A while back, I came across a real good analysis of America as being
the mystery Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and Abominations,
in the The Book of Revelation. Or maybe it was just New York City.
Doing a google search to locate this original information, I found too
much to go through. But America per se has some unsettling corellations
to Babylon.
Later I ran across an egroup that announced up front it will not
tolerate posts that argue that America is Babylon "because then
we would have to come out of America," which struck me as
real stupid. The issue of whether or not America is, or is any
part of, Babylon the Great, is not something to decide based
on your unwillingness to emigrate.
Now, the reasons for the call to leave geographically are
twofold. (1) to not become a partaker of her sins, and (2) to not
get caught up in and suffer from the devastating wrath that is to
come upon her.
In a small (large for its time but small for now) city state like
ancient Babylon, it is hard to avoid both. In a sprawling geography
like the continenal USA, it is faily easy to avoid both. Well, the
second depends on where you live.
The most recent thing brought to my attention on this,
was from a reader who pointed me to Antipas Ministries.
http://www.antipasministries.com and reading up more on ex members
at odds on some point or another, but agreeing in major points like
this, I located Tribulation Network http://www.the-tribulation-network.com/
Now except for some things Antipas doesn't harp on, the underlying
theology and eschatology seems 90% or more correct to The Bible and
the early church, though there are some deviations predictable from its
founders' protestant background. (I used to be in this category, I am
now Eastern Orthodox but that is another story.)
As time passed as I read their stuff, I noticed a strident and subtly
elitist tone, which was hard to pin down, but detailed by a detractor
who left them. I think the military background of one of the
founders is part of the cause of this.
meanwhile The Watchman Report writer seems to be hearing
from someone pretending to be Christ and The Holy Spirit who
teaches false ideas about the antichrist not being an actual person.
write that site off your list. (I may have a link to some anti occultism
article there on my link list, I don't know, but links in general do
not mean acceptance of everything at the overall site it is at.)
Now, there seems to be some confusions rampant in a lot of
interpretation, that confuses the antichrist with Babylon the
Great, and with the beast she rides, who is explicitly designated
as the seven hills she sits on, also some prior and future kings,
one of which may be the antichrist.
Congruent to all this, is the fact that some of the most abominable
cults in those days, were those of the so called "great mother"
and some of them incl. imagery of her driving or riding lions
or something like that.
Well did H. P. Lovecraft write in one of his dark poems,
"I am the voice of mother earth, from which all horrors
have their birth." dismissed by rationalists as oedipal dread, but
probably more than just that. The devouring mother is a concept
from India to Aztec Mexico. the Biblical concept dust to dust
is totally different, it is about dissolving back into what you were
made out of by the Creator, not about being cannibalistically
reabsorbed by someone who spawned you. Dust is impersonal,
and not something at all like you.
Tribulation network has its flaws too, apparently following the
lead of supposed prophecy experts who try to tie end times events
to Jewish feast cycles, which is ridiculous. no such corellations
are obvious in Daniel or Revelation, and St. Paul tells us to not
even bother about such. If it was important, we would have been
told it is important.
Another big confusion, from the first several hundred years to now,
is the idea of the millennial rule of Christ. early chiliastic movements
focussed on this. the early Church correctly dismissed this as a
heresy.
The problem is, that chiliasm sees Christ as only reigning for a thousand
years. The Bible says the Kingdom of Heaven lasts forever. The Creed
drawing on biblical tradition says "of His Kingdom there shall be no
end."
Revelation DOES NOT LIMIT Christ's reign to a thousand years.
What it DOES say, is that when Christ comes back, He will bind satan
for a thousand years, so that he cannot tempt the nations at all during
that time.
This puts to nought the idea that this time of binding and Christ's ruling
is going on now in the Church, because even though you argue that you
are under Christ's protection if you keep focussed on Him, the fact is
that Revelation said that satan would not be able to tempt THE NATIONS,
not the Church, and further St. Peter and St. Paul make clear that indeed
he DOES tempt and ensnare Christians. The need for exorcism and for
spiritual warfare, whether in the sense of against demons directly, or
against all kinds of sin inclination that can incl. demonic indirect influence,
puts the lie to all of this amillennial and satan is bound now sort of thinking,
which is turning up in some evangelical or charismatic scenes, and took over
the RC and I am sad to say the EO line of interpretation centuries ago.
After that thousand years, satan would be loosed to tempt mankind one
more time, and those who follow him will do a revolt against Christ, but
the revolt will be put down. At some point after that, the general resurrection,
the Last Judgement, and the New Heavens and the New Earth and the New
Jerusalem will come down from heaven, and it being some 1500 miles high
wide and long, a huge cube, and given layers within it several hundred
or more billion square miles of living space, that new heavens and new
earth must involve a total overhaul of the laws of physics.
