paganism. This Fuel Project, Know Your Enemy, Part 23 is only 16 minutes long. It gives a great overview from Constantine onward to the solidification of Catholicism, its marriage to money, and its relation to Babylon.
FUEL Project part 23 transcript, excerpt beginning at ~7:00--
"Stanley’s history on page 40 says, The popes filled the vacant place of the Emperors at Rome, inheriting their power, their prestige and their titles from paganism Pope Damascus recognized the power inherent in his new title. He believed himself to be head over not just the Christian church, but also over the pagans in Rome. It meant complete authority and domination; both the secular and the sacred, under one system. So how was the Roman Church to consolidate this rule over the pagans and the Christians under one system? They needed to somehow iron out the differences between the Babylonian system and the Christian system to create a unity between all peoples... and that meant compromise. What the Catholic Church did was consistently compromise the Gospel message with pre-existing pagan beliefs and adapted it based on whatever form of Babylonian mysticism existed a culture held to."
That melding of all the religious beliefs will find its ultimate expression in the first half of the Tribulation. This movement has already begun. It is called the Ecumenical movement
Ecumenical movement is a pursuit of a unity in and among all churches with the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church began its modern pursuit of ecumenism in 1961, but actually it has always been its stated aim, since at least 1274 if not before. The Catholic Church believes that it is the identical Church Christ founded and that all others have wandered. Ecumenism is the pursuit of the wayward churches back to the Catholic fold.
"Ecumenism takes as it starting point that Christ founded just one Church, not many churches; hence the Roman Catholic Church has as its ultimate hope and objective - that through prayer, study, and dialogue, the historically separated bodies may come again to be reunited with it. Before the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church defined ecumenism as a relations with other Christian groups in order to persuade these to return to a unity that they had broken. Pursuit of unity, thus understood, was always a principal aim of the Church." (source)
Knowing the past will help us identify the future when it arrives, as we see the pursuit of the folding-in of all religions into one.
A missionary couple our denomination supports recently came to speak of their work. They said that the Catholic Church's influence and embeddedness in Guatemala makes their work in bringing the truth of the Gospel very hard. The Mayans in the area are completely melded to the Catholic Church, mainly because the Catholic Church allows them to retain their Mayan rituals. Outside one local Catholic Church, he showed us a photo of a cave kind of pit, where the indigenous Indians sacrifice to the Mayan god before entering the Catholic Church to worship. The Catholic Church built the sacrificial pit as an honorary understanding that both religions could be accommodated. Therefore the Mayans sacrifice outside and then enter the Church and leave their money tithe inside.
Vatican City is the smallest nation in the world. It is not just a city, it is its own nation. "The size of a golf course, the Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s basically a walled enclave inside of Rome, Italy. It’s so small that the entire country does not have a single street address."
"Another unique thing about the smallest country in the world is that it has no permanent citizens. Citizenship of the Vatican City is conferred upon those who work at the Vatican, as well as their spouses and children, and is revoked when they stop working there. The Vatican City may be small, but it is very powerful. It is the sovereign territory of the Holy See, or the seat of the Catholic Church, its central government, which has over 1 billion people or about 1 in 6 people on the planet as constituents. The Vatican City was created in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty, which was signed by one of history’s most repressive dictators, Benito Mussolini and is ruled by the Pope, a non-hereditary, elected monarch who rules with absolute authority. He’s the legislative, executive and judiciary all rolled into one. Indeed, the Pope is the only absolute monarch in Europe."
Interesting, isn't it?
"The country’s economy is unique: it is the only non-commercial economy in the world. Instead, the Vatican City is supported financially by contributions of Catholics worldwide (called Peter’s Pence – hey, even the Pope accepts credit cards!), the sale of postage stamps and publications, and tourism."
