In his May Day speech delivered just after his fifth inauguration as President of Russia on Thursday, Vladimir Putin reminded his Western opponents that Russia’s nuclear forces are always on alert and ready for deployment.
He stated this just as the ‘Yars’ intercontinental ballistic missile launchers rolled past him in Red Square, and captured American and British weaponry sat on display nearby in the same way German equipment did during World War II.
All of this is very far away from Australia, for now. In our house, we’re more focused on the mundane routines of family life than the kings of the earth playing with their toys. For us, that mostly means homeschooling.
We start our day with music practice and then devotions. Our eldest was adamant that we study the Book of Revelation this year, so we’ve been making our way through it since January. We’re getting close to the end, so to speak.
The more I study Revelation, the more I believe it cannot be understood unless that understanding is itself revealed from on high. You can’t ‘figure it out’. It’s like a spinning tesseract that refuses to be pinned down and comprehended. It is a truly otherworldly document.
Yet there are some things you can get out of it if you stick with it.
For example, the book is a chiasm, a literary structure familiar to educated people in the ancient world1. That chiasmic structure helps us see that the great dragon, Satan, being cast down from heaven in Revelation 12:9 is the starting point and emphasis of the book. Our son and I agree that the most likely interpretation is this happened at the crucifixion (fight me in the comments, dispensational premillennialists).
It’s also clear that nothing in the book is literal. The book itself is John’s recording of a vision Jesus gave him toward the end of his life. It’s a symbolic text, and so to understand it we need to equip ourselves with wisdom about the symbolism familiar to people in the Jewish and Greek world of the first century AD.
It’s clear too the book is not linear in time. It jumps all over the place. While many of the events described at the beginning of Revelation correlate with Matthew 24 and relate to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, other passages also clearly describe events in our future. Those include Revelation 17-19 about Mystery Babylon.
Jesus is saying that Mystery Babylon will persecute the church and wants the church to understand it. If he didn’t, Revelation wouldn’t be scripture.
So, what is Mystery Babylon? Let’s break down both words first and see what can be revealed.
A mystery isn’t a secret or something that arouses curiosity. It has a very specific meaning in this context.
A mystery is something that was hidden and then later revealed. To any Hellenised Jewish reader in the first century, moreover, it would have had an even more specific association.
Mystery here refers to the mystery religion(s) of antiquity. Every post-Flood culture had mystery cults, which have a modern parallel in secret societies like the Freemasons and the Jesuits. They were usually associated with a particular deity, and one needed to pass through levels of initiation to ascend in the cult and gain the inner knowledge that enabled transformation and divine favour.
Most famous in the Graeco-Roman world were the Eleusinian Mysteries, but there were many more. These cults began in Mesopotamia and were associated with Babylon. They involved the transference of secret knowledge and often the carrying out of taboo or obscene actions as part of divine worship.
The Dionysian Mysteries involved a bunch of low-status swingers getting drunk and stoned then having a rave and an orgy.
The mystery religion survived into modern times through Kabbalah, which is the basis for the esoteric teachings of all modern secret societies.
In first-century Jewish and early Christian thinking, Babylon was associated with wealth, luxury, debauchery and rebellion against God. By the time of Christ, it had become a symbol of the spirit of man exalting himself in grandeur and glory against the authority of God. Linguistic echoes of the Tower of Babel would have also been in mind.
Babylon also uses its luxury and vice to seduce God’s people. Remember, the southern tribes were exiled to Babylon and, during that time, had to resist assimilating. It is after The Exile that the synagogue system spread, and the Pharisees – whom Jesus called a ‘brood of vipers’ (Matthew 12:34) and ‘sons of your father the devil’ (John 8:44) – gained power over the Jews.
In a letter to the churches of Pontus and Bithynia, Peter refers to Rome as Babylon (1 Peter 5:13-14). This sets us up to understand Revelation because it’s then clear that spiritual Babylon – Mystery Babylon – moves.
So then, what is Mystery Babylon today?
Mystery Babylon is portrayed as a harlot riding a beast drinking from a cup with the blood of the saints.2 She’s drunk, and the kings of the Earth have also gotten drunk while fornicating with her. She says in her heart that she is untouchable because she reigns over the kings of the earth.
In John’s vision, she is three things: she is a city; she is an empire and economic system; and she is a religion.
So far, we know that Mystery Babylon still exists – after all, the church still exists – and we know her attributes. So, let’s put together the most feasible theory we can for what Mystery Babylon is today.
What city is the wealthiest in the world, the centre of global finance for the most powerful empire in the world, the place where the kings of the earth meet (and likely fornicate), and just so happens to be the city most clearly associated with an image of a woman?
Hmm…
New York is the only viable candidate at this point. No matter how much this offends Western Judeo-Christian sensibilities, it makes perfect sense to the rest of the world.
Where do the pornography, the divorce culture, the trans agenda, consumer culture, nihilistic individualism and all the corrupting forces of modernity come from? What culture uses toxic feminity to seduce and intimidate? Who are the people who have culturally become a vacuous, manic, narcissistic, lying whore?
Us. That describes the West, which is the empire Mystery Babylon rules over.
Does this mean that New York is the iteration of Mystery Babylon described in John’s vision? No, it doesn’t. Mystery Babylon may keep moving before it is destroyed.
However, it’s an interesting coincidence that New York City has the world’s largest Jewish community—three times larger than the next city, Jerusalem. It would also be an Old Testament parallel that America, the nation most associated with Christianity, is the empire which seduces God’s people into worldliness and corruption.
If New York City and, by extension, the United States are Mystery Babylon, then it might be worthwhile for us to apply what Revelation says in order to see what will happen should judgement come to this avatar of Mystery Babylon.
The sequence is clear. Mystery Babylon rules over the kings of the earth by seducing and corrupting them, but she is not really in charge. She rides a beast, which we may consider to be Satan himself or perhaps the head of the fallen Watcher angels released from the Abyss for a short time prior to judgement.
At some point, God motivates ten kings to secretly make an alliance to take the whore out:
“The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have received no kingdom as yet, but they receive authority for one hour as kings with the beast. These are of one mind, and they will give their power and authority to the beast. These will make war with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings; and those who are with Him are called, chosen, and faithful.”
Then he said to me, “The waters which you saw, where the harlot sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. And the ten horns which you saw on the beast, these will hate the harlot, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to fulfill His purpose, to be of one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled. And the woman whom you saw is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.” (Revelation 17:12-18)
God uses an alliance of ten kings to take down Mystery Babylon by fire. After that, a new world order emerges that persecutes Christians openly and intensely.
We’re seeing a multilateral bloc emerging to oppose American power in front of our eyes. Could a revanchist Islamic Caliphate under Turkish leadership be the eighth beast that the demonic entity takes authority over? Revelation says the eighth beast had a mortal wound that was healed, and everyone marvelled. The resurrection of the Caliphate would sure get hajji jimmies rustling.
Can you imagine the armies that empire could command once the Muslims believe their Mahdi has arrived?
Yet now we’re in the realm of speculation. Mystery Babylon is still here, sitting on many waters while ruling and corrupting the world.
God used the Persians to destroy the first Babylon. Might the Persians of today, whom we call Iranians, take the lead next time, too?
Maybe Putin will lend them the tools.
2 For the Biblical text related to Mystery Babylon, see Revelation 17-19.
Originally published at Education Reformation.
