Here is another clue in clearly identifying the “mystery of Babylon the great.” Idolatry was at the heart of Babylonian worship.
Read Jeremiah 50:33-38 and Jeremiah 51:17, Jeremiah 51:47. What do you discover in these verses about ancient Babylon’s worship of images and God’s response to it?
Jeremiah 50:1-46 and 51 predict Babylon’s destruction by the Medes and Persians.
Image © Lars Justinen at Goodsalt.com
One of the reasons for Babylon’s demise was their idolatry. The Babylonians believed that these images were representations of their deities. In Babylonian religion, the ritual care and worship of the statues of deities was considered sacred; the gods lived simultaneously in their statues in temples and in the natural forces they embodied. The pillaging or destruction of idols was considered to be loss of divine patronage. For example, the Chaldean prince Marduk-apla-iddina II fled into the southern marshes of Mesopotamia with the statues of Babylon’s gods to save them from the armies of Sennacherib of Assyria. (Jane R. McIntosh, Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspectives, ABC-CLIO, Inc., [Santa Barbara, CA, 2005], p. 203).
The Bible prophets contrasted the worship of these lifeless images with the Creator God, who was both alive and lifegiving (Jeremiah 51:15-16, Jeremiah 51:19).
Read Exodus 20:4-6 and Psalms 115:4-8. What do they teach about idolatry?
Though the issues of the idolatry of spiritual Babylon go deeper than just bowing before images of wood and stone, spiritual Babylon does parallel ancient Babylon with the images introduced into its worship service. The use of images as objects of worship, or so-called “veneration,” is a violation of the second commandment because it limits the ability of the Holy Spirit to impress upon our minds the things of eternity and reduces the majesty of God to a lifeless statue. These images were introduced into Christianity in the fourth century to make Christianity more acceptable to the pagan populace. Unfortunately, these images are often given the sacredness and homage that belongs to God alone, which makes the whole thing spiritually degrading.
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