Mystery Babylon

The prophet Zechariah

The Harlot

Daniel's Vision of the Gentile Empires

Some people, including myself have noticed the similarity of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the destruction of Babylon. Perhaps the WTC attacks were fore shadowing’s that God provides us with on occasion.

Rev 18:2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.
Rev 18:3 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. Obviously the World Trade Center traded in an abundance of delicacies.
Rev 18:8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day (9-11), death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: (all the attacks involved intense fires) for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.
Rev 18:9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, (There was indeed weeping and lamenting on 9-11.)

Shiva - a pagan goddess of India & part of the ancient Mystery Religions

Rev 18:10 Standing afar off (people watching on satellite TV) for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour (the attacks in New York lasted a little over a hour.) is thy judgment come.
Rev 18:11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: (Many trading agencies were shut down for months.)
Rev 18:12 The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, (The WTC traded in all these commodities.)
Rev 18:16 And saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!
Rev 18:17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, (People on boats in New York harbor watched the towers burn.)
Rev 18:18 And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, what city is like unto this great city!
Rev 18:19 And they cast dust on their heads, (The people in New York city who fled ground zero were covered in dust) and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.
Three important facts are below.
1) you can connect the Scriptural dots and come clearly and directly to Babylon in Iraq, not New York City
2) there’s not a shred of Biblical evidence to support the New York City view vice Babylon
3) there’s no compelling reason to spiritualize the Biblical passages on Babylon.
The late Dr. David L. Cooper advised, “Where the plain sense of Scripture makes common sense, seek no other sense; therefore take every word at its primary, ordinary, usual, literal meaning unless the facts of the immediate text clearly indicate otherwise.” It’s come to be known as the Golden Rule of interpretation. We’ll apply it to see what the Bible says about Mystery Babylon.
Keep in mind, Revelation 18 takes place at the very end of the Great Tribulation after the completion of the seven bowl judgments
The first place to look is the only place it’s mentioned, Revelation 17. There the words “Mystery Babylon the Great” appear; written on the forehead of a symbolic woman seated atop a symbolic beast with seven heads and ten horns in a vision John was given. We know they’re symbolic because in the passage the angel describing them says so, and tells us what they symbolize. This fits with Dr. Cooper’s rule.
Mystery Babylon will re-emerge as a prominent belief system In World Affairs… Rev 18:2-3 The kings of the earth commit fornication with Mystery Babylon, and the merchants of the earth grow rich from their fornication with MB. Remember, even though in Revelation 17:9 John describes “mystery Babylon” as seated on seven hills, a prophecy in Zechariah 5:5-11 shows it being moved “to the plains of Shinar” a reference to ancient Mesopotamia. We can’t switch from literal to allegorical interpretations of Scripture without clear direction, and where Babylon is concerned no such direction exists. Almost from the beginning, the Bible has been a tale of two cities. Jerusalem is the city of God while Babylon has always been the city of man. Both disappeared from the world stage for many centuries, but when Jerusalem came back it was to its original location. The Bible says the same will be true of Mystery Babylon.
The angel explained to John that the beast symbolized Satan, who would become the object of worship in the world and manifest himself in one called the antichrist. The seven heads were seven hills and also seven kingdoms. Five of these had fallen when John was writing (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, and Greece) one was currently in power (Rome) and one was still to come (hold that thought). The ten horns were ten kings who didn’t yet have a kingdom but would each receive one for the purpose of serving the antichrist and making war against the Lord. And finally, the woman was the city that in John’s time was ruling over the world.
So far we have three references to Rome. It sits on seven hills, it was the kingdom currently in power, and it was the city from which the world was ruled. Most scholars accept the fact that in John’s time, when the Revelation was written, the vision of the woman on the beast represented Rome, and that’s why she was called Mystery Babylon.
(In the Greek language, the word we translate mystery literally means a revealed secret. The pagan religious system first practiced in Babylon had been transplanted to Pergamum in Biblical times (see Rev. 2:12-17 and my article on this blog concerning satan’s altar or search Pergamum) but in the 4th century AD would be merged with Christianity in Rome. That’s the secret John was revealing.)
Throughout much of church history Mystery Babylon has been a euphemism for Rome. But what about today?
The Roman Empire was never really defeated in the sense that the other ancient kingdoms were. It was split up and parts of it were overcome, but in the 300′s (A.D.) it was transformed into the Holy Roman Empire and for all practical purposes ruled over Europe until the 1500′s. And even after that parts of the old Roman Empire were pre-imminent in the world for a time, specifically Spain and England.
God says in Daniel 9:26. And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself: and the people of the prince that shall come shall destroy the city and the sanctuary; and the end thereof shall be with a flood, and unto the end of the war desolations are determined.
Those of us who believe that this portion of Daniel’s 70 weeks prophecy is still in the future, knowing that the Romans destroyed the city (Jerusalem) and the sanctuary (The Temple) in 70 AD, believe that it predicts a ruler emerging from a revived Roman Empire at the end of the age. This ruler is called the antichrist by most, who also see the European Union as a revival of the Roman Empire. That being the case, the kingdom described to John in Rev. 17 as the one that was still to come would be the European Union, a modern version of the Roman Empire.
When the antichrist comes to power, we believe he’ll divide the world into 10 regions and place a leader over each of them, hence the 10 kings loyal to him.
