BIBLE CALLS CATHOLICISM THE WHORE OF BABYLON

FIRST

The Bible warns against the Whore of Babylon. 

Babylon is Rome.  Attempts to make out it means Jerusalem or the real Babylon are far-fetched.  For example, both Rome and Jerusalem rest on seven small mountains or hills and yet Catholicism wants you to think only of the latter!  It says Rome is not the whore for her hills are not big enough!  If it is not Rome then it's not Jerusalem either if the diminutive size of the hills is that important!  Also, Ezekiel 16:28, 30, Jeremiah. 3:1, 6, 8 state that Babylon will judge the whore that is Jerusalem.  We know the author of Revelation who mined the Old Testament for prophetic symbols that he could borrow for his own book would not have used Babylon for Jerusalem.  He could not.

The whore's name is mystery Babylon - she is singular.  She is not mysteries.  And the Bible uses the word mystery for religion and what is spiritual.  She is a religion.

I do not believe any Bible prophet was able to foresee the future. The belief that they could has caused untold damage with its influence on politics especially in relation to Israel and Babylon. We have seen the harm this has resulted in for Iraq and Palestine. It's entirely possible that mad Christian fundamentalist President George Bush may have attacked Iraq more because Saddam Hussein was rebuilding Babylon in contradiction of Bible prophecy than for any other reason. Yet you can’t be a true Christian if you disown these vile and bloodthirsty activities. The crafty pope doesn’t remind his prospective converts of that!
 
The most bizarre fact is that Bible prophecies that condemn the Roman Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon and the pope as one who leads you away from the real Jesus are spot on the mark as regards seeing events that hadn’t happened yet though they were written before the Roman Church was founded by`the Emperor Constantine and Pope Damasus I when they pulled a lump of the Church away from its roots forming another Church that claimed identity with the old. I am not saying the Roman Church is the whore of Babylon but that the Bible says it. This would mean that every member of the Roman Church and Anglo-Catholics and Eastern Orthodox who are close in theology to the Roman Church are members of the whore. They are parts of her body. They are evil according to the Bible and whoever befriends them is also accused by this book of being evil (2 John 10,11). It implies that the pope should be opposed like he was the Devil himself for he is the head of the Devil’s organisation. He is the ringleader.

Constantine had a menu of Christianities and he chose the one that was mostly in favour with his brutalistic military.  The thought of blood and setting up a killing machine was never far from his mind.  He was a Roman Emperor and a fake Christian and thus was like the beast 666 that Revelation warns about.  This beast is Emperor Nero but is a model for the Roman Emperors including Constantine.  His masterpiece is the religious blood-drinking whore that Revelation tells us about.
 
The whore is the mother of harlots or temple prostitutes. That is a way of saying that she is the worst of them all. The word for harlot is kedeshah which means a woman who as a priestess, devotes herself to prostitution as an act of worship for bad goddesses such as Astarte. The whore is definitely a religious entity.
 
The book of Revelation written by John of Patmos, the last book of the Bible, is accepted by Christians as the word of God and infallible. The book is addressed to the Churches of Asia and not to the whole Church. It was not addressed to the Roman Church which as we will see will prove significant as it considers that Church to be Satan's filthy whore.
 
WHORE OF BABYLON IS A RELIGION
 
Those who interpret Revelation as pointing the finger at the Roman Church as the whore of Babylon do so because the book says that the visions in it will be fulfilled soon (Revelation 22:6). Accordingly, they hold that the whore was to come soon after the Book of Revelation was finished which matches the arrival of the Roman Catholic Church.

John saw the whore and she was drunk with blood and said he was totally astonished (17.6) at this. This indicates that it was a professing Christian Church that was behaving this way for he knew the true Christians would be persecuted in great numbers so the organisation that was doing the killing must have been the surprise bit. He knew the Roman Empire too well to be surprised about anything it got up to. It was not merely a political or commercial empire. Even if you think it was the blood that he was shocked to the uttermost by it is clear that Christian Rome killed more Christian people than pagan Rome ever did. Besides Revelation says it was seeing her that was the shock. He was shocked that a Church could have done this.  Some assert that the whore does not kill but she is behind the deaths of the innocent which is why she is drunk with blood.  If so then she is definitely a religion and not pagan Rome.  Judaism killed believers so the whore cannot be Jerusalem if she does not kill but gets somebody else to do the dirty work.
 
The Catholic Church is a political and commercial entity as well as a religious one. The once Catholic always Catholic line of thinking is pure politics. Maybe with a religious flavour - but still totally political. To say, "You were once a member of the Catholic denomination by Catholic baptism so you are a Catholic forever", is pure politics because if saying it was motivated by the spiritual one would say, "You were once given to Jesus in baptism - therefore you are obligated to stay united with him forever". Catholic is only a label. Just as Lutherans got the label of Lutheran, the Catholic Church can stop calling itself the Catholic Church. It could call itself the Church of Christ. The term Catholic only singles out one aspect of the Church. The Church has four marks it says. It says it is one and holy and Catholic and apostolic. It could be called the Holy Church if it wanted to be.
 
The kings of the earth commit fornication with the whore so she is not just a political empire. If she were, the kings would be described as part of her not outsiders that come to her for sinful delight to fornicate with her. The whore symbolises an evil spiritual empire with tremendous political influence and power. The fornication refers to spiritual fornication – turning away from God to make spiritual union with his enemy. “The great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication." (Rev. 17:1-2 KJV). The kings of the earth joined Catholic Rome willingly. Pagan Rome used force. The kings cannot be described as fornicating with her.
 