I had shown through scriptures in Part 1 the tie-in between money and false religion. Being wealthy is not a sin. Abram was wealthy (Genesis 13:2). It's doing wrong things with the money and for the money that brings judgment. Remember Elisha's greedy servant Gehazi? "But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, thought, "Behold, my master has spared this Naaman the Aramean, by not receiving from his hands what he brought. As the LORD lives, I will run after him and take something from him." (2 Kings 5:15-27). He ended up a leper. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? They stole from the tithe by falsely holding back and lying to Peter? They ended up dead. (Acts 5)
Jesus reminds us that where vast wealth exists, falsity likely exists too. "And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:23-24). Jesus repeats His warning in the same verse.
How rich is the Catholic Church? Time Magazine wrote in 1965,
"Bankers' best guesses about the Vatican's wealth put it at $10 billion to $15 billion. Of this wealth, Italian stockholdings alone run to $1.6 billion, 15% of the value of listed shares on the Italian market. The Vatican has big investments in banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction, real estate. ... Unlike ordinary stockholders, the Vatican pays no taxes on this income, which led the leftist Rome weekly L'Espresso last week to call it "the biggest “the biggest tax evader in Italy.”
That was in 1965. I wonder how much more wealth the Vatican has accumulated in the ensuing nearly 50 years? If I calculated right, and I may not have, 15 billion in 1965 dollars in today's dollars would be 105 billion. The Catholic Church is the wealthiest organization on earth. Italian author Avro Manhattan wrote,
"The Catholic church is the biggest financial power, wealth accumulator and property owner in existence. She is a greater possessor of material riches than any other single institution, corporation, bank, giant trust, government or state of the whole globe. The pope, as the visible ruler of this immense amassment of wealth, is consequently the richest individual of the twentieth century. No one can realistically assess how much he is worth in terms of billions of dollars."
Babylon the False Religion will be destroyed and its partner the Babylon the false economic system will also be destroyed. The Catholic Church has a role to play, whether it is prophetically the Babylon of the city on 7 hills or whether it is a part of the general destruction of all false religions.
The Harlot is mentioned again in the destruction of Babylon the false economic system. "For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies." (Rev 18:3). It's called prostitution because of the addition of the exchange of morals, faith, and conscience for money. It is the money exchange that makes it the harlot.
The lesson for us is to heed Jesus' warnings that vast wealth corrupts. In Revelation 18 when the Babylon economic system is destroyed, the woes that are heard from the crying participants only for the loss of the consumer goods, not the people. It is all about them, they are crying, 'where will be get our luxuries from, now?' (Rev 18:11, 14, 18-19).
The Son of Man had no place to lay His head, (Mt 8:20) but the King of Vatican City has golden monstrance, gold embroidered robes, gold jewelry, velvet garments and a satin pillow to lay his head...
Fornication with false religions and fornication as a greedy consumer and hoarder of wealth will find their ultimate whorish marriage both fulfilled in the Tribulation and judged in the Tribulation.
If you are blessed with wealth, that is wonderful. But take care to be a generous giver, (2 Corinthians 9:7), a diligent doer of the Word, (James 1:2) and pray always for the Holy Spirit to guard your heart from prostituting yourself for filthy lucre.
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 1, here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
Tweet
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
God will judge Spiritual Babylon in Revelation 17. Nimrod, Noah's great-grandson, and his wife Semiramis, brought the first organized false religion to man. His city, Babel, was the place where the Tower was built. The tower was a monument to man and what man could do, not a monument to God and what He can do. God stopped the building of the tower but that did not stop the growing of the false religion. It still grew. Babylon is therefore forever known as by full name: "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth". (Revelation 17:5)
So where is Spiritual Babylon today? Does she still exist? Yes, she exists. Technically, Babylon the Mother of Prostitutes is the mother of all false religions, starting with Nimrod and his wife, Semiramis, who called herself Queen of Heaven. The Queen of Heaven is mentioned in Jeremiah 44:15-19. The Queen of Heaven's counterparts in different cultures are Ishtar and Isis. All false religions that spawned from her are the harlot daughters of the original. But there is one religion that can be said not to be a daughter of the original Harlot Babylon but is still the Mother herself: The Catholic Church. Mary is the Catholic's Queen of Heaven.
