Pagan Prophecy

I've been studying the tremendously fascinating themes of prophecy these morning sessions, and up to now we've fairly well confined ourselves to tracing as best we can from the scriptures some of the major events that are predicted in the Bible. And noting some of these events is sort of pins around which we gather our thinking so we can recognize the trends of prophecy.

The Bible is an amazing book. One of the marks of its divine inspiration is that it was written over a period of some 1,600 years by some 40 different authors from very widely different walks of life. And they had no possibility of colluding together in their writing.

And yet when they write, when we compare their writings, we find a clearly definable unity and progression of revelation involved, which marks a divine hand in here. And this is certainly true of the matter of prophecy. The prophetic word is not condensed in one or two chapters in which we get it all set forth for us.

We don't have a section on prophecy in the Bible. It's interspersed throughout the whole of the scriptures. And I think for two reasons.

One is that we might learn it gradually. That's the way the Bible was written, here a little, there a little, line upon line, precept upon precept. That's the best way to learn.

And secondly, that we might learn it in relationship to other truths. And one of the dangers of studying prophecy is that we get it out of balance with other truths. And we sometimes view it, we get so wrapped up in the fascination of the unfolding of future events that we forget to relate it to other truths.

And that's why the Bible, God has written it the way it is so that we see it in relationship to other truths. This is very important. I don't be alarmed or disturbed about the singing.

This class here has so little resources to rely upon other than the teacher that they always turn it over to the teacher far in advance of the other groups. So while they're still singing, we have to teach here and it won't take long before it's over. That's just a little needle bag.

Now having concentrated up to this point on the major events of prophecy, I'd like to turn our attention to a little bit different point of view and look at it from a different facet and focus on the major personality of the prophetic scene. We've already met several of them and all the prophetic passages seem to hinge around these outstanding personalities which are predicted to come upon the scene. This is in line with God's processes.

He doesn't deal so much with events as he deals with people. God's program is men, people, not methods. It's only we who get involved in methods.

God who always deals with people. And therefore the prophetic passages we'll find seem to head up in certain outstanding personalities who reflect in their own makeup and being the principles and forces which have been at work through human history and which come manifest in terms of a single personality. And that's why these personalities become so dominant and so evident in the pages of Scripture.

Now we've met some of them already. For instance, that strange and sinister being who is called by various names in Scripture that Paul calls very blatantly the man of sin or the man of lawlessness. In 2 Thessalonians and we meet this character again and again in the prophetic pages under different titles.

Sometimes the fact that another title is used is somewhat confusing because we don't recognize him right away. But there are always clear-cut clues given that identify him, the titles that are used with one personality. Now can you think of some of the other names that this person is given? You've read so far.

Yes, he's called the Antichrist. Remember when our Lord was on earth he said to the people of his day, to the Jews, I am come in my Father's name and you receive me not. Another will come in his own name and him you will receive.

And he's referring to this figure who is still here who will be received by the Jews as the fulfillment of their predictions of the Messiah. You know the Jews as a nation do not receive, do not accept Christ as the fulfiller of those Old Testament predictions. They're still looking for the coming of the Messiah.

And our Lord said that there would come one who would meet their expectations and he would be the Antichrist. But what the Jews do not understand is that he's also the man of lawlessness, the man of sin. What are the other terms? Can you think of? Abomination of desolation.

The abomination of desolation. Or more strictly speaking, the abomination which makes desolate. Who used this term? Christ did himself.

Matthew 24. Where else do you see him? Jesus. What does Daniel call this? The prince that shall come.

Alright, the prince that shall come. There's another term for him too. Daniel 7. What? The little horn.

The little horn. What does John call it? The beast. So we have quite a number, you see, of titles given to this man, all of which reveal something of his character.

In Isaiah, we haven't looked at these passages, he's called the Assyrian. And we have other passages that refer to him in fact. Now this is one of the, this man, as we've seen, is to be the political head of the final form of Western civilization.

I know that Bible students frequently refer to the, that final form as the revived Roman Empire. But I don't think that's very accurate. Because the fourth beast or the fourth kingdom that we've seen predicted to occupy the earth in Daniel and in Revelation is never called the Roman Empire.

Although it's linked definitely with the Roman Empire in its beginning stages. So that the Roman Empire as we know it in history was a form or one of the forms that this fourth empire or kingdom would take. And it's not wrong therefore to identify it with Rome and with the Roman Empire.

