It is time for the writer of Revelation to describe the woman (church) sitting on the Beast (government) that would one day rule the world’s masses,  As previously stated, the one-world church and the world-dominating state are both taking shape now in these final days of the world as we know it (Rev. 17:4).  John looks on in amazement as the angel shows him (in vision) a woman arrayed in scarlet apparel and decked out with gold, precious stones and pearls.  She is holding a cup filled with abominations, filthiness and fornication.  Upon her forehead is written MYSTERY, BABYLON, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH (vs 5).  The woman is drunken with the blood of the millions of saints and martyrs whom she had killed because of their belief in and obedience to Jesus Christ.

Beginning with the supposed conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine and his commitment to do the church’s bidding, the Catholic hierarchy began persecuting anyone who would not obey her dictates.  Having gained the power of the world’s greatest empire to fulfill her wishes,  she decreed that everyone in the Roman Empire must join the church under threat of death.  Over 50 million people would be martyred before her reign of terror came to an end.  Many, if not most, of the murdered were God’s saints on whose blood the woman was drunken (vs 6).  This mighty whore and  her “harlot daughters” (Protestant churches) are called “Mystery, Babylon.”  Together they will form a world-wide church in the final days of this age that will direct the activities of a  Beast that will rule the world from a position of total power.  That church/state combine will conduct a campaign of terror and death such as the world has never seen nor will ever see again (Mat. 24:21,22).  Read The Ingathering: the Rise of the End-time Church and The Mark of the Beast.  Key words Rise and Beast respectively.

We will now examine some of the beliefs and customs the whore and her daughters have borrowed from Babylonian mystery religions.  These heathen doctrines and customs form the foundation upon which the Catholic/Protestant Church rests to this day.  The following spiritual aspects of God’s “beyond Babylon” prophecy are believed by billions of people to be dictates from God.  When His Truth about those beliefs and practices is revealed to them, they are rejected outright.  NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF SATAN who, as Jesus said, has deceived the whole world, including the church world (Rev. 12:9).  I will list some of the abominations the Catholic/Protestant Church System has embraced that have been borrowed from the Babylonian mystery religions that now engulf the world.  As this posting will reveal, God has truly carried end-time Israel and most of the world “… beyond Babylon.”

But before we proceed, I want to reveal what the Lord said about the actions He takes against the sinning church.  Some people cannot conceive of God pouring out His wrath on church people.  As this website repeatedly shows, the Catholic/Protestant religious system is not His church and its parishioners are not His people.  In 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12 the Lord declares what He would do to those church people who did not prove their love for His Truth (Word) by obeying it.  HE would “send them STRONG DELUSION so that they would BELIEVE A LIE, be DAMNED and PERISH.”  Note that God said HE would do this.  NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE WRATH OF GOD TOWARD THOSE WHO REJECT HIS WORD WHILE CLAIMING TO BE HIS PEOPLE.  Those in the church who “believe a lie” are following in the footsteps of Adam and Eve who believed Satan’s lie and rebelled against God, all the while believing that they would “… not surely die.”  Like the two members of the Church of Eden, their spiritual descendants believe that, because they are religious, the wages of their sins will not be death, but rather eternal life.  Now let us look at some specific Babylonian beliefs and practices that form the foundation of the modern day church.  I have already mentioned the celebrations of Christmas and Easter.  I have also mentioned that the church heathen holidays for God’s Holy Days.  These practices are abominations to God.  Now we will look at other abominations that the church declares to be dictates from God.

The Sunday Sabbath came into being in 364 A.D. when Pope Sylvester I changed God’s weekly Sabbath from the 7th day of the week to the 1st day of the week in order to please the sun worshipers in the church who paid homage to their god on his day–the day of the sun–Sunday.  For the previous 333 years the church had observed the 7th day (Saturday) Sabbath commanded by the Lord.  His people continue to do so.

The belief that the dead go directly to either a heavenly paradise or a fiery hell is one of the Institutional Church’s most cherished Babylonian beliefs.  Dante’s Inferno turned this unscriptural belief into a church-wide “truth.”

Some heathen societies placed steeples on the tops of religious meeting places to impale demons that fell from heaven.  Steepled churches continue to dot the global landscape.

The cross was in religious use some 1500 years before the time of Christ.  It was the sign of a heathen god whose worshipers sacrificed victims to him by nailing them to a cross.  His priests had crosses sown into their robes.  Females wore crosses around their necks and hung them from their ears.  Jesus was not nailed to a cross, but rather to a single stake.  Read Did Jesus Die on a Cross?  Key word–cross.

The popular fish symbol seen on cars and hanging from women’s ears represented Dagon, the fish god of the Philistines.  Dagon’s priests had the same symbol sown into their robes.

The idea of a three-personed godhead–a trinity–came from a heathen society that worshiped a one-bodied, three-headed god.  The first trinity was composed of Joseph, Mary and Jesus.  Its participants changed over the years.  Today’s version consists of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.  Read The Trinity.  Key word–Trinity.

The idea for placing colored windows in places of worship came from a Babylonian mystery religion.

Use of fire in worship came from sun worshipers’ use of a ring of fire made of logs that was constructed each year on December 25th–the birthday of their sun god.  Some churches carry on the tradition using candles.  Christmas lights used in the home represent the same tradition.

The exchange of rings during marriage ceremonies comes from the worship of the sun.  The round, shiny rings symbolized the couples’ unity in the worship of the round, shiny sun.

Santa Claus is a relic from a heathen religion whose adherents sacrificed their children to him by placing them in his arms where they burned to death.  As the children died their parents read written lists of what they wanted their god to bring them on his birthday–December 25th.  Today church people place their children on Santa’s knee and ask him to bring them the gifts they have written on their lists.

The use of Christmas trees is condemned in Jeremiah 10:1-5.  Here the Lord describes the practice as one of “the ways of the heathen” which are an abomination unto Him.  We are commanded not to learn their ways.  The modern Babylon Church embraces them and calls them the ways of God.

Indeed, God has carried the apostate church far beyond Babylon.  She is so far beyond the original Babylonian mystery religions that she in no way resembles the church established by Jesus Christ in 31 A.D.  But God has a remnant, a minutely few true believers who will join Him in His kingdom at the return of His Son to earth.  At that time Christ will gather those saints to Him in the air, then descend with them to the Mount of Olives.  From there they will walk into Jerusalem where He will establish the Kingdom of God.  From that time on the saints “will ever be with the Lord”  (1Thes. 4:16,17).  L.J.