Codeword Babylon Program No SPEAKER: John Bradshaw

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1 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 1 Codeword Babylon Program No SPEAKER: John Bradshaw The city of Rome has long been shrouded in mystery. Its origin has been explained with a legend two brothers, Romulus and Remus, are said to have built the city. They were the children of Mars, the god of war, and they were raised by a she-wolf. When they built their legendary city, an argument broke out over whose name the city should bear so Romulus stood on one hill, and Remus on another. A flock of birds descended on Romulus, signifying that the gods preferred him as the king, and Romulus murdered his brother with a shovel. Of course, that delicate story is just a legend, even though it s highly possible that men by the names of Romulus and Remus actually existed. And regardless of how the city got started, nobody can argue the fact that Rome has proven to be one of the most powerful cities on the planet. The names of her emperors are familiar to just about everybody: Julius, Augustus, Nero. Her poets have become required reading for almost every college student men like Horace and Virgil. And traces of her system of government, which had executive, legislative and judicial functions, and featured institutions like the Senate, can still be found in modern civilization. Even though many centuries have passed since her collapse, there s no question that her fingerprints have not been wiped away. And the story of Rome has become especially pivotal for one group of people in particular: the followers of a Galilean carpenter known as Jesus of Nazareth. For the most part, the Romans were very tolerant when it came to religion their conquered subjects were allowed to worship whomever or whatever they wanted, as long as the Caesar in Rome was added to the lineup of deities. That posed a special problem for Jews and Christians, of course, because they were monotheists, people who worshiped just one God. To add other deities even minor ones was completely out of the question. When Nero burned the city to the ground and found his move highly unpopular with the citizens of Rome, he needed a scapegoat. So he suggested the Christians must have torched the city on purpose. The Christians were rounded up and murdered in unbelievably inhumane rituals.

2 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 2 So intense was Roman persecution of the early church that the Christians began to use codewords to describe the city. Peter finishes his first letter with a cryptic greeting to his audience from a mysterious Christian church. You read about it in 1 Peter, (1 Peter 5:12, 13): By Silvanus, our faithful brother as I consider him, I have written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand. She who is in Babylon, elect together with you, greets you; and so does Mark my son. Who, exactly, were the elect of Babylon? We know it wasn t a church in the literal city of Babylon, because that city had been laying in ruins since the days of Alexander the Great. Check the scholarly footnotes of almost any edition of the Bible, and you ll find that most every scholar agrees: Babylon is code for the city of Rome. Which, of course, sheds great light on the use of the word Babylon in other New Testament writings. For example, when John wrote the book of Revelation some years after Peter wrote his letters, Roman persecution against the church was still burning hot. After a botched execution attempt, they exiled John to the Island of Patmos, during which the material for the Book of Revelation was born. In the 17th chapter of Revelation, he makes reference to a woman with a mysterious inscription on her forehead (Revelation 17:5, 6): And on her forehead was a name written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. 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 marveled with great amazement. But John didn t marvel for long, because an angel quickly explains what the imagery means in verse 9 (Revelation 17:9): Here is the mind which has wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. And again, in Revelation 17:18: And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth. The woman, according to the Bible itself, is a city that sits on seven hills that reigns over the kings of the earth. Now in all of human history, there is only one city that matches that description, and that s the city of Rome the city of seven hills. Writing sometime in the second century AD, the Christian apologist Tertullian confirms what the early Christians understood by the codeword Babylon. So, again, Babylon, in our own John, is a figure of the city Rome, as being equally great and proud of her sway, and triumphant over the saints.

3 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 3 So if Babylon is a codeword for Rome, that s got to raise some interesting questions. We ll look at those in just a moment. BIBLE QUESTION: Here s today s Bible question. I ve often wondered where in the world did Cain get his wife? Listen very carefully to this. As distasteful as this might sound, there is no escaping the fact that Cain married his sister. Adam and Eve had many children. Genesis 5:4 makes that clear when it says, And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth, were 800 years. And he begat sons and daughters. And if a couple is going to live to be older than 900 years old, there s the potential for them to be having a lot of kids. Now, I don t think we have to believe Cain married a girl whose pigtails he pulled. It is conceivable Cain hardly knew her that well when he met her that is, if he left home as an adult and then came back home in later years and met the young woman he later married. This shouldn t shock anyone, really. Even Abraham married his half sister, and Moses father married an aunt. It was a different world then. And way back then, we didn t have the same issues that we have to worry about today concerning birth defects and so forth, so certain dangers we face today were not issues back then. Now, the time did come when God strictly forbade the marrying of close relatives. It had been necessary for that kind of marriage to exist in the first place, but when the population grew to a certain level, it was no longer necessary. Even though the Egyptians still did so, God s people were not to do so any longer. RETURN TO PROGRAM: If Babylon was a codeword for Rome among the early Christians, then it raises some interesting questions, because the descriptions of Babylon given in the book of Revelation are very detailed. It goes way beyond the obvious identifying marks, like seven hills and worldwide rule. John s first mention of Babylon comes in Revelation chapter fourteen. In Revelation 14:8, we read this: And another angel followed, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.