But in a sense, it's far wider than that. It's almost the term that nearest approaches it, I think would be Western civilization. And it's interesting today, though no one has defined the boundaries very precisely, that we do have a clear cut distinction made between the West and the East in our present world affairs.

And we recognize that the West and the East represent quite different lines of thought, approaches to philosophy and to history and to economics and principles in various ways. And the great division in our world today is between the West and the East. We have the prediction here in scripture that we've already looked at carefully and we won't have time to review it of this strange fourth beast, fourth kingdom, who in Revelation 17, which we're going to look at now this morning more fully, is said to be linked with the Roman Empire of John's day, and would therefore carry on much of Roman attitudes and outlooks and economic principles and so on, but would be different than all the other kingdoms that had gone before it.

It wouldn't be a single totalitarian regime, but would be made up of varying forms of government rising and falling, which is exactly what we've seen in the tracing of Western history. Now in verse 1 of chapter 17 of Revelation, we come across, we are referred to another great world figure, prominence. Remember now as we look at these personalities that are to come in the final array of the nations, according to this accurate picture, we are looking at something which is already present with us and has been for the whole time of Christian civilization, that is for 20 centuries, as a force working through the world.

But it comes to its final head in this form that we see predicted here. Now we read in verse 17, then one of the seven angels, verse 1 of chapter 17 of Revelation, then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who is seated upon many waters with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication and with the wine of whose fornication the dwellers on earth have become drunk. And he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of blasphemous names and it had seven heads and 10 horns.

The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication. And on her forehead was written the name of mystery, Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth's abominations. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

Now it's been a favorite parlor game for many centuries to try to guess the identity of this woman and there have been some unusual guesses presented. Some have identified this woman with various characters of history, certain outstanding women of various ages of history have been identified with it even in our day, Mary Baker Eddy and even Eleanor Roosevelt. But I don't think we need to go into these as we can reject them out of hand as being quite without ground.

But here is a woman who rides upon the beast. Now we can immediately recognize the beast because this is the same beast, obviously, that we had brought before us in chapter 13 of Revelation, which also ties in very strongly and carefully with Daniel's revelation of the fourth beast that he would see as a great worldwide empire. And so we recognize that here is a person or a system which is identified with this worldwide empire of Western civilization.

Now, what is this system? That's what we need to identify. And we have several clues given to us in chapters 17 and 18 which help us in the identification. First of all, we have some geographical clues given.

In verse 18 of chapter 17, we're told, The woman that you saw is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth. Now, when John wrote these words in about 100 A.D., there was no question as to what city that referred to, the city of Rome. And this is further confirmed in verse 9 of this same chapter where we're told this calls for a mind with wisdom.

The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman is seated. And the only famous worldwide city built upon seven hills, of course, was Rome, so that this identification is quite clearly confirmed here. And we're told that this must be in some way connected with the city of Rome.

And over a dozen Roman authors speak of Rome in this way, the city of seven hills. That is, ancient Romans in their writing referred to it as the seven-hilled city. And even some of the old Roman coins bear this imprint upon it, the city on the seven hills, so that John's identifying marks here are quite clear.

But that isn't the whole picture. It isn't just Rome as a city, but it's Rome in some specific aspect. And it's the aspect symbolized here by the figure of a woman.

And not merely a woman, but a scarlet woman, a prostitute, a harlot. Now anyone who reads the New Testament thoughtfully soon is aware that adultery is used as a symbol of idolatry. That wherever adultery and fornication are used symbolically, they always refer to religious unfaithfulness, infidelity, to truth, to revelation.

And this is particularly confirmed in this chapter by the identification with the name Babylon. Because Babylon, as we trace it through the scriptures, was the great city which was begun by Nimrod, one of the early men referred to in the book of Genesis, who founded the city of Babel. Now he named it Babel.

It later became called Babylon. Babel means the gate of God. And you remember the story in Genesis, that he led a certain number of people out into the country of Shinar, the Mesopotamian plain.

And there they built a tower with the express intention of making a name for themselves and of ascending into the heavens. That is, of opening a gateway to God. Now they didn't literally mean by that, that they really expected to climb up into the atmosphere.

I know there were people who had these primitive ideas that you could actually enter heaven by climbing up far enough. But I doubt that this was the idea here. And archaeologists confirmed this in that they've discovered the foundations of various towers similar to this.

