COME OUT OF BABYLON

Come Out of Babylon

In Revelation 17: 1 there is to be judgment on the whore that sits
upon many waters.  The kings of the earth have committed fornication
with her, and she sits on a scarlet colored beast full of names of
blasphemy.  She is called Mystery, Babylon, the Great, the Mother of
Harlots and Abominations of the earth.

An interpretation of the whore is hard enough, not to mention the
beast that was and is not (Verse 8), or the beast that was, and is
not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven and goeth into
perdition (Verse 11)..  The beast will turn on the whore that rides
him, make her desolate and burn her with fire.

 The early Church Fathers and John Gill in the 18th century would say
the beast is the Roman Catholic Church. But the Beast could also be
the government Beast in Revelation 13: 1-3, that gets its power from
the dragon, who is Satan. In Revelation 13: 2 the government Beast
was like a leopard, a bear and a lion.  Daniel 7: 3-7, on the dream
of King  Belshazzar, also has the same three beasts, in the order of
a lion who first had eagle's wings but they were plucked off, a bear,
and a leopard.  There is in Daniel 7: 7 a fourth beast that is
dreadful and terrible. I think the three beasts of Revelation 13: 2
that are identical to three of Daniel 7 are there for a reason, to
tell us something about the influence of three governments or world
empires on the government Beast of prophecy.

The woman who rides the government Beast might be false religion,
which includes the apostate Christian church.  "Conservative"
Christians have supported the Neo-cons and the Bush regime.

"And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth
over the kings of the earth (Verse 18)."  The woman is called a city,
that reigns over kings.  On one level the woman is Mystery Babylon, a
false religion that rules over kings or heads of state. Most likely
only a false religion or perhaps a secret society would  rule over
rulers. In a sense you could say that the higher level Masons  are
that false religion that rules over the kings of the earth, and now
the Yale Skull and Bones Society"rules" over our White House.

 On another level she could be a city that holds great power over
other nations.  The Church Fathers would  have said  she is Rome.
But look at Revelation 11: 8, "And their dead bodies shall lie in the
street of that great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and
Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified."

Their dead bodies refer to the Two Witnesses after they are killed by
the beast who came out of the bottomless pit.

Does "that great city" which is the dark side of Jerusalem rule over
the kings of the earth? There is a spiritual heavenly Jerusalem and
there is an evil Jerusalem, a Jerusalem of false religion.

Mystery Babylon refers to a false religion, first of all to
Babylonian Mystery Religion which comes down through history as
Mystery Religion in pagan Greece and Rome, in Egyptian religion, in
gnosticism and in secret societies.  It influenced apostate Israel  -
the Jews - after the flesh in the form of the Babylonian Talmud and
the Kabbalah.  And it infiltrated the Roman Catholic Church perhaps
at about the time of Constantine. We could say that Mystery Babylon
is the apostate Christian church in the end times.

Revelation 18 describes something which is a culture, a civilization,
an economic system, a country, a city and an international order. It
too has  false religion within it.

This Babylon of Revelation 18 deals in merchandise (Verses  11-14) -
and the souls of men.  Merchants are important to Babylon, since she
has her own merchants and others come to trade with her merchants.
Verse 23 says "...for thy merchants were the great men of the
earth..."

The Greek word translated as merchants is emporoi,  and probably the
English word emporium comes from it.  On page 508 of A Linguistic Key
to the Greek New Testament, Vol 2, by Fritz  Rienecker, emporoi in
Revelation 18: 23 is defined as "merchants who deal in foreign
exports."  They are world traders.

I want to return to the economic side of Babylon later.

Verse 23 also says of Babylon that "...by thy sorceries were all
nations deceived."  Sorceries is from the Greek word pharmakeia, from
which we get our  pharmacies.  Sorceries refer then to  drugs, both
legal pharmaceutical drugs, and illegal ones.  The large
pharmaceutical corporations in the U.S. and Europe   play a large
role in the world of huge international corporations at the present
time, and some of them, like Bayer, go back to Nazi Germany.  Herman
Schmitz, a big Swiss banker, owned a large empire in Nazi Germany
called I. G. Farben that included Bayer and some other large
pharmaceutical corporations.   In addition, sorceries means
witchcraft, and the kind of witchcraft and mind-dulling effect
performed on people by Hollywood and other mass media.  Deception is
part of that media witchcraft or mind-control.

