Genesis 11.1-9-The Two Babylons

Sunday October 30, 2005

Genesis: Genesis 11:1-9-The Two Babylons

Lesson # 52

Please turn in your Bibles to Genesis 11:1.

This morning we will study the two Babylons mentioned in Scripture.

One refers to the ancient Babylon of the Old Testament whose origins we have been studying for the last two weeks in Genesis 11:1-9.

This morning we will study the Babylon mentioned in Revelation, which will be an apostate religious system as well as a commercial and political power.

Ancient Babylon began with Nimrod and the Tower of Babel rebellion and was located in modern Iraq, about twenty miles south of Baghdad, near the modern city of Hilla, on the Euphrates River, south of where the Tigris and Euphrates approach.

Babylon (aka Babel) became a synonym for the confusion caused by the language barriers, which God imposed on the human race because of their pride and arrogance in attempting to establish a one-world government and state religion that would honor mankind rather than God and would be independent of Him.

Genesis 11:1, “Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words.”

Genesis 11:2, “It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.”

Genesis 11:3, “They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.’ And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar.”

Genesis 11:4, “They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.’”

Genesis 11:5, “The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built.”

Genesis 11:6, “The LORD said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.’”

Genesis 11:7, “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.”

Genesis 11:8, “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.”

Genesis 11:9, “Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

Babylon is men¬tioned 260 times in Scripture, and is second in importance only to Jerusalem and Biblically it is viewed as the Devil’s city while Jerusalem is viewed as God’s city and they are always seen in opposition to each other.

Babylon is the result of apostasy against God’s plan of salvation, the first international, political and religious ecumenical movement in the history of man, and one which has never ceased to exist in one form or another.

Jerusalem is the result of God’s call of a man and a nation to perpetuate His plan of salvation and nationalism for the world.

Ever since, the Lord intervened at the Tower of Babel, Babylon has been a source and center of confusion in the world in the sense that the complex religious system established there by Nimrod and his wife was carried into all the nations by those who were dispersed from the city.

¬Babel was the seat of Satan’s ancient counterfeit strategy to des¬troy and corrupt the knowledge of God as well as God’s plan of salvation as anticipated in Genesis 3:15 and was accomplished by Nimrod’s political, commercial, and international system as demonstrated in the tower of Babel and by the mother child cult instituted by Nimrod’s wife, Semiramis.

Important to the study of Babylon and its origin is the origin of its religion and idolatry, which spread from Babylon to surrounding nations and beyond.

If you drop the first consonant of Nimrod's name and take the others, MRD, you will have the basic root of the god of Babylon, whose name was Marduk, and whom most scholars identify with Nimrod.

In the Babylonian religion, Nimrod died and became the sun god and his wife Semiramis was impregnated by a sunbeam and gives birth to her son Tammuz (a counterfeit miraculous birth) who was later killed by a wild boar.

However, after Semiramis cries for 40 days, Tammuz comes back to life again, which is a counterfeit of the resurrection.

During the Babylonian captivity Jeremiah condemned Israel’s worship of Semiramis "Queen of Heaven" (Jeremiah 7:18-19; 44:15-30) and at Jerusalem, in the Temple, they were worshipping Tammuz, the son of Semiramis (Ezekiel 8:14-15).

Jeremiah 7:18, “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me.”

Ezekiel 8:14, “Then He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the LORD'S house which was toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.”

This idolatrous worship spread around the globe where in Egypt Semiramis is called Isis and her son is Osiris, and in Assyria it was Ishtar and Bacchus and in ancient Greece it was Aphrodite and Eros.

Image on left from in Babylon and on right is from India (Pictures from “The Two Babylons” by Alexander Hislop, page 19).

The mother-child cult worship is a clever attempt on the part of Satan to anticipate the genuine virgin birth and thus to cast doubt upon the story when the Son of God would later become a human being in the town of Bethlehem.

The cult has also crept into Christianity and forms the basis for the Mariolatry that has prevailed in the Roman Catholic Church, where the Mother and Child are worshipped as joint redeemers.

This idolatrous religion culminates at last in the Bible in the book of Revelation and is described as the “great harlot” whose name is “Mystery Babylon the Great,” the originator of all the harlotries and false religions of earth.

The religious system, which began in Babel (or Babylon), became the mother, the source of all pagan religions of the world and this is the reason she is called “Mother of Harlots” (Rev. 17:5).

History shows us this system has never ceased to exist in one form or another and will exist in a revived form in the Tribulation as never before (Rev. 17 and 18).

Revelation 17 describes Babylon in its mystery form, as a religious system or spirit of false worship whereas Revelation 18 describes Babylon as a political and commercial system embodied in a city, the city of Babylon of the future.

Revelation 17, which deals with the destruction of religious Babylon, would have to occur somewhere around the middle of the Tribulation when the Antichrist is finished using her as a means to his rise to power whereas Revelation 18 describes the destruction of political and commercial Babylon as it is embodied in the city of Babylon, the headquarters of the beast aka the Antichrist.

Revelation 17 is in part an amplification of Revelation 13 in that it shows us one of the ways the Antichrist and his political system rise to power where he uses the relig¬ious influence and power of the woman, the religious system of mystery Babylon.

This system will have its tentacles in every part of the world where there is any kind of religion at all, apostate Christendom (the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodox Church, Protestant unbelieving churches), the Jewish religion, and the cults.

These will all come together in one great ecumenical movement, a super world religion, and the beast will use this to extend his authority and power throughout Europe, parts of Africa and perhaps the Americas.

Revelation 17:1, “Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters (refers to the nations of the world).”

Babylon’s description as “the great harlot” refers to the spiritual prostitution and fornication that categorizes the apostate church of the Tribulation which is unfaithful and rejects the Lord Jesus Christ as her husband (2 Pet. 2:1 2).

The prostitute exists today in many forms (Roman Catholicism, liberal Protestantism, the cults, etc.), but after the church is gone, or perhaps even before it is gone, they will unite and become one great ecumenical religious system.

Revelation 17:2, “with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.”

The wine refers to the demonic doctrines, ideologies and concepts pro¬duced by this religious/political alliance.

One of these demonic doctrines of the Babylonian religion was not allowing their priests to marry.

1 Timothy 4:1, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.”

1 Timothy 4:2, “by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.”

1 Timothy 4:3, “men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth.”

Revelation 17:3, “And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast (refers to Antichrist), full of blasphemous names (anti-Christ character), having seven heads and ten horns (ten nation European confederacy).”

“Seven heads” refers to the major world empires up to the time of Rome and which also were connected with the nation of Israel and her enslavements and these nations are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and Revived Roman Empire of the Tribulation.

“Ten horns” refers to the ten nation European confederacy of the Tribulation period, which constitutes the Revived Roman Empire.

Revelation 17:4, “The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet (stands for apostate church’s political power), and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls (apostate church’s immense wealth), having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality.”

Revelation 17:5, “and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, ‘BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.’”

“And on her forehead was written”: The practice of harlots in ancient times was to write their names on their foreheads for easy recog¬nition, which showed the shamelessness of their character and it revealed a seared conscience from continual rejection of God’s truth.

“Mystery” here is not a part of the name but a description of the name, a secret and “Babylon the Great” is the secret name and is telling us that Baby¬lon the Great refers not only to the city of Revelation 18, but to a religious system, the Babylonianism of ancient time, which will reach its peak in the Tribulation.

“The mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth”: The word “mother” indicates the position the harlot will play in the final days where she will gather all the forms of false religions under her wings for the one great world wide harlot system.