And one of the characteristics was that the signs of the zodiac were built around the top of the tower. And this was simply a place of religious sacrifice involving worship of the stars and the sun and the moon. And thus it was regarded as a gateway to heaven.

And it was this that Nimrod began. Now, Nimrod married a woman who was his own sister, who has come down to us in history by name. Her name was Semiramis.

If you ever visit the city of Cairo, Egypt, you will probably stay at the Semiramis Hotel, if you don't stay at the New Hill. And the Semiramis Hotel is named for this famous woman, who was the wife of Nimrod, the founder of the city of Babylon. And they had a child whose name was Tammuz, T-A-M-M-U-Z.

And around these what must have been very dynamic personalities, there soon sprang up what has been called ever since the system of the Babylonian mysteries, the Babylonian mystery of religion. Now, as far as can be traced, this is the first false religious faith introduced into Earth. And from it has come all the variant beliefs and crude or refined ideas of deities and junior gods and demons and demiurges and so on that exist on the Earth.

Those who have made a study in this field find it rather easy to trace a unifying system through all the pagan religions that have ever been known. And the first thing about this pagan system of Babylonianism was that it centered around the worship of a mother and child. Now, we're told that the Semiramis bore a son whom she declared was miraculously conceived, and she presented to the people as a promised deliverer.

His name was Tammuz. And this became the central feature of the Babylonian mysteries, and it was the worship of the mother and child, the oldest idolatry known to man. Now, you find this system at the heart of Hinduism, you find it at the heart of Buddhism, in its perverted forms.

You find it in all the ancient systems. I was in Mexico City last January and visited last November and visited the archaeological museum down in Mexico City. And there I saw a stone statue which was dated about 200 BC.

And to my interest and amazement, it was a statue of a mother and child. And you can trace this idea through all pagan religions. Now, it may be explained on other grounds in that certainly birth is a common feature of humanity everywhere, and it would be easy, of course, to speculate on the mysteries of birth, and this would account for it.

But at any rate, back of all the pagan systems is this worship of mother and child. Now, the name of Babel was changed to Babylon, and the mysteries that were connected with this religion began to spread through all the surrounding areas. And everywhere the symbols are the same.

It's the cult of the mother and the child. You find it in the ancient religion of Phoenicia, and they were worshipped there under the title of Ashtoreth and Tammuz. You find it in Egypt under the titles Isis and Osiris, the two gods, the god and goddess worshipped there.

In Greece it was Aphrodite and Eros. In Italy it was Venus and Cupid, and it's still worshipped under various names in various parts of the earth today. Now, all this was connected with Babylonianism.

And the primary purpose of this, and now this is what is very important here to understand in this, is that all these rituals or sacraments were designed to create an illusion of glory, of power, because the secret or the central idea of Babylonianism as such is a hunger for worldly glory obtained by the pretense of religious authority. That's Babylonianism. Now let me stop right here long enough to say that the woman here is not the Church of Rome, nor is it the World Council of Churches, though there are Babylonian principles involved in both of those.

The woman is not any organization here, as an organization, or a single denomination, or a single church. It is the idea of Babylonianism, because it's called this, Mystery Babylon is her name, which is inherent in every religious group on the face of the earth. Babylonianism, I'm sure, is represented here in Peninsula Bible Church, as it is in any religious group anywhere.

And it's this idea, which is the false system, that is rejected here and clearly named as being evil. A religious harlot, you see, a false principle of faith, an attempt to substitute for the true church. Now just as the true church of Jesus Christ is no one denomination, no one organization, no one group of people on the face of the earth, but the true church is found among all the denominations of Christendom, including certainly the Roman Catholic Church, and all other groups that bear the name of Christ, so the false church is not one denomination, or one organization, but is found among all denominations, all organizations.

Its idea, you see, is Babylonianism. It's sacramentalism, that is some form of outward, external worship, designed to obtain worldly glory on the pretense of religious authority. That's the heart of Babylonianism.

Now it began at Babel, and it spread in various forms throughout the earth, and it's very widespread today, as John points out here, and is intimately linked with what we call Western civilization. Now is this true? Do we find this picture? Here's a woman who dominates almost the beast. You can say, and perhaps with great authority and support, that this is very evident in the Church of Rome, and certainly it is.