I bring Catholicism into this discussion because of the prophecy in Rev. 17:9, "This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits." Rome is known as the City of Seven Hills. I do not know dogmatically that the city of 7 hills refers to Rome. I do not believe that the Harlot of False Religion is only the Catholic Church, I believe that it refers to ALL false religions in the world. The prophecy in Revelation shows us that though all false religions are tolerated by the Beast (Antichrist), in the middle of the Tribulation the Beast puts a stop to them all, and any semblance of ecumenism goes out the window. Catholicism will not be tolerated. Wicca will not be tolerated. Judaism will not be tolerated. Islam will not be tolerated. The Beast insists all worship HIM and him alone. (Revelation 13:11-18).
But...since the antichrist will emerge from the revived Roman Empire, it behooves us to look at its capital, Rome and the nation nesting inside Rome, Vatican City.
The Fuel Project Series explores the coming New World Order from a Biblical perspective. In this part, it discusses how Catholicism was created by putting a Christian facade on Mystery Babylon paganism. This Fuel Project, Know Your Enemy, Part 23 is only 16 minutes long. It gives a great overview from Constantine onward to the solidification of Catholicism, its marriage to money, and its relation to Babylon.
FUEL Project part 23 transcript, excerpt beginning at ~7:00--
"Stanley’s history on page 40 says, The popes filled the vacant place of the Emperors at Rome, inheriting their power, their prestige and their titles from paganism Pope Damascus recognized the power inherent in his new title. He believed himself to be head over not just the Christian church, but also over the pagans in Rome. It meant complete authority and domination; both the secular and the sacred, under one system. So how was the Roman Church to consolidate this rule over the pagans and the Christians under one system? They needed to somehow iron out the differences between the Babylonian system and the Christian system to create a unity between all peoples... and that meant compromise. What the Catholic Church did was consistently compromise the Gospel message with pre-existing pagan beliefs and adapted it based on whatever form of Babylonian mysticism existed a culture held to."
That melding of all the religious beliefs will find its ultimate expression in the first half of the Tribulation. This movement has already begun. It is called the Ecumenical movement
Ecumenical movement is a pursuit of a unity in and among all churches with the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church began its modern pursuit of ecumenism in 1961, but actually it has always been its stated aim, since at least 1274 if not before. The Catholic Church believes that it is the identical Church Christ founded and that all others have wandered. Ecumenism is the pursuit of the wayward churches back to the Catholic fold.
"Ecumenism takes as it starting point that Christ founded just one Church, not many churches; hence the Roman Catholic Church has as its ultimate hope and objective - that through prayer, study, and dialogue, the historically separated bodies may come again to be reunited with it. Before the Second Vatican Council, the Roman Catholic Church defined ecumenism as a relations with other Christian groups in order to persuade these to return to a unity that they had broken. Pursuit of unity, thus understood, was always a principal aim of the Church." (source)
Knowing the past will help us identify the future when it arrives, as we see the pursuit of the folding-in of all religions into one.
A missionary couple our denomination supports recently came to speak of their work. They said that the Catholic Church's influence and embeddedness in Guatemala makes their work in bringing the truth of the Gospel very hard. The Mayans in the area are completely melded to the Catholic Church, mainly because the Catholic Church allows them to retain their Mayan rituals. Outside one local Catholic Church, he showed us a photo of a cave kind of pit, where the indigenous Indians sacrifice to the Mayan god before entering the Catholic Church to worship. The Catholic Church built the sacrificial pit as an honorary understanding that both religions could be accommodated. Therefore the Mayans sacrifice outside and then enter the Church and leave their money tithe inside.
