In this thought-provoking episode, we journey into the depths of Revelation 17, uncovering the ancient and enduring impacts of Babylonian religion. Discover how pagan practices have seeped into modern traditions, often masked by the veneer of Christianity, influencing beliefs across denominations. Our exploration delves into fascinating connections—from the infamous Tower of Babel to the intricate mother-child motifs found in various cultures, all woven into the tapestry of religious practices we know today.
The sad thing is that we have adapted and adopted all that paganism was, and it’s everywhere. Oh, it’s not just Catholics, it’s Protestants too. We’re all a part of it. We go along with it. We don’t even know how much is in our culture at the present time that is related to ancient Babylonian religion. It’s sometimes hard to even teach the Bible in its purity and its simplicity because sure as shoot, you get on something like this and it’s going to make people offended because they’re going to see that, wait a minute, that’s something we do. That’s something we believe in.
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The Great Harlot. Her secrets, they’re out. The religious system that deceived the nations now stands exposed before the judgment of God. The kings who once praised her turn against her, and God puts it in their hearts to do His will. The deception, it’s over. The mask comes off and the hammer is about to drop. Welcome to the midweek edition of Hope for Today, the Bible teaching ministry of David Hawking. In day three of our look at Revelation 17, one through six, David’s going to reveal how God brings down the great harlot and sets the stage for the fall of Babylon itself. And just before today’s lesson, we have a special resource I’d like to highlight on the homepage of davidhawking.org. This is Your Quest for God, and it’s written by our good friend Richard A. Bennett. You can download it free of charge in multiple languages. Your Quest for God is 139 pages that will help you understand what it means to know God personally and to have a dynamic, growing relationship with Him. Your Quest for God, a free download on the homepage at davidhawking.org. Well, now as we come to day three of our study in Revelation chapter 17, titled The Great Harlot, David shows how the final judgment of religious Babylon unfolds. Let’s get into the word.
SPEAKER 03 :
The Great Harlot is a woman who rides on a scarlet-colored beast with seven heads and ten horns. There came one of the seven angels who had the seven vials or bowls of wrath, those were the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come here, I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore or harlot that sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication, So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. We got to keep thinking, who is this woman? She’s called a mystery, a mystery that is associated with ancient Babylon or Babylon the Great. As we look to beginnings of Babel or Babylon, Genesis chapter 10, verse 2, it came to pass as they journeyed from the east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and they dwelt there and they said one to another, go to let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar. Again, I don’t want to bore you with details. But this is the only thing that could be in a Mesopotamian valley and is totally different from the building materials that are used in the land of Israel in ancient times. It’s just a small point, but I love it. God’s word is accurate. They said… Go to, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach into heaven, and let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built. Now that is of interest to me also. Little things again. But in Babylonian Chronicles, a document from archaeological discovery, the Babylonian Chronicles, I read a passage that I thought was interesting. The Babylonians believed that the Tower of Babel was built by the gods. And I just thought it was interesting that God made it clear here in verse 5. The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men built it. No, it wasn’t the gods. It was the children of men built it. Just an interesting little detail. Verse 6, the Lord said, Behold, the people are one. They have all one language. And this they began to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down. The plural here is fascinating, is it not, as it relates to the Lord? Yahweh, let us go down. And there confound their language. Babylon means confusion, Babel rather. Let’s confound their language that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there upon the face of all the earth. And they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth. And from there did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Now, this whole story of the beginning of Babel is very interesting. Nimrod is, according to the Bible, the founder of this empire of which the first city is Babylon. Now, the woman is called Mystery Babylon the Great. Nimrod’s wife, we know a great deal about her, Semiramis. Semiramis I. Now, in Babylonian literature, she has a husband named Ninus, who we believe is Nimrod. She was the first high priestess of the Babylonian mystery religion. She claimed to have a son by miraculous conception whose name is Tammuz. Tammuz is mentioned in the Bible in Ezekiel 8, verse 14. Interestingly, he was also known as Bacchus, the god of wine. Another interesting thing to me is that his name was constantly