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Babylon

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What is Babylon?

 

Question: What is Babylon?

“What is the meaning of Babylon the Great and what does it stand for?”

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Answer:

The term “Babylon the great” is only used twice in the Bible, and both times it is found in the book of Revelation. The word Babylon is derived from Babel, which means “confusion.” Nimrod thought he and his followers could build a tower that would reach heaven, but God confused their languages. From that time until now the name Babylon often signified a false form of religion.

In the book of Revelation Babylon is called “that great city.” We are told, “the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell: and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath.” (Revelation 16:19) The falling of Babylon is symbolic of the falling of all false religions just prior to Christ’s second coming.

In Revelation chapter 17 Babylon is personified by a woman riding upon a beast. We read, “upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” (Revelation 17:5) Babylon is said to be the mother of harlots. She is not only a harlot herself, but is the mother of other harlots. A harlot in the Bible is often used to signify false or apostate religions. She is said to have made “the inhabitants of the earth… drunk with the wine of her fornication.” (Revelation 17:2) By giving her wine of corrupted doctrines to other religions, she has made them her daughters. Some of the wine of Babylon includes Sunday sacredness, the immortality of the soul, consciousness in death, the trinity, image worship, purgatory, etc. When we trace all these false doctrines back to the source, we find that they were first brought into Christianity through the Roman Catholic Church. This, along with the Biblical description of Babylon, the antichrist, the man of sin, and the little horn of Daniel 7 leads me to the conclusion that Babylon is the papacy and all her daughter churches who are drunk with the wine of her false doctrines.

The Bible says, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” (Revelation 18:2) It is time to come out of Babylon before we are destroyed with her. “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” (Revelation 18:4)

This question and its answer were printed in the September 2001 issue of Present Truth.

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