Vatican City is the smallest nation in the world. It is not just a city, it is its own nation. "The size of a golf course, the Vatican City is the smallest country in the world. It’s basically a walled enclave inside of Rome, Italy. It’s so small that the entire country does not have a single street address."
"Another unique thing about the smallest country in the world is that it has no permanent citizens. Citizenship of the Vatican City is conferred upon those who work at the Vatican, as well as their spouses and children, and is revoked when they stop working there. The Vatican City may be small, but it is very powerful. It is the sovereign territory of the Holy See, or the seat of the Catholic Church, its central government, which has over 1 billion people or about 1 in 6 people on the planet as constituents. The Vatican City was created in 1929 by the Lateran Treaty, which was signed by one of history’s most repressive dictators, Benito Mussolini and is ruled by the Pope, a non-hereditary, elected monarch who rules with absolute authority. He’s the legislative, executive and judiciary all rolled into one. Indeed, the Pope is the only absolute monarch in Europe."
Interesting, isn't it?
"The country’s economy is unique: it is the only non-commercial economy in the world. Instead, the Vatican City is supported financially by contributions of Catholics worldwide (called Peter’s Pence – hey, even the Pope accepts credit cards!), the sale of postage stamps and publications, and tourism."
I had shown through scriptures in Part 1 the tie-in between money and false religion. Being wealthy is not a sin. Abram was wealthy (Genesis 13:2). It's doing wrong things with the money and for the money that brings judgment. Remember Elisha's greedy servant Gehazi? "But Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, thought, "Behold, my master has spared this Naaman the Aramean, by not receiving from his hands what he brought. As the LORD lives, I will run after him and take something from him." (2 Kings 5:15-27). He ended up a leper. Remember Ananias and Sapphira? They stole from the tithe by falsely holding back and lying to Peter? They ended up dead. (Acts 5)
Jesus reminds us that where vast wealth exists, falsity likely exists too. "And Jesus said to His disciples, “Truly I say to you, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." (Matthew 19:23-24). Jesus repeats His warning in the same verse.
How rich is the Catholic Church? Time Magazine wrote in 1965,
"Bankers' best guesses about the Vatican's wealth put it at $10 billion to $15 billion. Of this wealth, Italian stockholdings alone run to $1.6 billion, 15% of the value of listed shares on the Italian market. The Vatican has big investments in banking, insurance, chemicals, steel, construction, real estate. ... Unlike ordinary stockholders, the Vatican pays no taxes on this income, which led the leftist Rome weekly L'Espresso last week to call it "the biggest “the biggest tax evader in Italy.”
That was in 1965. I wonder how much more wealth the Vatican has accumulated in the ensuing nearly 50 years? If I calculated right, and I may not have, 15 billion in 1965 dollars in today's dollars would be 105 billion. The Catholic Church is the wealthiest organization on earth. Italian author Avro Manhattan wrote,
Babylon the False Religion will be destroyed and its partner the Babylon the false economic system will also be destroyed. The Catholic Church has a role to play, whether it is prophetically the Babylon of the city on 7 hills or whether it is a part of the general destruction of all false religions.
The lesson for us is to heed Jesus' warnings that vast wealth corrupts. In Revelation 18 when the Babylon economic system is destroyed, the woes that are heard from the crying participants only for the loss of the consumer goods, not the people. It is all about them, they are crying, 'where will be get our luxuries from, now?' (Rev 18:11, 14, 18-19).
The Son of Man had no place to lay His head, (Mt 8:20) but the King of Vatican City has golden monstrance, gold embroidered robes, gold jewelry, velvet garments and a satin pillow to lay his head...
Fornication with false religions and fornication as a greedy consumer and hoarder of wealth will find their ultimate whorish marriage both fulfilled in the Tribulation and judged in the Tribulation.
If you are blessed with wealth, that is wonderful. But take care to be a generous giver, (2 Corinthians 9:7), a diligent doer of the Word, (James 1:2) and pray always for the Holy Spirit to guard your heart from prostituting yourself for filthy lucre.