Babylonianism is a very evident thing in any sacramentalist organization, where the teaching is that sacraments or ritual of any sort has eternal value, that it does something for you, and that the performance of a certain mumbo-jumbo or hocus-pocus or a special rite or ritual will accomplish something or do something for you in the sight of God. That's the heart of Babylonianism. But if you think clearly, you can see it certainly by no means is confined to the Roman Catholic Church.

It's in Protestantism through and through, so that the Protestant churches are as much involved in this as the Catholic churches. Wherever you find a church seeking position, prestige in the eyes of the world, wherever you find among even the people of God, the true people of God, a spirit of concern because of our standing in the community or of offense because we feel we are not given the proper position in the eyes of others around, you find the spirit of Babylonianism. A desire for worldly glory and standing, you see, which bases itself upon a claim or a pretense of religious authority.

Now you see how this is pictured here? The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls. That's all external glory, isn't it? That's what the world holds of value, what they like to see. And I think this is perhaps most evident in churches in the hunger after ornate and tremendously expensive and luxurious buildings.

To be blunt, I don't say that because we happen to not have the most luxurious building in the world. We happen to have a rather simple building because we're convinced that this is the truth. I remember when Dr. Oswald J. Smith, who was a great missionary statesman, was in Brazil some time ago.

Jack Wirtson was telling me that he was invited to visit one of the great Protestant churches of Brazil. Tremendous structure, huge building. And as he was taking through it, the minister was telling him all about the building and how beautiful it was and what it did.

And Dr. Smith turned to him and he said, How many missionaries does this church support? And the minister said, Well, we have one couple that we support. And Smith turned to him and said, This whole building, he said, is a stench in the nostrils of God. Because, he said, the work and the concern of God is not buildings, but people.

And a church that pours its money into buildings and not into ministry is defeating the very purpose of the God who called it. Now, I don't know what the reaction was. That was all the story that was reported to me.

I doubt if Dr. Smith was invited to speak there. But this is characteristic, you see, of Babylonianism, wherever it may be found. Now, as we read through, we discover what happens to this woman.

We're told, we've already looked at these passages concerning the beast. And, oh, let me read a little bit further here about her characteristics. She's holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication.

Now, this is religious falseness, you see. The golden cup speaks of that most intimate symbol of Christ in his church, the cup of the Lord's Supper. And that which, but this cup is full of abominations and impurities, a fornication, which speaks always in terms of religious falsehoods or wrong doctrines concerning the work and person of Christ.

Now, you can find this in any system today. Wherever there is false teaching contrary to the scriptures, especially that which touches the person and the work of Jesus Christ, you find Babylonianism. No matter what group or organization it's involved with.

That's the characteristic, you see, of this woman. And on her forehead was written the name of mystery, Babylon the Great, mother of harlots and of earth's abominations, tracing back to those original departures from the revelation of God, which came at the city of Babylon. And thus this woman is called Babylonianism wherever she appeared.

And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, showing that this system, wherever it is, wherever it appears, is always opposed to the things of true religion of God. And it will always be in opposition to those who try to make a stand for the truth of God. It always rejects the offense of the cross and exalts the flesh as opposed to the spirit.

And is very disdainful of anything that calls for genuine sacrifice, for giving up for the cause of Christ and looks upon it as foolishness and folly. We find the spirit everywhere, don't we? See, this is a system which John says will dominate, will be in widespread control of the thought of people throughout the whole of the Western civilization. And just as there is a false idea of Christian faith which is permeated and woven into the warp and woof of our economic and political structures of the Western world, so we find this woman riding in domination over the beast these days.

Now let's read of her downfall. Verse 15. And he said to me, the waters that you saw where the harlot is seated are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.

There is a widespread influence over the whole of peoples and nations, tongues. But the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the harlot. They will make her desolate and naked and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.

For God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast until the words of God shall be fulfilled. Now what's going to happen? Well, according to this, the world is going to become so sick of what they call and we call nominal Christianity, Christianity in outward form only, in all its various forms and faces, that it totally rejects it and refuses anything to do with the Christian message. Now this is a spirit which is becoming widespread in our own day.

I have talked with many intelligent people around the world who have come already to this conclusion. Right now the church and its message is a joke in many parts of the world and in the minds of many, many people. Is it not? You know them.

And it's a very little step, you see, from a church which is a joke to a church which is a menace and a rejection of that outright. And in the purpose and program of God, this is what will be permitted, is that as the Western kingdom comes to its final form, there will come an increasing hatred of the hypocrisy and the emptiness of mere Christianity without reality and there will become a rejection of the Christian message. So that I think, and more and more we can expect, that the churches will follow the pattern that we see going on in the continent, in England nowadays, that they will become increasingly empty.