pictured and symbolized by the ancient Babylonians by the sign of the cross, which was really the letter Tau, T-A-U, the first letter of the name Tammuz, the sign of the cross. This woman… Semiramis I, the first high priest of the Babylonian mystery religion, is also the same as the queen of heaven, which is mentioned in Jeremiah 7, verse 18, and chapter 44, verses 15 to 30. She claimed to have a son, Tammuz, who was born in miraculous fashion, as I said, and would be the promised deliverer. One of the interesting things is that her husband is also the son. This is very fascinating because in all the mother-child religion developments of the ancient world, this was always true. Whenever you see the Madonna and child, the mother and the child, the child was also the husband as well as the son. It was considered to be a miraculous conception. And you’ll find this everywhere. The queen of heaven with a baby in her arms. In the Phoenician culture, it is Ashtoreth and Tammuz. In the Egyptian culture, it is Isis and Osiris, or also known as Horus. In India, it is Issi and Iswara. In Greek backgrounds, it is Aphrodite and Eros. In the Italian culture of Rome, it was Venus and Cupid. In Asia, it’s Cybele and Dioeus. It goes on and on in every ancient culture and religion. We have the mother-child. We have also a lot of mysteries in these religious systems that date all the way from Babylon the Great. You have, for instance, a lot of customs that you practice now that are Babylonian. I’m not making it up. If you think I am, study it for yourself. There’s plenty of evidence. For instance, Christmas. Christmas. Well, first of all, Christmas to me is the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I don’t care when it was. But everybody knows that December 25th is a celebration of an ancient Babylonian custom called Yule Day. You know the Yule log? The word Yule is simply the Chaldean word for infant. The Chaldeans are the priestly sect of the ancient Babylonians. I hate to ruin Easter for you, too. But Easter’s from the Babylonian Ishtar. The tradition in many American homes is to fix hot cross buns on Good Friday and dyed eggs on Easter Sunday. I hate to disappoint you. Those are all Chaldean rites from the ancient Babylonian religion. I could ruin a lot of holidays. You want me to? No, no, let’s don’t do that. To a Christian, Christmas is the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, and even in a pagan environment, we can preach Christ. To a Christian, Easter is Resurrection Day, and frankly, every Sunday to us is a celebration of it. But it is interesting as you follow it all the way through. The Babylonian religious system, after the fall of Babylon, moved during the days of the Persian Empire to new headquarters. Interestingly, at a city that’s mentioned in the book of Revelation, and that’s the city of Pergamos, where the Bible says Satan’s throne is. Yes, the Babylonian religion, with its priestly system, confessing to a priest your sins, all of it, friends, it’s all a part of Babylonian religion. the College of Cardinals, Pontifex Maximus, Supreme Pontiff, all Babylonian religion terms, every last one of them. It moved to Pergamos. From Pergamos, it came into Italy through the Etruscans, who were very deep into Babylonian religion. You probably know one of the famous Etruscans. His name was Julius Caesar, who, by the way, was the high priest of the Babylonian religion, who, by the way, is the one who took the title Pontifex Maximus And that’s where Octavian got it, who became Augustus Caesar and was the first one to take the title Supreme Pontiff, which all Roman Empire emperors took from then on. From the time of the empire, beginning in 30 BC, clear to the fall of Rome. When Rome fell in 476 A.D., I find it very interesting who took over. The Visigoths came into Rome, sacked the city. Rome had fallen perhaps in terms of its power long before, but its official death was 476 A.D. And interesting to me that the bishop of Rome at the time, who had been gaining quite a bit of ascendancy in the last couple hundred years previous to that, the bishop of Rome was a man named Damasus. And Damasus all of a sudden took the title Pontifex Maximus, Supreme Pontiff, and it wasn’t until 1870 that the Roman church said the Pope is infallible. But all these years they’ve been speaking of his greatness, the vicar of Christ on the earth. Damasus was from the Carmelite monastery in Haifa, Israel, which is well known to be perpetuators of the ancient Babylonian religion. Now it is in Rome, and now everybody that is religious is taking over all the political involvements of the Roman Empire, so much so that Philip Schaff, the historian, said, the Roman Catholic Church is nothing but pagan Rome baptized. Folks, I don’t wish any evil on the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church teaches all of this. and we’ll tell you all of it. The sad thing is that we have adapted and adopted all that paganism was, and it’s everywhere. Oh, it’s not just Catholics, it’s Protestants too. We’re all a part of it. We go along with it. We don’t even know how much is in our culture at the present time that is related to ancient Babylonian religion. It’s sometimes hard to even teach the Bible in its purity and its simplicity because sure as shoot, you get on something like this and it’s going to make people offended because they’re going to see that, wait a minute, that’s something we do. That’s something we believe in. Religious symbols that we use that