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 1, here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
Tweet
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 1
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 2 here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
The most intriguing name in the bible may well be Babylon. (AKA Babel). It is mentioned over 300 times, more than any other name except Jerusalem. Babylon figures prominently in Genesis and in Revelation, illustrating to us the bookend of the false system that has bracketed mankind from the beginning to the end. It was with us after the flood (Genesis 10) and it never left the earth, but it will be addressed in the future. Just because the Lord has not yet judged Babylon the harlot religious system does not mean that He won't.
Babylon is a false religious system, or spiritual harlotry. Revelation 17 is all about the evil thing that spiritual adultery leads to, and shows us the final judgment of it. Revelation 18 shows us the false political/economic entity Babylon will become and also shows us its final judgment. There is a third meaning of Babylon in Revelation, and that is the name of an actual city. From Revelation's intertwining of spiritual adultery and economic adultery we can surmise that where one exists, the other follows. They are closely related.
SPIRITUAL HARLOTRY
Babylon's full name is found in Revelation 17:5: "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth". Pretty strong! So what exactly does spiritual harlotry look like?
Hosea was a prophet of God whom God commanded to marry a prostitute. (Hosea 1). As Pastor Weaver exposits, "At the beginning of Hosea’s ministry, the northern kingdom was seemingly prosperous under the stable reign of Jeroboam II. But though things appeared to be calm on the surface, underneath the torrents of the kingdom’s destruction were swirling. The nation had forsaken Yahweh. Though they retained allegiance to Yahweh with their lips, their hearts were far from Him. They had began to mingle elements of the Canaanites’ fertility religion with Yahweh worship by engaging in sexual rites and drunken orgies which were thought to secure the giving of rain and the fertility of the land for their crops."
The first indicator of spiritual harlotry is unseen. It is a heart condition that God sees. Everything looks all right on the surface because people speak and act in ways that seem consistent with God. But everything is not all right. The second indicator of spiritual harlotry is when religious people incrementally meld pagan rituals and ideas and doctrines with the Truth as revealed from God. Today this can be seen when churches bring the world into the pulpit, such as promoting the latest popular book, following a worldly fad, or singing secular songs.
This is a process Paul described as gangrene. (2 Timothy 2:17). If not stopped immediately, the false practices and doctrines continue to infect the body.
Pastor Weaver continues,
"The book of Hosea is not primarily about Hosea and his marriage, it is ultimately about God and His relationship to His covenant people, Israel. Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute because that is the kind of wife which Israel had become to Yahweh. By combining elements of Baal worship with the elements of Yahweh worship commanded in the Law, Israel was engaging in spiritual adultery – a religious syncretism which by combining true Yahweh worship with idolatry resulted in a perversion which God Himself viewed as spiritual adultery."
Though the excerpt above characterizes idolatry as spiritual adultery, I prefer to use the term used in Revelation, prostitute, whore or harlot. While adultery to me is a setting aside of morals, prostitution has the additional component of money changing hands. We will see from scriptures below that money is always a large component to spiritual falsity.
The Tribulation's Spiritual Babylon is the end result of man's failure and inability to eradicate false religion from the flesh and the mind. Finally, they all just quit trying. The Holy Spirit's ministry of restraining of sin and illuminating the Truth has slowed this gangrenous creep for the last 2000 years, but when the Restrainer is removed, (2 Thessalonians 2:6), Babylon as spiritual harlot will explode all over the earth. Almost everyone will be infected by it. The final result will be that the world worships satan. The exhortations to the Tribulation believers in Matthew 24:13 and Mark 13:12 show us how hard it will be to remain faithful in a fallen and perverted world.
ECONOMIC HARLOTRY
So Revelation 17 dealt with the harlot Babylon in religion and Revelation 18 deals with harlot Babylon as false economic system. To me, this illustrates how the two are closely related. Once the mind begins to allow the world in, then money follows. By reverse logic, the old adage to "follow the money" shows that when we follow money to the root, the person will be evil at root also. 1 Timothy 6:10 states that "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." That verse shows us that the love of money and false religious systems are intertwined.