Verse 23 tells us that in Babylon the light of a candle shall shine
no more, and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard
no more.  Who is the bridegroom in the New Testament?  It is Jesus
Christ, and his bride is made up of saved people, and might be
specifically the 144,000 of Revelation 7, though many, many more than
the 144,000 are saved Christians.

In Revelation 18: 4 God calls his people out of Babylon, so they will
not have to go through the plagues or partake of her sins.

Why are the voices of the bridegroom and his bride no longer heard in
Babylon?  It is because they have left Babylon, in obedience to the
call of the Lord.  Largely, they have departed out of the world
system that is Babylon; they have come out from the apostate churches
which are Mystery Babylon.  They have left the culture of Babylon
which has the spirit of antichrist. It is antichristian, as
Revelation 18:  24 says, for in her was found the blood of the
prophets and the saints. Finally, they have, as much as possible,
left the economic system of Babylon. And, hopefully they have  left
that Babylon which is the spirit of usury

 In a literal way, the call to leave Babylon can mean to leave the
urban areas like New York City, San Francisco, Dallas or Chicago. But
I don't think leaving Babylon means to leave the U.S.  Where can we
go?

Bankers, usury, the power of money, and the rule of big money  are
not mentioned in Revelation 18. But because so much emphasis there is
placed on merchandising and on merchants or world traders, we know
that money drives Babylon.  Money was necessary for the Roman Empire
and  necessary for modern world empires like that the the U.S. now.
The power of the U.S. depends on its money power.

Banking and usury may have started in earnest in ancient  historical
Babylon, in the city of Babylon or in nearby cities.

The quote below is from:

http://viking.som.yale.edu/will/finciv/chapter1.htm

"In the 1920's, Sir Leonard Woolley, excavating the Mesopotamian city
of Ur, the fabled birthplace of Abraham, found himself standing in the
remains of what must have been an upper middle class neighborhood near
the center of the ancient city. His Iraqi excavators uncovered the
narrow walls and small rooms that signified domestic architecture --
rather than the majestic palace architecture that typically attracted
the attention of Near Eastern excavators...


Professor Marc Van De Mieroop of Columbia University has used
Woolley's careful excavation notes to match the dozens of excavated
clay tablets to the homes where they were found. From these, he has
been able to identify what must have been a very early "Wall Street" -- a
financial district in the ancient city that was the home of Ur's
second millennium lenders and entrepreneurs. From their records, he
has been able to reconstruct a fascinating story about one of the
world's first financial centers.

Most of the cuneiform texts found in the financial district date from
the early years of the reign of the King Rim-Sin (1822-1763 B.C.), who
ruled from the capital city of Larsa, a few miles north of Ur shortly
before Hammurabi's time."

Many of the  clay tablets found were records of loans for which the
lenders collected interest, or usury. The article on usury in ancient
historical Babylon goes on to say that:

"It is difficult to escape the conclusion that, while the first loan
contracts and the legal system that enforced them may have been good
for the Mesopotamian economy, they made life miserable for the working
man and woman. If lending began, as historian Paul Millet believes, as
a process of neighborly reciprocity in rural societies, then it
evolved into something quite different. In Babylonian times,
short-term debt was a tool used to extract taxes from the population,
and to increase the productivity of temple lands. It is almost as
though the government had found a way to extract the residual
"goodwill" from the economy, by allowing individuals to shift
financial obligations into the future. Lending in ancient Ur was
mostly for emergency purposes -- where the government created the
emergency! The other side of the coin is that certain entrepreneurs
such as Dumuzi-gamil achieved economic upward mobility through
borrowing. Thus, while the system was harsh on the populace, it
encouraged creative and productive enterprise. For those with the
imagination to exploit it, the financial system of Ur offered
limitless possibilities."

Since historical Babylon is the model or metaphor for the Babylon of
prophecy, we can ask if the economic system of the Roman Empire -
which Church Fathers  said was a fulfillment of  the prophecy on
Babylon - was based upon usury. Some historians think that usury
helped to corrupt the Roman Empire. Ever since England became a
colonial power and an empire, it too  used money to gain power over
the Third World, and it too has used usury to increase that power.
Now the U.S. empire is based on money power - and on usury. But only
a very few international bankers are benefiting from that usury.

It is true that the Catholic culture of medieval Europe opposed
usury.  But after the 16th century usury came back into use as a way
of increasing the power of big bankers and of making money, or
stealing it from the working people without having to labor like
them.   The New England Puritans opposed usury, and  the U.S.
Constitution says only Congress can create money, not the federal
Reserve System. And a few presidents like Andrew Jackson stopped the
U.S. from setting up a national bank for the benefit of the bankers.

