At this point in this very important series we will plumb the depths of the second (spiritual) aspect of the Lord’s prophecy in which He stated that He would carry Israel away beyond Babylon–Satan’s ancient earthly headquarters from which all false religions evolved.  As we will see, one of those religions, by embracing many Babylonian beliefs and practices, became what today is the Catholic/Protestant religious system.  As I have pointed out before, God’s prophecies are dual relative to the time element involved and the action taken.  The first “carrying away” of Israel involved Him physically taking the ancient nation of Israel from their Promised Land and scattering them throughout the rest of the earth.  The second “carrying away” involved the Lord allowing Satan to take over professing Christianity and pushing her far beyond Babylon in a spiritual sense in terms of numbers of adherents and power.  The original Babylon had limited geographical outreach.  Spiritual Babylon covers the earth today.

In the remainder of this series we will continue our study of spiritual Babylon and the power she exerts over 99.99% of the world’s present population.  To view spiritual Babylon in all of her modern day glory and power, let us turn to Revelation 17:1-5 where we find Jesus Christ revealing her to the Apostle John who was instructed to write what he saw and heard in a book (1:11,19) and sealing it.  The seals would remain in place until the end of the latter days, meaning the end of this world.  John watched the Lamb of God strip off the seals of that book in order to reveal to those with eyes to see and ears to hear the meaning of “… the things that will take place HEREAFTER”(1:19/ Ch. 6).    It is the task of the Lord’s end-time apostles to understand the meaning of the vision and to “shout it from the housetops” (Mat. 10:27).  The “hereafter” Jesus referred to has arrived and His apostles are shouting out God’s final written words to the world.  Recall that the entire Book of Revelation was a vision (1:10) in which Jesus revealed to John (and those in the hereafter) what would take place on earth during the final 3 1/2 years of this age.  Following the Day of the Lord (the final year of the Tribulation period) Christ will return, the first resurrection will take place and the Millennium will begin.  Now we will look at spiritual Babylon–the great whore church and those religious bodies who will become part of the whore system.

In Revelation 17:1-5 we find an angel showing John the “great whore that sits upon many waters, with whom the kings (nations) of the earth have committed (spiritual) fornication ….” (vss 1,2).  John is shown (in vision) a woman (symbolic of a church) sitting on (guiding/controlling) a “Beast” (symbolic of a government).  It is important that we understand the significance of the fact that the whore was “sitting upon” the Beast.  As a small child I rode horses bareback with only the bridle reigns with which to guide and control them.  The horses obeyed me because it was their nature to do so, but only because they had been “bridle broken.”  They could have thrown me off at any time and killed me had they a mind to do so.  BUT THEY DID NOT.  THEY OBEYED ME BECAUSE THEY HAD BEEN TRAINED TO DO SO.  I, a 70 pound child, controlled 2000 pounds of muscle because I had the will to control them and they had the will to obey me.  I believe God put me on those horses many times so that I could better understand the whore/Beast situation that I would later teach.

In the very near future a world-ruling (Beast) Government will exhibit the same subservient attitude toward a one-world (whore) church.  Both the Beast and whore are forming as you read this posting.  However, this is not a new phenomenon.  The Catholic Church exercised dictatorial influence over the mighty Roman Empire during the height of the empire’s power.  That church/state power consortium would later carry out what is known as “the Inquisition” in which the empire’s military committed over 50,000,000 murders under the direction of the Catholic Church.  History will repeat itself in the final days of this age.  The Book of Revelation, specifically chapter 17, describes that historical replay of events that will take place in the very near future.  The players in both groups will be the biological and spiritual descendants of the original church/state union and the descendants of the ancient Israelites.  The only difference will be in the scope of the undertaking.  In the next Inquisition the Beast and the whore will rule the entire world’s population and will cause the death of 2/3 of them.  There are now approximately 7.5 billion people on earth.  If they were in power today they would kill approximately 5 billion people.  One tiny group will be spared the Tribulation terror–God’s Very Elect.  Read God’s Very Elect: Future Caretakers of the Universe.  Key word–Caretakers.  Jesus warned that Inquisition I will pale by comparison to Inquisition II.  Also read The Inquisition.  Key word–Inquisition.

Let us now return to the great whore (church) sitting on the Beast (government).  In 17:2 the angel is telling John that the inhabitants of the earth will have partaken of her (spiritual) wine and will have become drunken (addicted) to it.  They will have embraced her spiritual “truths” (committed spiritual intercourse with her) and will have rejected God’s Truth, which Jesus said was His Word (Jn. 17:17).  By rejecting His Word/Truth they will have rejected Him and His Son (Lk. 10:16).  The world-wide embrace of false religion and rejection of God’s Truth has already taken place.  As this website has repeatedly proven, the church and the nations in which she resides have gone “awhoring” after what Satan’s church system has to offer in terms of self-serving religion.  Religious man has partaken of the great whore’s elixir and likes the taste of it.  As a result, man, not the Biblical God, now determines what is good and evil, which is exactly what the Serpent of Eden awarded Adam and Eve.  We know how that turned out.

The Garden of Eden scenario began to repeat itself soon after the deaths of the first apostles.  Without their fiery condemnations of what Satan was doing in the church and the war they waged against him, the church began to wither.  At the same time the church formed by Simon Magus (the magician) was on the rise.  Empowered by Satan, the “Universal (Catholic) Church” which began in Rome in 33 A.D., soon gained control of all things Christian.  Having the Roman Empire to do her dirty work, the church persecuted, often to the death, most of the remaining true believers.  History is about to repeat itself.  Read Simon of Samaria: the Legacy.  Key word–Legacy.  In the next posting we will delve deeper into this Satan-empowered, man-directed religious system that, with the revived Roman Empire (aka the European Union) doing her will, is destined to once again rule over the earth’s masses.  Only the return of Jesus Christ to earth will prevent that church-state, whore-beast consortium from killing everyone on earth.  L.J.