Look at the cross references to the 1 Timothy 6 verse warning us about the evils of replacing God with the idol of money: Joshua 7:21, Psalm 62:10, Proverbs 15:27, Ecclesiastes 2:19, Matthew 6:19, Matthew 13:22, Mark 4:19, Colossians 3:5, 1 Timothy 3:3, 1 Timothy 6:9, 2 Timothy 3:2, James 5:19. NOT following the money is a huge theme in the bible, and the final end of such waywardness is shown to us in Revelation 18 when the Economic Babylon is destroyed.
Titus 1:11 warns us against false teachers who always do what they do for "filthy lucre's sake". Peter repeats this warning in 1 Peter 5:2: "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;" (KJV). So it is no wonder that Babylon the Spiritual Whore is joined to Babylon the Economic Whore.
Babylon was the first organized false religion, and she has many daughters. However, there is one daughter who can actually be stated to still be the mother. That is the Catholic Church. This will be explored in part 2 of "Babylon the spiritual and economic harlot", and part 3 will look at the city of Babylon.
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 2 here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
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Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
The most intriguing name in the bible may well be Babylon. (AKA Babel). It is mentioned over 300 times, more than any other name except Jerusalem. Babylon figures prominently in Genesis and in Revelation, illustrating to us the bookend of the false system that has bracketed mankind from the beginning to the end. It was with us after the flood (Genesis 10) and it never left the earth, but it will be addressed in the future. Just because the Lord has not yet judged Babylon the harlot religious system does not mean that He won't.
Babylon is a false religious system, or spiritual harlotry. Revelation 17 is all about the evil thing that spiritual adultery leads to, and shows us the final judgment of it. Revelation 18 shows us the false political/economic entity Babylon will become and also shows us its final judgment. There is a third meaning of Babylon in Revelation, and that is the name of an actual city. From Revelation's intertwining of spiritual adultery and economic adultery we can surmise that where one exists, the other follows. They are closely related.
SPIRITUAL HARLOTRY
Babylon's full name is found in Revelation 17:5: "Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and Abominations of the Earth". Pretty strong! So what exactly does spiritual harlotry look like?
Hosea was a prophet of God whom God commanded to marry a prostitute. (Hosea 1). As Pastor Weaver exposits, "At the beginning of Hosea’s ministry, the northern kingdom was seemingly prosperous under the stable reign of Jeroboam II. But though things appeared to be calm on the surface, underneath the torrents of the kingdom’s destruction were swirling. The nation had forsaken Yahweh. Though they retained allegiance to Yahweh with their lips, their hearts were far from Him. They had began to mingle elements of the Canaanites’ fertility religion with Yahweh worship by engaging in sexual rites and drunken orgies which were thought to secure the giving of rain and the fertility of the land for their crops."
The first indicator of spiritual harlotry is unseen. It is a heart condition that God sees. Everything looks all right on the surface because people speak and act in ways that seem consistent with God. But everything is not all right. The second indicator of spiritual harlotry is when religious people incrementally meld pagan rituals and ideas and doctrines with the Truth as revealed from God. Today this can be seen when churches bring the world into the pulpit, such as promoting the latest popular book, following a worldly fad, or singing secular songs.
This is a process Paul described as gangrene. (2 Timothy 2:17). If not stopped immediately, the false practices and doctrines continue to infect the body.
Pastor Weaver continues,
"The book of Hosea is not primarily about Hosea and his marriage, it is ultimately about God and His relationship to His covenant people, Israel. Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute because that is the kind of wife which Israel had become to Yahweh. By combining elements of Baal worship with the elements of Yahweh worship commanded in the Law, Israel was engaging in spiritual adultery – a religious syncretism which by combining true Yahweh worship with idolatry resulted in a perversion which God Himself viewed as spiritual adultery."