Seeing Rome as both the 4th and 5th kingdoms of John’s vision fits with other prophecies as well. For instance, in Daniel 2&7 we’re given two views of Gentile Dominion, the time in world history when gentile powers are superior to Israel. In both the dream Daniel interprets in chapter 2 and his parallel vision of monsters coming out of the sea in chapter 7, there were only four gentile kingdoms identified from Daniel’s day to the Kingdom Age. By comparing the symbolism of the visions with what we know of history, we can identify the first one as Babylon, in power when Daniel was alive having conquered both Egypt and Assyria. Then came the Medo-Persian Empire, followed by Greece and finally Rome. The only kingdom after Rome is the Kingdom of our Lord, a Kingdom that will never be defeated or given to another. So Rome is the last gentile world power before the Lord’s return.
In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Daniel 2) of the huge poly-metallic statue that symbolized the four gentile powers, the two legs of iron represent Rome’s Eastern and Western components that ultimately became the Holy Roman Empire’s Catholic and Orthodox churches. The feet and toes of iron mixed with clay stand for the European Union and signify the problems that have plagued Europe’s attempts to unite (iron and baked pottery neither mix nor adhere well) as well as the 10 regions (the toes) into which antichrist will divide the world. Interestingly, it was the Treaty of Rome that in 1957 gave the European Union its beginning. So the clear hints of the two incarnations of Rome have now been verified in history.
So how does all that relate to literal Babylon? Rev. 18 claims that in the final days the City of Babylon will once again be a world center for government, commerce, and religion and describes the worldwide distress caused by its destruction just before the Lord’s return. For years scholars, believing Babylon to have been destroyed long ago, searched for the modern city they believed the passage to be symbolizing, and many chose New York. But during the Gulf War they discovered that ancient Babylon had never been destroyed in the way the Bible describes. Further research showed that it’s been continuously inhabited since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and Saddam Hussein has expended much effort in restoring it.
Let’s understand a little more about why some still believe Rev 18 describes New York City. Being home to the UN it could be considered the center of world government, the New York Stock Exchange has a tremendous influence over world commerce, and of course it’s located in the USA, the most obviously Christian nation in the world today which connects it with a major religion. And then there’s the indisputable fact that having been so richly blessed the US certainly deserves to be judged, and New York is arguably its most prominent city.
Biblical scholars from other countries complain that only the arrogance of Americans causes us to look for ourselves in the Bible. Sure we’re on top now, but the US is such a newcomer on the world scene, barely over 200 years old in a history that at its most conservative estimate stretches back over 6000 years. And the battle between the city of Satan (Babylon) and the city of God (Jerusalem) had been raging for several thousand years before America was even discovered. In a nutshell, the long view of history argues persuasively for reading Rev. 18 literally. If so, how does Babylon get to be center stage again after so many centuries of obscurity?
In the Book of Zechariah, a series of night visions concerning the end times occupies the first six chapters. The one recorded in chapter 5 gives us the answer. Zechariah describes being told in this vision to inspect a large basket with a lead cover. An angel tells him the basket contains the iniquity of the people throughout the earth. When he looks inside, he sees a woman, who the angel identifies as the symbol of their wickedness. Then two other women, each with the wings of a stork, lift the basket and begin to fly away with it. (Storks, being unclean birds, would not defile themselves by carrying this load of wickedness. Lev. 11:19)
“Where are they taking it?” Zechariah asks. “To the country of Babylon,” the angel replies, “To build a house for it.” (Literally to the plains of Shinar, the location in ancient Mesopotamia of the City of Babylon). “When it’s ready, the basket will be set there in its place.” (Zech. 5:5-11). The fact that an actual physical location is given for the basket’s final destination should discourage anyone from spiritualizing that part of the passage. Again we’ve applied Dr. Cooper’s Golden Rule of interpretation.
So we know where the basket is going, but where will the stork-women be taking it from? According to many scholars the woman in Zechariah’s basket is the woman from Rev. 17, Rome. At the end of the age, after all its true believers have been whisked away in the Rapture, the religious system currently headquartered in Rome will be returned to Babylon from whence it came, to be absorbed into antichrist’s one world religion. (The European Union will also be absorbed, but into antichrist’s one world government, bringing the world’s political, commercial, and religious power together under one central authority.)
Zechariah’s visions followed Babylon’s defeat by the Persians. And almost from Zechariah’s day to ours, Babylon was a forgotten city. Although Alexander the Great later lived and died there, his plan to dredge a big harbor to lure Persian Gulf boat traffic to Babylon was never implemented. Alexander had 500,000 rations for his army to prepare the city to be his world capitol. After his death a natural harbor was found on the Tigris River and soon became the regional center of commerce Alexander had envisioned. The city that grew up around this harbor was named Baghdad. Although only about 62 miles (100 km) away, Babylon slowly faded into obscurity dwindling to as few as 10,000 inhabitants. It was never again a center for government, commerce, and religion, but neither was it ever destroyed as Revelation 17-18, Isaiah 13-14 and Jeremiah 50-51 all prophesy. These events are still in our future.
Saddam Hussein spent millions restoring ancient Babylon perhaps unknowingly preparing it for its final role in world events. Since the Lord is committed to doing all that He’s promised (Isaiah 46:8-11), when the time is right the basket symbolizing the world’s wickedness will be set in the place prepared for it on the plains of Shinar. And then the ancient City of Babylon will once again become the world headquarters for the three great evils of mankind’s design:
Government which enslaves men politically;
Commerce which enslaves us economically; and
Religion which enslaves us spiritually.
Does the City of New York deserve to be judged? Absolutely, along with the rest of America, and the world for that matter. But is New York the Mystery Babylon of Rev. 17-18? I hope my comments have persuaded you otherwise. But to be sure, become a Berean and search the Scriptures daily to see whether these things be true. (Acts 17:11)