4 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 4 When the word Babylon is first introduced to the reader, it s not a flattering description. She stands against the Creator in opposition to the God of Heaven. She is a fornicator meaning she is engaged in spiritual infidelity and her influence is felt, and her example followed, all over the planet. In Revelation 17, she is the great prostitute, with the words Mystery Babylon written on her forehead. According to the Apostle Paul s letter to the Ephesians, the church is the bride of Christ, and in a key passage found in the writings of the prophet Ezekiel, the nation of Israel was also considered to be God s wife. When I found you, God says to Israel (Ezekiel 16), you were a wretched little nation that nobody cared about, but I took you in, and when you were fully grown, I married you. A woman in Bible prophecy represents God s people. In the book of Jeremiah, God says, I have likened the daughter of Zion to a lovely and delicate woman. (Jeremiah 6:2) The problem with Israel, according to Ezekiel, was that she had a wandering eye (Ezekiel 16:14, 15): Your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty, for it was perfect through My splendor which I had bestowed on you, says the Lord God. But you trusted in your own beauty, played the harlot because of your fame, and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it. In the prophetic portions of the Bible, harlotry or prostitution is used to describe unfaithfulness to God. The bride of Christ was fooling around on her husband. Of course, that raises a very important question: if Babylon is codeword for the Roman Empire as we ve seen from the writings of the early church fathers and more importantly, from the Bible itself then in what sense could Rome be guilty of spiritual adultery? How could Rome be the unfaithful bride, if she never was a bride in the first place? That s an important question and it leads to some rather uncomfortable issues in the history of Christianity itself. Take another look at the seventeenth chapter of Revelation with me (Revelation 17:18): And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth. There s no question about it: the harlot is a great city that reigns over the kings of the earth but she s also a woman, and that s an unmistakable symbol for God s people. So is it possible that when John addresses the issue of Babylon, he s not just talking about the pagan Roman Empire?

5 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 5 There s a fascinating prediction found in Paul s second letter to the Thessalonians, chapter two a prophecy long associated with the rise of Antichrist. Here s what Paul writes (2 Thessalonians 2:3, 4): Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. After establishing that the man of sin would make his entrance onto the world scene before the Second Coming of Christ, Paul provides more details on the timing. Listen carefully to what he says (2 Thessalonians 2:5-7): Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. Something or somebody was standing in the way of the lawless man s appearance. And some of the early church fathers saw something very specific in this. What obstacle is there, wrote Tertullian, but the Roman state, the falling away of which, by being scattered into ten kingdoms, shall introduce Antichrist upon (its own ruins)? Building on the prophecies found in the book of Daniel, Tertullian predicted that the biggest problems for the Christian church wouldn t come from the Roman Empire itself, but from something that happened after the Empire collapsed. For some reason, he couldn t see the man of sin becoming a problem as long as the Roman Empire stood in his way and Paul described the man of sin appearing after a great falling away, a time when the church itself would become unfaithful to the teachings of Christ. Start putting the pieces together, and you get a startling picture. As troublesome as the pagan Roman Empire was for the early Christian church, there were much worse problems on the horizon distinctly internal problems. As long as Rome was persecuting the church, there was little chance that the church itself could exert the kind of influence needed to produce such colossal problems. But take the Roman Empire out of the way, and the church could build on her ruins. Which, of course, is exactly what happened. After the conversion of the Roman Emperor Constantine early in the fourth century, Christianity shifted away from its status as a despised, marginalized sect to become the official religion of the Roman Empire itself.