Though the excerpt above characterizes idolatry as spiritual adultery, I prefer to use the term used in Revelation, prostitute, whore or harlot. While adultery to me is a setting aside of morals, prostitution has the additional component of money changing hands. We will see from scriptures below that money is always a large component to spiritual falsity.
The Tribulation's Spiritual Babylon is the end result of man's failure and inability to eradicate false religion from the flesh and the mind. Finally, they all just quit trying. The Holy Spirit's ministry of restraining of sin and illuminating the Truth has slowed this gangrenous creep for the last 2000 years, but when the Restrainer is removed, (2 Thessalonians 2:6), Babylon as spiritual harlot will explode all over the earth. Almost everyone will be infected by it. The final result will be that the world worships satan. The exhortations to the Tribulation believers in Matthew 24:13 and Mark 13:12 show us how hard it will be to remain faithful in a fallen and perverted world.
ECONOMIC HARLOTRY
So Revelation 17 dealt with the harlot Babylon in religion and Revelation 18 deals with harlot Babylon as false economic system. To me, this illustrates how the two are closely related. Once the mind begins to allow the world in, then money follows. By reverse logic, the old adage to "follow the money" shows that when we follow money to the root, the person will be evil at root also. 1 Timothy 6:10 states that "For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil, and some by longing for it have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." That verse shows us that the love of money and false religious systems are intertwined.
Look at the cross references to the 1 Timothy 6 verse warning us about the evils of replacing God with the idol of money: Joshua 7:21, Psalm 62:10, Proverbs 15:27, Ecclesiastes 2:19, Matthew 6:19, Matthew 13:22, Mark 4:19, Colossians 3:5, 1 Timothy 3:3, 1 Timothy 6:9, 2 Timothy 3:2, James 5:19. NOT following the money is a huge theme in the bible, and the final end of such waywardness is shown to us in Revelation 18 when the Economic Babylon is destroyed.
Titus 1:11 warns us against false teachers who always do what they do for "filthy lucre's sake". Peter repeats this warning in 1 Peter 5:2: "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint, but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind;" (KJV). So it is no wonder that Babylon the Spiritual Whore is joined to Babylon the Economic Whore.
Babylon was the first organized false religion, and she has many daughters. However, there is one daughter who can actually be stated to still be the mother. That is the Catholic Church. This will be explored in part 2 of "Babylon the spiritual and economic harlot", and part 3 will look at the city of Babylon.
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 2 here
Babylon: The Spiritual and Economic Harlot, Part 3 here
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Sunday, November 27, 2011
Follow the money! To Bankruptcy, that is
What we never think of is spiritual bankruptcy. We never ponder that we are all bankrupt. "What?" You ask? "I have money in my bank account and my bills are paid." No, we are born sinners, bankrupt of the spirit that we need to come into alignment with Jesus, which is the spirit of repentance for our sins.
His glory is that men respond to His call for repentance and come out of spiritual bankruptcy because of His grace and mercy. It is the highest act of a Holy God to redeem men.
Sadly, we live in a time when there is much material bankruptcy but also much spiritual bankruptcy. There is spiritual bankruptcy in the church. The Prosperity Gospel, also known as Name it-Claim it, the Health-Wealth Gospel or the Word of Faith Gospel, permeate today's Laodicean Church of America. The Prosperity Gospel is spiritually bankrupt.
I wrote a blistering essay on the view Jesus holds of the last church in the Church Age. We are in that phase now, and it is called the Laodicean Church. I wrote about what Jesus says of this church, here.
Jesus said of this last church they will say "I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’" This is a direct quote of what Jesus said the last church will say of themselves. He abhors this church. He vomits it out of His mouth. (Revelation 3:14-22). How did we get here? What happened?