Meanwhile, Christ will have been reigning all along, during the thousand
years that satan is bound, and all along after.
Back to the America as Babylon interpretation.
Wikipedia lists all the cities that are claimed to be built on seven hills.
there are a lot of them. some are port cities, some are not. America has
at least twelve of them. and in the New York City area is a village called
Babylon.
That doesn't mean that the attack on the WTC was righteous. Indeed,
it was likely in part an inside facilitated job using Saudis, to promote the
babylonish agenda of the satanic ruling class elites.
But Babylon is not the Roman church. The Vatican right now is a city
state, a separate nation within the confines of the nation of Italy, but not
under the Italian government, a sovereign small nation. The RC never
ruled Rome as its secular ruler, wherever the Vatican was held to be
located, whether within Roman city limits or not. The present Roman city
limits are not the same as the old city limits of John's time.
Antipas Ministries joins the ranks of the ignorant and half baked
when it denounces USA having diplomatic relations with Vatican
City as against the Constitution, because Vatican City is not the
Roman Catholic Church, it is a sovereign nation state that happens
to be a theocracy, in this case run by the RC, just like Saudi Arabia
or any other sovereign nation state that happens to be a theocracy
run by some other religious entity. Also, the Constitution only
forbids the federal government from making an established
religion, which says nothing about having some official relationship
with one. An establishment of religion is about making a particular
denomination, not a general category of religion like Christianity
as distinct from Judaism as distinct from Islam as distinct from
paganism of one sort or another as distinct from Buddhism, and
a hierarchy and organization be the official religion which every
citizen has to pay a tithe or something like that to, or at least
taxes support the established religion (same idea as an
establishment of business, a particular church organization like
a particular business) as distinct from some function of it like
religious run schools, which taxes used to support in the USA
until protestants argued these shouldn't when RC schools
started getting tax support.
Diplomatic relations with a sovereign nation state which is
a theocracy is another matter entirely.
Neither is it the kind of port city whose destruction can be seen from
afar, nor is it a major importer of goods and slaves and whatnot. America
is. the great whore is described as drunk on the blood of the saints, and
there is an issue of a kind of mystery and of intoxication, and of the kings
of the earth being "drunk with the wine of her fornication." whoredom
is not always strictly about sex. Lust for power and money is a drug in
itself, and the best detailing and denunciation of all these things I have
seen yet is at the Antipas Ministries site.
Prophecy, someone pointed out, has an odd way of double fulfillment.
such as Abraham, while aged from an aged woman, he begets a son.
And his son though not as old does similar. Prophecy can have a dry
run or partial fulfillment and a replay or main fulfillment later.
contrary to Antipas Ministries take on Babylon, the core of the city
WAS destroyed and disappeared under the sands, only to be dug up
by archaeologists in the 1800s, a haunted and cursed place that
bedouins would not camp overnight at. the location called Babylon
to a late date and eventually renamed, was more like a suburb, just
as a city in Alexander's time and now had a double existence a
rebuilt or extended one existing next to the main one.
The details of Daniel's prophecy about the wars between the kings
of the north and the south were fulfilled in detail in the days of
Antiochus Epiphanus, and maybe some others, yet despite having
to know all this, being only a few hundred years later, and privy to
the Books of Maccabees and pagan historians, the early church
Fathers incl. Hippolytus looked for a fulfillment of these things
in future.
Something very much to recommend Antipas and Tribulation Network,
to those who are concerned about the Apostolic Fathers and somewhat
later Patristic Fathers, is that these two sites' writers are very well
acquainted with them, or at least some of them.
Meanwhile, I am not happy with the Antipas writers' reaction to the
Christian Right being mad at homosexuals. Sure, they are an easy target.
But while they are not top ten on the list of works of the flesh he quotes
from Paul, fornication and lasciviousness are, and fornication is a term
that covers more than just heterosexual prostitution or free of charge
no strings heterosexual adult sex.
elsewhere, Paul definitely puts them as the final degradation end
result of idolatry and refusing to honor YHWH as the true God and
Creator, in Romans, and elsewhere warns against two very sneaky and
dangerous groups of people: the concision, those who wanted to
restore circumcision and mosaic ritual and food laws and "dogs,"
common slang for buggery or anal sex aka doggy style, whether
heterosexual or homosexual. (actually vaginal entry can be done from
the rear also, but that was not the point.) So yes, homosexuals or
rather those who accept their inclinations as right and act on them
or are willing to act on them, are a major issue for Christians.
elsewhere, he does focus on the convergence of perverse sexuality,
whether bondage and pain inducing or pedophilia, and occultism
and the influence of evil spirits released by occultism experiments
in secret government labs and the CIA.
Justina
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