But by 1913 the "Creature From Jekyll Island" - the FED - was
established so that private international bankers could create money
out of nothing and charge the government interest on that money.
Lesser private banks loan money to people on interest and extort or
steal money from them that way.

Credit cards are worse than most loans by  local banks because credit
card banks are not restrained by contracts with people they lend
money to.  Credit card banks can raise interest rates, increase the
monthly minimum payment, charge fairly large penalties for minor
infractions like paying a few days late or your check arriving late
due to the slowness of the Post Office, and can  declare default and
demand the entire credit card balance be paid at once - or turned
over to a collection agency. Credit card banks also promote credit
card  use by people of low income, in part because low income people
may not be able to get regular bank loans, or have to use credit
cards to buy food, etc. Then, many low income people run up credit
card debt that is too big for them to pay and end up being bothered
by bill collectors, and perhaps losing what property they possessed..

Coming out of Babylon then means stopping the use of credit cards.
It also means that if you are a Christian and hope to belong to the
Christian Remnant in the end times, that as an individual or as an
organization you should not  accept payment by credit cards. You are
called out  of the monetary system that is based on usury, which is
Babylon.  Credit card use is not necessary and so we have a choice
not to use them, or to use them and in some way put ourselves back in
Babylon under the extortioners. If a Christian ministry takes credit
cards for payment, they should be criticized for that.

You have to make a choice whether you are going to serve God or
money, and  be dominated and oppressed by money. "No man can serve
two masters:  for either he will hate the one, and love the other:
or else he will hold to the one, and   despise the other.  Ye cannot
serve God and  mammon (Matthew 6: 24)."  Mammon is Strong's number
3126, and there  the Greek mammonas is defined as confidence in
wealth. Mammon is personified and means having confidence in the
power of money.  If you have a lot of money, it does not matter if
you have no talents, you can hire talented people to work for you; if
you do not have an attractive personality, you can attract others to
you  by your money, and so on. The love of money also involves a
strong desire, or obsessive desire for more money, something the
Bible  clearly opposes.

Usury is forbidden in the Old Testament.  Texts such as Exodus 22:
25, Leviticus 25: 36-37,. Psalm 15: 5, Nehemiah 5, and Ezekiel 22: 12
are all clear that usury is wrong. Some early Church fathers
considered usury to be a sin.

So the Babylon of Prophecy has several dimensions.  It is false
religion, and even religion under Satan. It  is an economic system in
which the power of money and banking with usury play an important
role.  You could, with James Lloyd, call it the Money Beast of
Babylon. It has a political and military side too.

Jeremiah 50 and 51 and Isaiah 47 add to our understanding of the
Babylon of prophecy. Jeremiah 50: 22-23 speaks of the sound of battle
in the land and of great destruction, and that Babylon, the hammer of
the whole earth, is cut asunder and broken. Jeremiah 51 and Isaiah
47:  13-14 predict some kind of military defeat and destruction of
Babylon.   Babylon will fall and that fall probably refers to it as a
world power that will come to  its end as a major power, and
specific cities like New York City may be largely destroyed..

Like some of the early Church Fathers, John Gill of the 18th century
thought Rome, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church was
Babylon.  Gill says of Revelation 17: 1 that the "great whore"  "...
is no other than Rome Papal; for that a city or state is meant is
clear from (Revelation 17:18) and it is usual for idolatrous or
apostate cities to be called whores or harlots, see (Isaiah 1:21)
(Ezekiel 23:2-4) (Nahum 3:4) and she is called a "great" one, because
of the largeness of the Papal see; and because of the multitude of
persons, the kings of the earth, and the inhabitants of it, with whom
the Romish antichrist has committed spiritual fornication, or
idolatry: her "judgment" signifies either her sin and wickedness; in
which sense the word is used in (Romans 5:16) and which is exposed,
(Revelation 17:5,6) namely, her idolatry and cruelty; or else her
condemnation, and the execution of it, suggested in (Revelation
17:8,16) and more largely described in the following chapter:"

The early Church Fathers and John Gill  were not wrong in identifying
the city of Rome and the Roman Catholic Church as Babylon.  The
prophecy concerning Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18  has been partly
fulfilled in Rome and in the Roman Catholic Church and Babylon has
existed in the world ever since as a culture, false religion and
economic system. And Mystery Babylon as well as the Babylon of
Revelation 18 will be more fully fulfilled in the end time, which is
future, but we don't know how far ahead it is. Some Bible prophecy
can have more than one fulfillment.