And we'll see this in America before very long. It's already taken place in the continent. And that there will be literally no interest in the usual approach.

And that the work of God, therefore, is going to have to go on and will go on, of course, in quite other ways. Not so much now in church buildings as it will go on in the homes of believers and in community witness and in smaller gatherings. And this is what you see, a powerful trend in this direction developing all around the world.

You know, this kind of a meeting here today is a minority meeting in the world today among the churches. There's very few countries that this can happen in. Most of the Christians of the world today, this morning, this Lord's Day morning, are not permitted to meet in any kind of a meeting like this.

You ever thought of that? We think in terms of the life of the church as being what we experience. But we're in the minority. Most Christians don't have the freedoms that we have.

Now, that's what the Scriptures indicate will happen here, that the false form, the Babylonian spirit in the church is going to be rejected by the world. Strangely enough, anyone who has lived with worldlings, who are out-and-out worldlings, that is, who make no profession at all of faith, find an amazing hunger for honesty among them in reality. And the one thing that they can't stand above anything else is any sense of hypocrisy.

Students, for instance, reflect this strongly. The student world is a world that demands honesty. And anything that smacks of the slightest taint of stuffiness or piousness or hypocrisy is rejected right out of hand by the student mind.

And what goes on in the student world is frequently the harbinger of what is coming in the widespread area of human thinking. And I think we see these trends very strongly developing in the life of the student world today. There's a rejection of nominal Christianity, but a wide-open acceptance of that which is real.

Therefore, Christian people, you see, are called upon to demonstrate, and this is why the word continually comes back to this, this let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works, this continual manifestation of a life of faith, not just the preaching of it, not just the claiming of walking by faith, but a demonstration of it. This is always an attractive thing, so that even in our own day we're beginning to see strong trends along this line of an utter loathing of the false, the merely nominal, the external, and a ready acceptance of the real, a wide-open door and a hunger after the reality of a life of faith in Jesus Christ manifest, not going along with the same standards that the world goes for, not giving in to all the hunger after standing and prestige and so on, but just a quiet walking before God and a readiness to accept the conditions of life that he makes possible with rejoicing and gladness. This is what the world is looking for.

Now, in chapter 18, we have a very vivid description of the destruction of this woman, its effect upon the commercial life of earth, and so on. I don't think we need to go on into it at any great length, except we might just read a bit of it here in order that we might see it wrought before us, and then if you'd like to ask questions further about these things, we can. After this, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his splendor, and he called out with a mighty voice, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.

It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird. Remember the Lord Jesus in Matthew 13 told a series of parables that depicted the course of this present age, and he told of one which would be, he said, the kingdom of heaven was like a mustard seed, which was planted in the earth and is intended of God to be nothing but a lowly shrub, like the mustard that we see growing out here in the fields, nothing very important looking, very powerful in its effect to take over a field, but very unimpressive in its outward appearance. But this mustard seed grew into a great tree, he said, unnaturally, unnatural growth, under which men came and rested in its shade, and the birds, he said, built nests in its branches.

And then he interpreted that parable, and he said the birds were, he didn't interpret that specific parable, but in his interpretation of the sores, he had identified the birds as demons, demonic spirits, the spirit of false teaching, which would inhabit this great mustard tree, and would be an unnatural growth. And this is what we have confirmed here, you see. It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul and hateful bird.

For all nations have drunk the wine of her impure passion, this hunger after prestige, standing, and power, and authority in earth, politically. And the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich with the wealth of her wantonness, been commercially profitable to have this spirit. Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues, for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.

I want to pause there a moment, and point out to you that this is a word which is addressed to the people of God only at the point of the utter overthrow of this system of Babylonianism. It's not a word that's intended, as you can see, for the whole time of its duration. It's impossible, you see, for the people of God to be separate physically from Babylonianism in the world today, because it infiltrates every single system.

If you identify Babylon here with the Roman church, well then, of course, you can come out from the Roman church and be separate, but you won't be free from Babylonianism, because it's in Protestant churches just as well. So this is not a call, you see, for a separation from the world council of churches, or the Roman Catholic church, or any other system. It's a call only for the people of God to ever remain separate in their thinking and attitudes from the principles and the attitudes that are Babylonianism.

