What will the end-time church look like? Will it resemble the two-headed competing, conflicting, contradictory, Word-denying, God-defying religious monstrosity that today calls itself “Christianity?” Or will it be something else entirely? The Scriptures tell us that the religious entity that forms prior to the Great Tribulation and rules the world during the three and one-half years of horror will be unlike anything the world has ever seen or will ever see again. The central religious entity that will form the foundation of the end-time church has been in existence for some 1900 years. Having separated herself from God not long after the deaths of the original apostles, she will be instrumental in the formation of the end-time church. Let us now take a Scriptural look at this world-ruling monster.

In Revelation 16:6;17:1-6;18:24;19:2 we are introduced to a “woman” named Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Whore, the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. This woman is depicted as being drunk with the blood of saints, martyrs and ministers of Jesus Christ. This gives us the first hint as to the identity of this spiritual prostitute who would give birth to daughter prostitutes who, along with their mother, will spill the blood of God’s people during the Great Tribulation.

Those who study God’s Word and know what has been happening in religious circles for hundreds of years readily recognize the Great Whore as the Catholic Church. This ungodly conglomerate of heathenism began martyring God’s saints during the fourth century and continued on a hit-and-miss basis until she decided to organize her efforts. During the following centuries her activities, called the Inquisition, resulted in the murder of upwards of 50 million people, millions of whom were God’s saints.

Honest students of church history readily recognize the Great Whore’s daughters as the various sects that comprise the religious system known universally as Protestantism. In that fruit does not fall far from the tree, the so-called Protestant Reformation produced prostitutes which were merely different versions of the mother prostitute herself. In reality, the sects/cults of Protestantism are nothing more than denominations of the Catholic Church who claim to have left their mother “in protest.” Soon the pretense will end and they will return to her openly and en masse.

With the departure of the protesters, followed by their division into hundreds of sub-sects/cults known as “denominations,” there developed the belief that the Mother had lost her Daughters forever. But God teaches the opposite. As the Scriptures and recent events reveal, the Daughters’ spiritual umbilicals have not allowed them to stray far from their doctrinal source. In other words, “Like mother-like daughters.”

In reality, the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism are mainly in form, not substance. Beneath the different visual trappings of the two systems can be seen the same foundational beliefs, traditions and customs borrowed long ago from the heathen world. The Protestant Reformation and the rise of various Middle-eastern “isms” made it appear that the religious world had been permanently splintered. However, the Scriptures tell us that there is coming a time when all religious entities of whatever stripe will unite to form one universal, centrally-governed church which, with the help of an all-powerful universal government, will rule the peoples of the earth with an iron fist. However, one group of people will refuse to go with the religious flow–a tiny, faithful, despised, rejected and persecuted body of true believers–God’s Remnant Church. To be continued. L.J.