False philosophies don't just appear, they have always existed, since the Garden when satan exhibited pride and sought to diminish God before men. All philosophies stem from this, in various iterations. As far back as 1860 (or so) Charles Spurgeon preached:
"I believe that it is anti-Christian and unholy for any Christian to live with the object of accumulating wealth. You will say, “Are we not to strive all we can to get all the money we can?” You may do so. I cannot doubt but what, in so doing, you may do service to the cause of God. But what I said was that to live with the object of accumulating wealth is anti-Christian."
Even further back, Jonathan Edwards preached in the 1700s, that "On judgment day even the condemned will testify against unfaithful ministers for their failure to seek the salvation of souls. Such ministers neglect the proper work of the ministry and attend chiefly to accumulating wealth. "They will face a dreadful Judgment." "Those precious souls who were committed to our care lost through neglect will rise up in judgment against us and shall declare how we neglected their souls." (source, book "The salvation of souls: nine previously unpublished sermons on the call of ministry and the Gospel" by Jonathan Edwards.)
Prosperity Gospel is nothing new. But our response to it, is.
Hearken to a warning from even further back. Jesus' warning of the Laodicean Church was not only condemning a general attitude of the last church in the Church Age, but was a letter to an actual church in 90AD. It was read at the church in Laodicea. It is real. Jesus warned the actual Laodicean Church that accumulating wealth for wealth's sake will lead to them being blind, poor, naked and unrighteous. By poor, I believe He meant poor in not having the treasure of Jesus as the primary consideration of their heart.
We receive other biblical warnings about the gangrenous effect of replacing the treasure of Jesus with the idol of money.
"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. You have lived on the earth in pleasure and luxury; you have fattened your hearts as in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have murdered the just; he does not resist you." (James 5:1-6)
The Holy Spirit causes James to write that the rich will weep. There is no getting around that. The rich will weep. They will howl. They will be miserable. Not that money is bad, but look what the verse goes on to say they did with it: they accumulated it in the last days. They defrauded. They cheated honest workers. Do we see these conditions now? Yes.
So that is the second verse that shames and condemns the church that trades spiritual treasures for material wealth. Revelation 3:14-22 tells us, James 5:1-6 tells us. And now Jesus tells us in Matthew the same warnings. In Matthew 13:22, Jesus explains the parable of the sower. He says, "Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful."
In Matthew 6:19 Jesus warns, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:"
Paul warns Timothy, in 1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
Focusing on wealth makes us stray. It chokes the word. It makes us howl. It produces misery. And if we pursue material wealth at the expense of Jesus and to the exclusion of Jesus, we will be vomited out His mouth.
Do we take heed?
Money is good and useful for advancing the Kingdom of God. It is great for showing the love of Jesus through giving to our neighbor. But if we accumulate it, hoard it, gain it by deceptive means, we succumb to its inherent evil, because then money has been separated from its intent: to show the glory of Jesus. Be warned.
Revelation 18:4-5 is the end of the end of the prosperity gospel. It is last chance Texaco, the bitter end of the sin of riches come to full fruition. See, even as the harlot economic Babylon is almost at her final moment, in His mercy He still calls us out of the deceitfulness of her riches!
"And I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities." (Revelation 18:4-5)
But then the damnation comes. It is where this has all been leading since the American Prosperity Gospel polluted the American church in the twentieth century, since Charles Spurgeon warned us not to accumulate riches in the nineteenth century, since Jonathan Edwards preached against ministers accumulating wealth at the expense of their charge of lost souls, since satan in the garden tempted man with the notion that satan has more to offer than God does, we have been chugging down this road. It all ends in Revelation 18.
"In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.’ Therefore her plagues will come in one day—death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her." (Rev 18:4-5, 7-8).
Use your money for the Glory of God. Check your motivations for accumulating it. And combat the Prosperity Gospel as the evil daughter of the Harlot Babylon that it is. Don't be spiritually bankrupt. Work, labor, be paid, and give back joyfully. "Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." (2 Corinthians 9:7)
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