And in the final moment before its utter destruction, there is a physical separation involved, for the word is, lest you share in her plagues, for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and now the moment of destruction comes, God has remembered her iniquities. Now, this I think is very important, because there's a very false concept abroad among Christian people today that we can withdraw physically from that which is evil, and that we can isolate ourselves from that. But this is never what you find in the word of God.

God has always intended, and I think it's clear from the Scriptures, that his desire is to infiltrate every single organization, organism, political party, anything that you want to add, any of the structures and affairs of man, with true Christian faith. This is what our Lord Jesus meant when he said, in view of the coming of Christ to right the wrongs of the world, occupy till I come, he said. Now, what does that word mean, occupy? Well, we understood it during World War II very plainly, didn't we? We had armies who were armies of occupation.

What did they do? They went into a country and took over, didn't they? If they could. They were sent in to try to capture, to infiltrate, to take over a country. And this is what our Lord intends of Christian believers today, to occupy till he comes.

One of the false concepts of our day is that Christians are to continually withdraw from various evil-ass societies and keep clear out of them. Now, there are areas where, of course, you can't be identified. Certainly not.

And I'm not in any sense preaching here that we ought to go in for all the things that the world does. This is obviously wrong. But the withdrawal, the separation, is not one of isolation, but of insulation.

And it's the intent and purpose of the Holy Spirit to temper the evil of the world by the presence of salt in the midst of the corruption. That's what salt's for, isn't it? Salt up on the shelf won't keep meat from spoiling. It's salt that's rubbed down in it that keeps it from spoiling.

And the Lord Jesus said, Ye are the salt of the earth. And therefore, it's his purpose that Christian people should be placed by the direction of the Holy Spirit in all avenues, in all areas, in all aspects of life to exercise the ministry of salt for the prevention of the spread of corruption and to be a testimony, a light shining in a where? Dark place. What good are lights in light places? You need lights in dark places, don't you? That's what we have.

All right. Render to her as she herself has rendered, and repay her double for her deeds. Mix a double draught for her in the cup she mixed, as she glorified herself and played the wanton.

So give her a like measure of torment and mourning. Since in her heart she says, A queen I sit, I am no widow. Mourning I shall never see.

And this is the attitude of external religion always. It's why there's nothing going to happen to me. I'm in good standing with the people around.

I'm accepted in this community. We have an understanding with the powers around, and nothing can happen to me. And he says, the prophet says, Since in her heart she says, A queen I sit, I am no widow.

Mourning I shall never see. So shall her plagues come in a single day, pestilence and mourning and famine, and she shall be burned with fire. For mighty is the Lord God who judges her.

And the kings of the earth who committed fornication and were wanton with her will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, Alas, alas, thou great city, thou mighty city Babylon, in one hour has thy judgment come. And then we read of the commercialization, inheritedness.

The merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, all articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, and wheat, cattle, and sheep, horses, and chariots, and slaves. That is human souls. The fruit for which thy soul longed is gone from thee, and all thy dainties and all thy splendor are lost to thee, never to be found again.

Alas, alas. And so the cry goes up here, that this has been the system of false religion, substituting external dependence upon externals for true faith in a living Christ, and using that to gain an authority over the peoples around in order that they might obtain earthly prestige and glory. That's Babylon.

Now, any questions on this? I can picture it. It's rather adamant. It's a big red convertible.

It might be. Isn't Antichrist and Babylon the same thing? No, not exactly. Antichrist is the political forces at work, while Babylon here is religious forces.

Those two distinctions. Yes? Yes, because it was through the city of Rome that the false religious ideas that I've spoken of as Babylonianism were injected into the Christian situation and given Christian terms and Christian ideals and so on. This is true.

And that's why it was when Constantine became emperor of the Roman Empire and also head of the church that many of these ideas crept in. You see, although the reformers set the Protestant churches free to a great extent from many of the basic errors of Rome, they didn't set free from all of them. And much of Roman errors of concepts of what faith is and what the purpose and the place of sacraments are and so on have carried over strongly and infected Protestant churches too.

There was no clear and utter break with some of these Babylonian-ish ideas. And Babylonianism now has spread as rapidly through the Protestant churches as it ever has through the Catholic churches, and is as rampant and as evil and as widespread here as it is there. You can't distinguish between the two.

