BABYLON THE GREAT (Part 3)
B — THE CAPITAL OF POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS SOVEREIGNTY
“On her forehead was written a name, a mystery: “Babylon the Great, the mother of the prostitutes and of the disgusting things of the earth.” And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the holy ones and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus” (Revelation 17:5,6)
Babylon the Great is described as a prostitute, who commits fornication with the kings of the earth (Revelation 18:3). In this, it is like Jezebel, mentioned in the book of revelation: “Nevertheless, I do hold this against you, that you tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and misleads my slaves to commit sexual immorality and to eat things sacrificed to idols” (Revelation 2:20). We can consider this passage to be a simple definition of Babylon the Great: a prophetess who organizes the worship of Satan on earth. In the Bible it is described as the one that encouraged the worship of Baal, a worship rivaling the true worship of Jehovah (1 Kings 17:31; 18:19). In the biblical narrative she is describes as manipulator of her husband, king Ahab, even to organize murders (1 Kings 21 the murder of Naboth). Therefore, Babylon the Great is the allusion to the first city organized as worship rivaling that of Jehovah, also symbolized with the bad woman Jezebel the prophetess of Baal.
In the Bible there is the concept of the sovereignty of God through royalty, and the sovereignty of God through the worship (or sacred service) due to it, through the priesthood.
These two concepts, administration of the city by a king or princes (political) and administration of the priesthood, although different, are inseparable. For example, in the Bible, the 144,000 have the function of representing the sovereignty of God, through the royal function (administration of the city) and priestly sovereignty (administration of the spiritual temple) (Revelation 5:10). It is interesting to note that the copper altar in the courtyard of the temple sanctuary had four horns at four angles (Exodus 29:12). What did these horns symbolize? They simply symbolized the sovereignty of God: “Jehovah will shatter those fighting against him; He will thunder against them from the heavens. Jehovah will judge to the ends of the earth, He will give power to his king And exalt the horn of his anointed one” (1 Samuel 2:10). In this text, the symbol of the horn is associated with the exercise of royalty as an expression of Jehovah’s sovereignty. While in the temple, the four horns were associated with the exercise of Jehovah’s sovereignty through the priesthood, as part of exclusive worship (or sacred service).
Even in the book of Revelation, there is a passage which shows that Babylon the Great is not the symbol opposite to what represents the sovereignty of kings on earth. In Revelation 18:9,10, it is written that the “kings of the earth will weep and beat themselves in grief over her (Babylon the Great)”. This shows that if Babylon the Great were to represent only the false “religion”, destroyed by the expression of human political sovereignty (represented by the kings of the earth), does not seem to conform to the context of the book of Revelation. The false worship is far beyond the mere “religious” context, the worship of a false god in a temple, for example. The false worship can also take place in a political context, or as part of an entire nation. The best known state cult is patriotism, the singing of the national anthem (or worship) to the fatherland (acting as an impersonal god representing the nation and the people) and the salute to the flag (gestural worship to the impersonal god of the Fatherland or the Nation). Autocratic regimes have often been organized in a cult of the person of a dictator, greeted in a “religious” gesture of allegiance, or even adoration, with the aim of creating national and patriotic cohesion.
In the book of Revelation chapter 13, it is described a wild beast with two horns, which organizes a false worship around the image of the wild beast which has the number 666. This wild beast is described in a “religious” action while it is supposed to represent a “political” entity. In a way, this wild beast created a new “religion”, for a “political” purpose. This shows that in the Bible, these two Greco-Roman concepts are not separated, they are nested. False worship is also exercised in a “political” framework, it is very linked to the exercise of human sovereignty on earth.
From 1991, this patriotic and religious spirituality which allowed the cohesion of nations and empires, and also the great carnage of the two world wars, in the name of Religion and the Fatherland, began to crack in a very accelerated way (this process had already started after 1914 with the disappearance and fragmentation of the Austria Hungarian and later Ottoman empires). Since 1991 there are very numerous conflicts scattered on the earth which divide the nations and make disappear empires by an increasingly accelerated “Balkanization”, with claims of ethnic and religious autonomy extremely deadly (Examples, the war of the ex-Yugoslavia, the massacre of Tutsis in Ruanda and currently the massacre of civilians in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and for several years (for the latter countries of the Middle East)). There is an international liquefaction and atomization, of the cohesion of the worldwide human sovereignty.
It is about the self-destruction of the very concept of human domination on earth, by nationalism and patriotism (political fall), and of the physical and very accelerated self-destruction, of this domination, by wars, the terrorist attacks, the challenges to governmental authority, by mass movements. It is an international liquefaction and atomization of the worldwide human sovereignty (the effective destruction of Babylon the Great). The continuation of the examinations of the prophecies of the Revelation, will make it possible to better understand when this international process of destruction accelerated, until today. It is necessary to identify what is represented by the image of the wild beast with the number, 666, of Revelation 13, corresponding at the same time, to the wild beast of Revelation 17.
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