Rut said:
How can we check the history? Rev is about the future
Rev 1:1 What evidence do we have that Babylon is Rome?
Just a few historical references:
istorical proofs such as Alexander Hislop's "The Two Babylons: Or, The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife" (1853) demonstrate to the willing mind the certain connection of Ancient Babylon to the final form of the One World Religion ruled by the False Prophet, who "causeth the Earth and them which dwell therein to worship" (Revelation 13:12) the Antichrist. Hislop's classic work focuses on "Rome [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church] as the Apocalyptic Babylon". He concludes, "Let every Christian henceforth and for ever treat it as an outcast from the pale of Christianity. Instead of speaking of it as a Christian Church, let it be recognised and regarded as the Mystery of Iniquity, yea, as the very Synagogue of Satan." "Come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues" (18:4).
While waiting for the papal bull to reach him, Luther published "The Babylonish Captivity of the Church" on October 6th 1520. Luther wrote, "I denied that the Papacy was of Divine origin, but I granted that it was of human right. Now, after reading all the subtleties on which these gentry have set up their idol, I know that the Papacy is none other than the kingdom of Babylon, and the violence of Nimrod the mighty hunter [WStS emphasis]. I therefore beseech all my friends and all the booksellers to burn the books that I have written on this subject, and to substitute this one proposition in their place: The Papacy is a general chase led by the Roman bishop to catch and destroy souls" (Wylie, Volume 1, Book 6, Chapter 2, p. 489). Luther understood that Romanism is identified with Babylon the Great. "Even a child is known by his doings, whether his work be pure, and whether it be right" (Proverbs 20:11).
About this same time (October 1520), Luther wrote a letter to Pope Leo X. The following are excerpts of that letter: "It is true that I have attacked the court of Rome; but neither yourself nor any man living can deny that there is greater corruption in it than was in Sodom and Gomorrah, and that the impiety that prevails makes cure hopeless. Yes, I have been horrified in seeing how, under your name, the poor followers of Christ were deceived
You know it. Rome has for many years been inundating the world with whatever could destroy both soul and body. The Church of Rome, formerly the first in holiness, has become a den of robbers, a place of prostitution, a kingdom of death and hell; so that Antichrist himself, were he to appear, would be unable to increase the amount of wickedness. All this is as clear as day... You should perish by poison even before you could try any remedy. It is all over with the court of Rome. The wrath of God has overtaken and will consume it. It hates counselit fears reformit will not moderate the fury of its ungodliness; and hence it may be justly said of it as of its mother: We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healedforsake her [Jeremiah 51:9]" (Wylie, Volume 1, Book 6, Chapter 2, pp. 491-492).
Pastor Charles Chiniquy (1809-1899)-- a former Roman Catholic priest, who for 25 years zealously promoted Catholicism in Canada and the United States of America-- offered us this clue to the identity of Babylon the Great in the Dedication of his book, "Fifty Years in the Church of Rome" (1886): "Rome is the great danger ahead for the Church of Christ, and you do not understand it enough... The atmosphere of light, honesty, truth, and holiness in which you are born, and which you have breathed since your infancy, makes it almost impossible for you to realize the dark mysteries of idolatry, immorality, degrading slavery, hatred of the Word of God, concealed behind the walls of that Modern Babylon [WStS emphasis added]... It is that ignorance which paves the way to the triumph of Rome, in a near future, if there is not a complete change in your views on that subject... It is that ignorance which paralyses the arm of the Church of Christ, and makes the glorious word "Protestant" senseless, almost a dead and ridiculous word. For who does really protest against Rome today? where are those who sound the trumpet of alarm?... modern Protestants have not only forgotten what Rome was, what she is, and what she will for ever be; the most irreconcilable and powerful enemy of the Gospel of Christ; but they consider her almost as a branch of the church whose corner stone is Christ." "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3). "Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure" (2Timothy 2:19). And, "I will build My Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).
[Read in Chiniquy's substantial work, "Fifty Years in the Church of Rome" ---New Window, his firsthand insights into the workings of the Church of Rome, and see if indeed the "leopard [has changed] his spots" (Jeremiah 13:23).]
Protestant Reformation
Some pre-
Reformation writers and most of the Reformers themselves, from
Martin Luther (who wrote
On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church),
John Calvin, and
John Knox (who wrote
The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women) identify the
Roman Catholic Church with the harlot of Babylon. This opinion influenced several generations in
England and
Scotland when it was put into the
1599 edition of the
Geneva Bible. As a tradition, it continues through
Scofield Reference Bible (whose
1917 edition identified "ecclesiastical Babylon" with "apostate Christendom headed by the
Papacy") and pro-Reformation writings such as those of
I.M. Haldeman, and it is kept alive by contemporary figures such as
Ian Paisley and
Jack Chick. The "drunkenness with the blood of saints and martyrs", by this interpretation, refers to the
veneration of
saints and
relics, which is viewed by the Reformers as
idolatry and
apostasy. Those who accept this tradition use the phrase "harlot of Babylon" to refer to the Roman Catholic Church.
The Protestant reformers were not the first people to call the Roman Catholic Church the harlot of Babylon. There was a fairly long tradition of this kind of name-calling by opponents of the Papacy.
Frederick Barbarossa published missives that called the Papacy the harlot of Babylon, and the
Pope the Antichrist, during the course of his protracted quarrel with
Pope Alexander III.
Dante equated the
corruption and
simony in the office of the Papacy with the harlot of Babylon in Canto 19 of his
Inferno:
Di voi pastor s'accorse il Vangelista,
quando colei che siede sopra l'acque
puttaneggiar coi regi a lui fu vista. . .
("Shepherds like you the Evangelist had in mind when he saw the one that sits upon the waters committing fornication with the kings.")
When the
Florentine tyrant
Girolamo Savonarola also called the Papacy the harlot of Babylon, he meant something closer to the Reformers' usage. These claims, however, were based chiefly on social and political disagreements with Roman Catholic policy, or at their strongest accuse the Papacy of moral corruption. The Protestant reformers, by contrast, seriously considered the Papacy to be at least potentially the apocalyptic figure mentioned in Bible prophecy, and included the claim in Bible commentaries as well as polemics. They meant something more than to accuse the Roman Catholic Church of political or moral corruption; they claimed that as a church it taught a
Satanic counterfeit plan of
salvation, one that would lead its faithful to
Hell rather than to
Heaven.
Check the dates this belief is not new. Many denominations still believe this is true.