are in our Christian bookstores and all over our artifacts, so to speak. You can even show all of those symbols in ancient Babylonian religious systems. It’s kind of hard, folks, to identify what we read in the Bible with what’s happening in our Christian world. People ask me, well, is the harlot, is that the Roman Catholic Church? Well, they certainly are a part of it. But aren’t the Protestants also involved? Are not we also corrupt? Are not we also experiencing the tragedies of the Babylonian religion that has infected every ancient culture of the world, affected the Roman Empire, and affected all of church history to the point we are Babylonians. We are following much of what they say. And we don’t even want to hear anybody attack it. We don’t want to hear anybody expose it. We just don’t want to listen to it. And the purity of God’s word, especially as it relates to the nation of Israel and God’s plan for it, somehow is lost as churches start talking about themselves being the new Israel. There’s all kinds of problems related to this. But these names are in the Bible. Bel, the top of the Babylonian pantheon. You know him perhaps as Baal or Baal in the Israelite religion. In Jeremiah 1-2 it says, Bel is confounded. You do know that Cush is the father of Nimrod, also known as Merodach in Babylonian religion. All of this is something that’s well known. Mentioned in the Bible, Jeremiah 50, verse 2. Bells in Isaiah 46, Jeremiah 50, chapter 51. Tammuz, Ezekiel 8, 14. Queen of heaven, Jeremiah 7, Jeremiah 44. It’s almost like Christians are stunned to hear this when it’s right in our Bibles. God has warned us about that system of religion, the Babylonian religion, the Chaldean priesthood. He’s warned us and warned us. He warned the children of Israel about all these abominations. And yet today, it has infiltrated every part of what we know as Christendom around the world. Babylonian religion. Go back to Revelation chapter 17, verse 6 for a moment. Sometimes we’re too quick to judge. But all of this is certainly important to our understanding because she is the mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. But look at one final thing, the accusation against her. And this again is another clue. Verse 6, I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration or, it’s a play on the word, wonder again. Go back to chapter 6, verse 10. When the fifth seal judgment was introduced, the opening of the fifth seal, it says in verse 9, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? Keep that in mind. Go to chapter 16, verse 5 and 6. Looking at the seven last plagues and plague number three, the third bowl of wrath that was poured on the rivers and fountains of waters, they became blood. And the angel of the waters said, verse 5, Revelation 16, Thou art righteous, O Lord, who art and wast and shalt be, because thou hast judged us. For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink. They are worthy. They deserve this. Chapter 18, verse 24. Concerning the destruction of this woman, Babylon the Great, it says, In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth. Wow. The martyrs cried out, How long, O Lord, till you avenge our blood? The angel of the water says, They’ve shed the blood of saints and prophets. They deserve to drink blood themselves. God, destroy them. And then at the fall of this woman, it says, in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints. So I say to you that whoever this woman is, this mother of harlots and abominations, she is the primary guilty party in the death of God’s people who have stood for his word and the testimony of our Lord Jesus Christ. Whoever the woman is, she is the one who has been killing and destroying God’s people all the way through the centuries. Let’s pray. Father, when we look throughout history, we see lessons that some of us don’t want to hear or think about. We see very clearly the evidence of Babylonian religion infiltrating religious system after religious system in the nations of the world. It got into Israel and You brought judgment on them because they had participated in all these abominations of those nations that followed in Babylon’s line. And it’s still with us today. It’s so much a part of us that we can’t even recognize those things that we do and believe in and practice that are a part of it. Not really of your word. Lord, I sense a great burden for those who may be new to the word of God. It all sounds so weird and strange. And yet, Lord, we know that the evidence is powerful, overwhelming. And you said in your word in chapter 18 to come out of her, my people. Don’t participate in her sins. So Lord, apparently some of your people who love you are a part of it and need to get out of it. You warned the religious leaders of the past that they follow the traditions of men rather than the commandment of the word of God. You warned them that their hearts were far from you. They were hypocrites, that they felt they were righteous and godly. Lord, help us not to be deceived. Help us, Lord, to know personally the living God through his son, Jesus Christ, where we can really be set free, where the truth will make us free. Thank you, Lord. We praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, that’s David Hawking, and this is Hope for Today. David returns in just a moment to close out our time in the Word for today. So do stay tuned for some additional thoughts and teaching. First, Matt and I have a great resource you’re going to want to get a copy of.