6 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 6 And then, after the empire s collapse at the hands of marauding barbarians, the church continued to expand and prosper in ways that defied imagination. Saint Augustine called the expanding Christian church the City of God, and envisioned the church triumphing over the pagans to become a global kingdom for Christ. And of course, who s going to argue with a successful Christian church? Taking the name of Christ to the world was a good thing but honest Christians will have to admit that along the way, our history as a church has included some pretty dark chapters. As pagan Rome gave way to a new Christian empire in the west, it brought some distinct problems. Pagan Rome stopped persecuting Christians, but after a while, Christians began to persecute each other over religious differences of opinion. During the period known as the Dark Ages, something like 50 million people were put to death over matters of conscience and suddenly, you can see how the symbols described in the book of Revelation can be used to describe both a city AND a church. We go to Revelation 17 and we read verse 6 (Revelation 17:6): 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 marveled with great amazement. John is amazed by the sight of the woman, and given the way that John himself was persecuted by the emperor Domitian, it couldn t have been just the early Roman persecution that he witnessed. He saw an impure woman the symbol of an unfaithful church committing the same crimes as the Roman emperors. What was this Christian-against-Christian persecution John saw going on? We are going to take a look at that just ahead. EVERY WORD DEVOTIONAL: I read a fascinating article recently titled, Why Do We Let Them Dress Like That? Author Jennifer Moses asks, Why do so many of us not only permit our teenage daughters to dress like this like prostitutes, if we re being honest with ourselves but pay for them to do it with our Amex cards? I don t mean to pick on girls, or women, but have you noticed that modesty has just about become a thing of the past? Maybe God saw what was coming and so urged Paul to write 1 Timothy 2:9: In like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with propriety and moderation. We re living in the most overtly sexualized generation in history. Can that be denied when retailers are now selling padded bras for eight-year-olds?

7 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 7 A commitment to modesty for everyone would certainly be in line with God s will for His children. RETURN TO PROGRAM: If Christians care to be honest, it doesn t take a degree in history to uncover the atrocities committed by the Christian church. There were systematic pogroms in Europe, the horrors of the Inquisition, and shady financial and political deals done in the name of Christ. Over the centuries, some pretty horrible things have been done under the banner of Jesus. Search the pages of the Bible, and you won t find God advocating the use of force by His people to establish a kingdom on earth. The Inquisition and other atrocities like it were not born of the Bible; they were born of Christians who were being unfaithful to the teachings of Jesus. And the remarkable thing is that Bible prophecy predicted it. Today, a lot of the Christian world is looking over the fence at other people, trying to figure out where all the trouble in the book of Revelation is going to come from. Once, the Soviet Union was the spiritual bogeyman. Today, some look at the European Union. Others watch Islamic terrorist organizations. And while there s no question that all of these things have presented important challenges for the Christian church, the message of the Bible is clear: we need to be especially vigilant of what takes place in the name of Christianity. There will come a time, Paul says, when people will have a form of godliness, but they will deny the real power behind it. The biggest problem we face is not atheism or communism. It s a misguided Christianity that presents itself as the real thing. Just listen to the daunting words of Jesus found in Matthew 24 (Matthew 24:24, 25): For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. See, I have told you beforehand. Before the consummation of history, the Bible predicts an overwhelming religious deception so overwhelming that God s own people might just fall for it. And of course, that would create a situation where God s woman the church has become unfaithful. We know from history that it s already happened. Daniel, John and Paul were absolutely right: on of the ashes of the Roman Empire was built a tainted Christianity, one answering precisely to the description given in the book of Revelation. You know, there s no better word than Babylon to describe the spiritual problems in this world, and you might say in the Christian church. The root of the word

8 It Is Written Script: 1204 Codeword Babylon Page 8 Babylon is Babel, from the tower built in defiance against God, and the word itself means confusion. Babylon is inhabited by people who think they re right, but they re drunk, and they have no concept of reality. People convince themselves they re still living within the boundaries of God s will, when they re doing anything but. But that sort of religion is bound to ultimately fall. The Bible says so. In Revelation 18 we read (Revelation 18:2-4): And he cried mightily with a loud voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every foul spirit, and a cage for every unclean and hated bird! For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury. And I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. The prophetic message of the Bible is clear: there s only one safe place to stand, and that s right here, on God s Word. Anything else is confusion it s Babylon, and right now, God is calling you out of Babylon. So in these moments, just before Jesus comes, where are you going to stand? Will you stand on a manmade religion, or will you stand on the Word of God? I want to stand with Jesus, and I want to live by His Word. If that s your desire, too, let s tell Him that right now. Would you pray with me? PRAYER: Father in Heaven, we thank you that you are God enough to speak to us very directly and to tell us that down here in the last days of the earth s history, a huge challenge the most pressing challenge is going to come from within Christianity itself, from Christians who have concocted a form of religion that doesn t square with the Bible. Lord, teach us please to be biblical. Help us to be faithful. Let us live by every word that proceeds from out of your mouth. Give us that grace today and Lord grant that we would trust in Jesus fully. This we pray in Jesus name, Amen. It Is Written Box O Thousand Oaks, CA USA Tel: (805) Fax: (805)

BOOTCAMP WHO REALLY IS MYSTERY BABYLON? have based their existence, lifestyle and religions on the lies of Satan. As

BOOTCAMP WHO REALLY IS MYSTERY BABYLON? have based their existence, lifestyle and religions on the lies of Satan. As BOOTCAMP Apostle Jacquelyn F. Fedor WHO REALLY IS MYSTERY BABYLON? She is a spiritual city founded by people with hearts and minds that resist truth and have based their existence, lifestyle and religions