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.

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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.

<–Wednesday Friday–>

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Join It Is Written Sabbath School host Eric Flickinger and this quarter’s author, Mark Finley, as they provide additional insights into this week’s Sabbath School lesson
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKM_D4N7deU&w=560&h=315]

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You can view an in-depth discussion of A City Called Confusion in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris. Click on the image to view: [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynul7nPI924&w=560&h=315]

With thanks to

Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.

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Revelation’s appeal is an urgent call to commitment, summarized in the symbolism of the two women in Revelation. Although at times it will appear that God’s people will be defeated in this cosmic controversy between truth and error, God promises that His church will triumph in the end.

Compare Matthew 16:18 and Revelation 17:14. What promise did Jesus give His disciples regarding His church?

Christ is the solid foundation His church is built upon. His church is based on the teachings of His Word and guided by His Spirit. On the contrary, Babylon, as we have seen, is rooted in human-made teachings and traditions. Any religious leader who substitutes human opinions or traditions in the place of, or above, the revealed will of God in the Scriptures is simply fostering Babylonian confusion.

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In the days of ancient Babylon, church and state were one and the same thing. When King Nebuchadnezzar sat in his temple on his royal throne, he supposedly spoke for the gods. On one occasion, as an act of defiance of the true God, the Babylonian king passed a universal decree enforcing worship and commanded all his subjects to bow to his decree, a powerful symbol of what God’s faithful people, who refuse to worship the false image, will face in the last days. (See Daniel 3:1-30.)

In the last days of earth’s history, a church-state system will arise, spiritual Babylon, with a spiritual leader claiming to speak as God. His word will be declared to be the very word of God and his commands the commands of God. Throughout the centuries the Roman pontiffs have declared that they stand in the place of God on earth. In his encyclical letter of June 20, 1894, Pope Leo XIII stated, “We hold upon this earth the place of Almighty God.” The Ferraris Ecclesiastical Dictionary adds, “The Pope is of so great dignity and so exalted that he is not a mere man, but as it were God and the vicar of God.” The apostle Paul adds these words exposing this power: “ … 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” (2 Thessalonians 2:4, NKJV).

<–Tuesday Thursday–>

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Read Revelation 17:4-6. What do these verses teach us about the nature of this evil system?

As we have seen, Revelation 17:1-18 describes an apostate religious system that introduces into Christianity many of the teachings of Old Testament Babylon.

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“In order to search for an understanding of the nature of Babylon, we need to go back to its first reference in the biblical record, in Genesis. It all began on the plain of the land of Shinar, a region in the southern part of Mesopotamia, today south Iraq, called Babylonia. It is there that the Tower of Babel was built, a symbol of human self-sufficiency, self-preservation, and independence from God ([Gen.] 11:1-4).” — Ángel Manuel Rodríguez, “The Closing of the Cosmic Conflict: Role of the Three Angels’ Messages,” unpublished paper, p. 43.

The Tower of Babel, the site of ancient Babylon, was built in direct defiance to the Word of God. The Babel builders built this monument for their own glory, and God confused their languages. The Genesis account puts it this way, “Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth” (Genesis 11:9, NKJV).

So evil is this system that it is depicted as having been “drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6, NKJV) — horrific images of just how corrupt Babylon is (see also Isaiah 49:26).

In essence, spiritual Babylon represents a religion based on human teachings, established on human ideas, and supported by human traditions. It is a form of human-made religion built by, perhaps, brilliant human religious leaders, but it stands in opposition to the power of the gospel and the church that Jesus built, a church built on love, not violence.

The book of Revelation describes these two systems of religion. The first reveals total trust in Jesus and dependence on His Word. The second reveals trust in human authority and dependence of human religious teachers. One is a Christ-centered faith with total dependence on Christ’s grace, sacrifice, and atonement for salvation. The other is a humanistic approach to faith that replaces the total dependence on Christ for salvation with a dependence on the traditions of the church.

<–Monday Wednesday–>

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