It shows that there is a control being exercised by this false force, and you certainly see this in the continual political influence that is exercised by churches in governmental affairs, by means of maneuvering, power-pulling, lobbying, and this sort of thing. Now, this was never intended for the church. Christians now, don't misunderstand, are to exercise political influence in their vote and in their normal channels of citizenship.

They're to do that, but not as churches. This is what Babylonianism is. Well, the beast is right here on Earth right now, has been for 20 centuries.

It's this Western civilization. It heads up finally in a single individual who reflects the ideas that have been gathering for 20 centuries, and he is also called the beast, referred to here as an individual. But the great beast which woman rides here is the total ideas and formats of Western civilization.

It's right in the world today. It will be the final form of this empire, which evidently looks like it will be 10 nations who band together in a common agreement, and three of them, we're told, lose their identity completely in this agreement and give up their sovereignty to one who becomes the leader of them. And I suppose we're seeing forerunners of this in the pressures today in the European common market, this type of thing.

It strongly looks that way. Any other questions? Is the beast here right now? The beast is both the whole political makeup of the Western world from the time of the introduction of the Roman Empire to our present day and on to the coming of Christ, but it also heads up finally in one single individual who is called the antichrist. You see what I mean? He will be received as the one who is the fulfiller of the prophecies of the Messiah in the eyes of the Jews and will be worshipped as an actual person.

Just as Christ, you see, in his person, gathers up all the ideals of God for man and becomes representative man in terms of what God intended man to be. Yet he's one person. He gathers up all that God ever intended man to be and all that man ought to have been was represented in Jesus Christ.

So the antichrist, as a person, gathers up all that is false in man and represents it as all that man became contrary to what God intended him to be. See? And thus stands for that, yes? Well, that is, if he is the one to do this, then that's typical of the Jewish nation. You would be a Jewish brother.

There is some question on this. There are certain verses that seem to suggest that, but it's not necessarily true. And even among the Jews today, there's widespread diversion on this idea.

Some think that he must be a Jew by birth. Others say no, that this is a recognition that the Jews are losing their nationalistic demands and recognizing that God can work through another as well. That's hard to establish that point.

There's another person, the false prophet, we'll see, that works with him here. And we'll look at that next week. By the way, I should say a word about next week.

I won't be here next week. I'll be in Mexico. And the class here will be taught by Mr. Rod Johnson, who is a young life missionary in France and will have with him a chaplain of the French army in Algiers.

And they have some very interesting inside reports to give you of life in France and what's going on in these countries. And then I'll be back the following week. Yes? Well, fellowship with the works of darkness means to agree with the attitudes and the outlooks of those who hold these.

And this we're not to have anything to do with. But it's one thing to disagree with the principles and the outlooks and the attitudes of a person and quite another thing to have some contact with them and talk with them. Paul says in one place, writing to the Corinthians, he said, I forbid you to have anything to do with adulterers and with fornicators.

But he said, not of the fornicators and adulterers of the world, he said. You can't. Otherwise, you'd have to go out of the world.

You'd have to leave the world some way. But he said, if a brother is called, then you're not to have anything to do with it. That is, if a Christian becomes involved in these things, the area of Christian withdrawal is within the church, not from those outside the church.

It's only we withdraw from those who are temporarily disobedient to the profession that they've made and only for the purpose that they may ultimately be restored and be received back again. But all withdrawal in the New Testament is within the limits of the church and has nothing to do with the world around. And our Lord demonstrated this so clearly when he came and ate with publicans and sinners and went into their homes and was invited to their feasts and attended their dinners and aroused the opposition of the Pharisees who objected to this because they felt that he should be separate from them in that isolated sense, which is always a false sense.

What do you think? You say that Babylon has come down, but I've heard several ministers talk about Easter being very pagan. No, I don't think so. These are of pagan origin, there's no doubt about that.

But in themselves, they've long since lost any connotations of that type. And it's no more pagan than using the names of the days of the week, for instance. Do you ever know where they originated? Sunday is the day of the god of the sun, you see.

Monday is the moon day, where we worship the moon god. You do this, don't you? Wednesday is Woden's day, the worship of the god of war, of the Norse people. Thor's day? Thor's day.

Now, is it wrong to use those? No, there's nothing violating that. They were of pagan origin, but they're utterly meaningless in that respect today. All right, I guess our time is up.

I see all the other sheep getting out of the fold. Let's bow together in prayer.