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| Ancient Babylon has been in ruins for centuries, but the term ‘Babylon” may be a code word for something other than the literal ancient city, prophecy experts say. |
There’s a passage of holy writ that has baffled
Bible teachers for centuries, confounding and teasing them, to the point where
most modern preachers pass right by it like a trucker skirting a weigh station.
Who is “Mystery Babylon,” that “great whore”
spoken of in Revelation 17-18 that commits “fornication” with world rulers,
lives in extreme luxury and gets “drunk with the blood of the saints” before
finally meeting her fiery destruction?
Who is this mysterious woman?
Popular theories say it’s the Roman Catholic
Church. Others point to New York City, seat of the United Nations, Wall Street
and all manner of human greed and fleshly lusts. Some say it’s apostate
Christianity in general, not just the Catholic Church, or America as a whole,
not just New York.
Still others point to Mecca and Saudi Arabia’s
royal family, which lives in opulence and owns everything from diamond-studded
cars, a harem of sex slaves and more than a few Washington politicians.
Whatever it is, this mysterious Babylonian
spirit reigns supreme during the very last days, and if the amount of space
devoted to it in the Bible is any indication of its importance, then it might
behoove the faithful to dig deep into the bowels of Revelation 17-19, Isaiah
13-14 and Jeremiah 50 in search of clues.
To understand what is happening now
regarding the “Babylonian spirit” you have to go back to the beginning, says
Paul McGuire, co-author of the book with Troy Anderson, who is executive editor
of Charisma magazine.
There has always been a human element seeking to
build a false utopia devoid of God, he said. The essential question is, who are
they and what is motivating them?
The Garden of Eden was a perfect world in terms
of economic prosperity, health and well-being. But a powerful fallen angel
named Lucifer became the temporary ‘god of this world’ after the fall of
mankind,” McGuire explains.
And here’s where it starts to get interesting.
The book’s authors take the reader on a historical journey in an effort to
connect the unseen dots. Many of them are found hiding in plain view.
“Since that time, Lucifer has been leading a
revolution against God along with one-third of the angels. The world system, or
the Babylonian system, is Luciferian in nature,” McGuire told WND.
“That is why, ever since ancient Babylon, a
secret priesthood of Luciferian elites has conducted secret rituals and passed
on secret Luciferian knowledge through what is known as ‘Mystery, Babylon.’”
Plato spoke of it in his “Republic,” where he
said the ideal society would be ruled by a very small number of “philosopher
kings.” Sir Francis Bacon described a secret ruling elite in his novel “New
Atlantis.” Similar principles were found in the French Revolution, the various
communist revolutions, and in Hitler’s national socialist revolution.
America,
the landing ground of Illuminati?
And America has not been exempt, according to
the authors. It has been a pivotal playground for these elites since the time
of its founding.
Evidence of their secret occult influence can be
seen in the symbols incorporated on America’s money. The backside of a dollar
bill shows an unfinished pyramid with an all-seeing eye in the capstone.
Underneath the pyramid are the words: “Novus Ordo Seclorum,” Latin for “New
Order of the Ages.” On the right side is a mysterious bird, which the book’s
authors say looks a lot like the Phoenix, a bird that was to rise from the
ashes of a destroyed civilization and usher in a new world order in the
mythical story of Atlantis.
But unlike Soviet Russia or Jacobin France,
America has always been a battleground of conflicting ideas in which biblical
Christianity has served as arch rival to Illuminati elites. Biblical principles
of natural law and unalienable rights provided by the “Creator” were embedded
in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. That battle continues
to this day.
“As we document in our book, this secret
knowledge has been passed on through secret societies throughout the ages. The
names of these societies have been changed many times over the centuries,”
McGuire said. “For example, Sir Francis Bacon, a member of Britain’s
Parliament, was head of the Rosicrucian Order, which is believed to have later
morphed into the Bavarian Illuminati, a fashionable 18th century secret society
that attracted some of Bavaria’s leading intellectuals.”
Today, these powerful secret societies include
Yale University’s Skull and Bones, whose members include both Bush presidents
and current Secretary of State John Kerry; Bohemian Grove, which conducts mock
human sacrifices at its annual retreat in rural California; the Bilderbergs;
Council on Foreign Relations, Club of Rome and Trilateral Commission.
“They are the scientific elite or the
technocratic elite that the philosopher Plato referred to as the 10 god-kings,”
McGuire said.
Aldous Huxley, the brother of UNESCO founder and
eugenicist Julian Huxley, wrote about the coming technocracy in his classic
work “A Brave New World.”
Aldous Huxley wrote that the term “technocratic
elite” comes from the word “techne” and techne comes from the word “wicca,”
which implies the power or magic to reconfigure reality through supernatural
power.
“The Babylon Code” postulates that the secret
knowledge originated with Nimrod, who built the Tower of Babel in ancient Babylon,
which provoked God to scatter the people and scramble their languages. It was
passed to ancient Egypt, then got handed down to the Greeks and Romans before
landing in modern Europe and America.
‘Guarding
their secret knowledge’
As a means of control, McGuire says, the elites
are careful to keep this knowledge highly compartmentalized, shielding the
bigger picture so that even the lower-level elites do not understand where
things are heading.
He includes presidents, prime ministers,
scientists and educators among the “lower levels of the elite.” These lower
elites work to create a completely secular society, pushing an atheistic view
of the world in schools, universities and business. But this “scientific
materialism” is a fraudulent cover meant to keep the wider population in the
dark about spiritual realities, probably because they know that a truly
spiritual, Christian population will be more difficult to deceive and lead into
spiritual darkness and, ultimately, into political enslavement.
McGuire said the only way to fight this evil is
with supernatural power. It cannot be defeated in the political arena alone.
“Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto preached the
same message as the Illuminati Manifesto,” he said: Destroy the family, cause
divisions, and destroy religion, especially Christianity. After all is
destroyed, rebuild according to the utopian vision of total control by the
elites.
Similar principles are taught in Saul Alinsky’s
“Rules for Radicals,” which was dedicated to the “very first rebel …Lucifer.”
“So there’s like a secret priesthood of people
who have access to this supernatural power but the way they maintain control is
they create a firewall between them and the so-called masses and they hide
their power and the only thing they tell the masses is there is no God and it’s
all just about the material world, and the only thing that’s real is that which
you can see,” McGuire said.
“God has no meaning, we’re all just evolved
animals,” he continued. “But the Illuminati created communism and they know
there are supernatural forces and they use things like communism or fascism to
deceive the masses. That’s the way they keep their control, but meanwhile they
are accessing and deploying supernatural power all along. You go back to the
intellectuals like Bertrand Russell, Huxley and H.G. Wells, and you discover
they were not the secular humanists they pretended to be. They were secretly
steeped in the occult.”
’1.5
billion bow five times a day toward Mecca’
Others, such as end-times Bible prophecy teacher
Joel Richardson, hold to a very different view of Revelation 17-18 and the
identity of Mystery Babylon.
He traces his view back to Daniel 7 and the four
beast empires. He said the Christian use of the word “Babylon” has
traditionally been used as a metaphor to describe whatever evil empire happened
to be reigning on the earth at the time.
“This motif of a beast as an empire is picked up
in Revelation 17 and expanded upon,” Richardson said. “She is seen sitting on
and riding the beast. The beast represents the final world empire that is the
satanic empire that will be the vehicle of the Antichrist and his armies. The
beast is the main competitor or the enemy of the people of God in the earth. So
the woman and the beast, they are rider and steed, they go together, the great
harlot and the beast. They are a team.”
Richardson breaks down Mystery Babylon, the
great whore, by the following characteristics.
- She lives in a desert
and sits on many waters, which is peoples or groups of people.
- She’s sitting on a
scarlet beast clothed in purple, indicating royalty.
- She is portrayed as both
a queen and a prostitute.
- She is both a powerful
religious and economic force in the earth.
- She commits spiritual
fornication with false gods.
- She has influence with
many kings of the earth.
- The kings have committed
fornication with her, to engage in idolatry with her.
- She is a heavy consumer,
and through her purchasing makes the merchants of the earth rich.
- She spreads her false
religious convictions throughout the world.
- She is responsible for
the shed blood of the people of God, Israel and its spiritual offspring, the
followers of Jesus.
- She lives in extreme
luxury and the kings who committed fornication with her also lived luxuriously
with her.
- Not only the kings but
the peoples of the earth committed fornication with her.
- The beast nations will
hate her. These are the nations that make up the final union of the beast
empire – Iran-Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Sudan, Libya. They will “devour her and burn
her flesh.”
- She represents the
greatest false religion that has ever existed.
- She is the biggest
spiritual whore on the earth, and all nations have “drunk the wine” of her
false religion, and will feel the wrath of God.
- She is a rabid consumer,
causing the merchants to weep over her destruction.
- She is portrayed as a
coastal city. The shipmasters and anyone who trades on the sea “stood at a
distance” and mourned her destruction.
Richardson believes the key verse to identifying
this great harlot is found in 1 Peter 5:13. Peter was in Rome at the time and
referred to the church “who is in Babylon.”
“Babylon” was a code word in the early church
for Rome, the capital city of the reigning beast empire.
“Rome was the antichrist system, the pagan
empire that’s at enmity with the Church,” Richardson said. “In succession these
are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.”
Then there will be a seventh and final beast
system, which Richardson believes was the Islamic Ottoman Empire. It will be
revived and make a curtain call in the last days before Christ returns.
In the first century the Roman Empire was
Satan’s physical instrument to come against God’s people, he said.
It was the spiritual capital of the reigning
antichrist empire. It was the Babylon of the early church.
So Richardson’s theory is that Mecca can be
interpreted as today’s spiritual Babylon, the capital of world idolatry and the
economic stronghold of Satan’s work in the earth.
Richardson says the Islamic empire meets all of
the criteria of the world’s final beast system.
“It is the greatest stronghold of Satan in the earth,”
he said.
Only Muslims are allowed into the city and
millions make annual pilgrimages to touch the Kaaba, a black stone that Muslims
believe has the power to forgive sin.
“We have 1.5 billion people who five times every
day bow down and pray to a false god and they are, make no mistake, worshiping
Satan,” he says.
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, he says, is the
fulfillment of this prophecy in Revelation 17-18 because it fulfills every
biblical criteria of the “whore.”
Richardson said people talk about the “Israeli
lobby” in Washington but the “Saudi lobby” dwarfs it by comparison. The Saudi
royal family has had almost every important politician in Washington in its
pocket going back decades. The family lives in extravagant luxury to the point
of overkill, like the diamond-studded Mercedes owned by Prince al-Walid bin
Talal and the legendary stories of multiple gigantic palaces with gold toilets
and female harems at their beck and call.
“The stories of Saudi wealth are just
ridiculous. The now deceased King Fahd owned dozens of palaces each more
grandeur than the past. Architects estimated one was worth several billion, and
that was in the 1980s. Fahd also had a 100-room house in Marbella Spain, one in
Paris, one in Geneva, 24 Rolls Royces with gold hood ornaments,” Richardson
said. “Prince Talal donated $50 million to CAIR (Council on American-Islamic
Relations), which is the main jihadist organization in the U.S. — not military
but intellectual jihad. It’s chief spokesman, Ibrahim Hooper, said he desired to
see the U.S. Constitution replaced by shariah law.”