SPEAKER 01 :
This month, Jim, we’re featuring our book, Life’s Greatest Questions. And let me just read a few quick lines from it. Yeah. Many have no time for God choosing rather to ignore and neglect his role and importance in their lives. But what has all this secularism and individualism produced? Is there a greater degree of happiness? Has our nation been delivered from a psychological troubles? Do our marriages and family reveal the blessings of selfism? Are we closer to peace on earth? Our questions of poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse, pornography, divorce, abortion are venereal disease diminishing or increasing? Is everything answered by money? Matt, I love how this quote continues.
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It’s time for intellectual honesty and courage. What are we looking for? What do we hope to discover by our obsession with pleasure and personal needs? Does God have anything to say about our experiences?
SPEAKER 01 :
Does he exist? Does he care? Is there anything he can do about our dilemmas? Can he make us happy? Life’s greatest questions are consistently dealt with in one book, the Bible. Its message is like fresh air in a polluted atmosphere.
SPEAKER 04 :
It speaks with authority and clarity about human life and its problems. And Matt, these questions address pressing issues in our culture today. Yeah, in many churches and even in our families. And it’s crucial we have the answers. Life’s Greatest Questions by David Hawking takes us into scripture for wisdom and answers. Life’s Greatest Questions, our featured offer is just $10. And your purchase will prepare, strengthen, and bless you, your family and friends, and it will help the ministry of hope for today. To get your copy of Life’s Greatest Questions, call 800-75-BIBLE, that’s in the U.S., or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada, Bible by the numbers 24253. Or visit us online at davidhawking.org. And by the way, while you’re there, be sure to check out David’s Revelation series sermon notes. This is a wonderful way to follow along as David teaches here on radio and to review what you’ve learned in the weeks past. And the sermon note pack covering all the messages is just $10. You can order the series as well on MP3 audio. Again, the complete series, just $30. Or you can order the series on DVD and watch it. That set is $50. Now, each one of these resources is filled with solid teaching to help you grow in your understanding of God’s Word and, of course, His plan for the future. And by the way, friends, if hope for today has been a blessing to you, would you pray for us? And would you also prayerfully consider standing with us this month with a donation? Your gifts keep these broadcasts on the air. They help us reach people around the world with God’s Word and provide free resources and Bible teaching to those who may not be able to afford it otherwise. Every gift, large or small, makes an eternal difference. That’s what God’s Word does. You can send your support to Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California, 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011. RPO, Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, BC, V2S 8P1. Of course, you can also contribute online at davidhawking.org or call us at 1-800-75-BIBLE in the US and 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. Let’s go back to David for his closing thoughts.
SPEAKER 02 :
One of the interesting things, which I’m sure you have noted already in our study of Revelation 17, 1-6, the great harlot, is what is said in verse 6. It says, “…I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Yeshua, Jesus.” And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. Well, we’re going to continue to study chapter 17. We have to. There’s so much in it, and there’s so many people making false or wrong interpretations. Maybe they’re sincere, but they’re not getting it from the Word of God. That is so important. I hope you understand that. God bless you.
SPEAKER 04 :
Well, thank you, David. And before we go, we’d love to hear from you. Let us know where and how you listen to Hope for Today. Your responses, they help us to be good stewards of the resources God has given us and make sure his word continues reaching people in every part of the world. So reach out today. You can call us at 800-75-BIBLE, that’s in the U.S., or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada, or visit us online at davidhawking.org and use the contact form. Well, next time on Hope for Today, as we move ahead in chapter 17 of Revelation, David’s going to begin a message called The Mystery Revealed. In it, the Apostle John is shown the hidden truth behind the woman and the beast. It’s a vision that exposes the spiritual deception of the last days and God’s sovereign plan behind it all. Join us for day one of The Mystery Revealed, right here on Hope for Today.