The whore is drunk with the blood of the saints and she makes the nations drunk with her fornication and disobedience of God. An empire could not be described as making the world drunk but a religion can. A religion claims the right to order you what to believe and tries to make you addicted to its claims and "services".
 
The fornication is a symbol from Isaiah 1:21; Jeremiah 3:6-10, 13; Ezekiel 16:15-17, 28, 29, 38; Hosea 6:10; 7:11; 8:9, 10 for God’s people coming under the influence of pagan religion. The whore was Christian and became more and more pagan until she was a harlot not a Church.
 
When Babylon the Great falls the merchants of the earth stand watching and mourn (Revelation 18:15). Rome was always a commercial empire and Jerusalem never was - reminding us the whore is Rome not Jerusalem. Roman Catholicism enables many people to make money out of it and it has the greatest potential wealth in the world for if it needed any amount of money the faithful would give it. The whore is very wealthy (Revelation 18:17). Pagan Rome might have had more wealth to squander than Catholic Rome assuming the latter’s whining about running at a deficit is true but Rome is the centre of the richest Church in the world. It is all one Church with loads of money. And then there is the matter of the priceless treasures of the Church!
 
Revelation 18:13 says the merchants of the whore sell souls as well. This refers to the whore’s diabolical spiritual activities.  

The whore boasts that she is queen and carries a chalice and gets venerated so clearly she looks like she is written with the Virgin Mary, the Catholic mother goddess in mind.  Mary is the Queen of Heaven and the Mother of the Church so the Catholic Church uses her as a symbol for herself and a representative.  The condemnations of the whore infer terrible things about Jesus' mother.  A truly good woman would not be used as an emblem of the filthy whore.  The whore is unaware of her own sins just like the Catholic version of Mary, regarded as a sinless woman, is.

Why does Revelation call Perganum the seat of Satan?  The book says that Jerusalem is Sodom and speaks of the great whore in Rome.  It refutes the notion that Jerusalem or Rome is the centre of evil in the present tense.  Jerusalem is not the whore of Babylon that the book talks about for it would be named as the seat of Satan if it were.  It is hard to know why Perganum could be called seat of Satan and shows that statements such as Jesus calling Peter the rock are not to be taken too literally.  Peter being the seat of the Church is not literal.  Or you may say that rock does not mean he is the seat or throne or head of the Church.  If the whore is future Rome then it does not matter what "Thou art Peter" means for papal Rome is condemned.
 

THE WHORE IS A MOTHER CHURCH

The whore is sure that she is a queen not a widow and secure on her throne she will never know suffering or sorrow (Revelation 18:7).  Those who say that she is Jerusalem and is calling herself a widow for she killed her spiritual husband Jesus are ignoring the fact that this would be too far-fetched of an interpretation for the Jews did not kill Jesus - Rome did.  The last thing she would do if she hated Jesus is protest too much.  In fact as Jesus is sacrificed on Catholic altars the Roman Catholic Church is a more logical fit!  And as the successor of pagan Rome pretending to be a Church the case can be considered closed: Roman Catholicism is the whore.

Her boast that she is queen and protected magically from suffering and that she is secure on her throne - the papacy claims to be the rock the Church is built on that cannot perish - can only describe a religion which feels sure that it has supernatural protection. A political empire will not describe itself as a not being a widow but a religion will and the Church of Rome claims to be the Bride of Christ. No pagan religion claimed to be the bride of any God or his wife – Roman Catholicism is the only religion that was ever run from Rome that did. Her boast, “No widow am I”, is an odd thing to say. It's like something a religion that claimed its husband came back from the dead in a resurrection would say.

One of the main claims of the Roman Catholic Church is that it is mother and the spiritual queen of God’s reign on earth and will never depart from the faith or be utterly destroyed. Revelation certainly cannot mean that the queen expects no suffering or sorrow at all. It must but it means it expects nothing major. This fits the Roman Catholic Church.
 
Lets retrace.  The whore boasts that she is not a widow (Revelation 18:7). The boast is important. Her husband is dead or has been. You would only boast about not being a widow if people had reason to think you were. Perhaps the spouse had returned from the dead. She is saying her spouse is alive or risen from the dead and that is why she is not a widow. The whore therefore claims to be the bride of Christ just like the Catholic Church does. Pagan Rome had a lot of theological flexibility and so does New Age religion which is why they are not the whore for the whore claims to be the bride of one dying and rising god. Roman Catholicism makes a profession of faith to one God, Jesus. Why does she boast about being married? There is something very impressive about the marriage. She seems to be claiming to be married to the Son of God, Jesus. Her boast would indicate that her not being a widow is uniquely remarkable. It is a hint that there is more than just a husband who was mistakenly thought to be dead here. It's more like she is bombastic because he died and made her a widow and she is not a widow anymore for he rose from the dead.

The whore is contrasted with the Bride of Christ which means the true followers of Jesus. It is called the whore because instead of following Jesus it turned away from him to whoredom with Satan. A prostitute is always a good woman at first so it refers to an apostate Church. It is the whore for it has no excuse for having turned bad for it had the gospel and still retains some of it so it is not pagan Rome that the Book of Revelation is about. The whore is called a whore because she is unfaithful and you can’t be faithful unless you were faithful first. The whore is talked about like a female because it claims to be the bride of Christ. Also, Romanism claims to be the Holy Mother Church while the harlot is the mother of harlots according to Revelation 17. If the Book of Revelation is prophetic it must refer to the Roman Church or a new Roman Church that will be headquartered in Rome. (Some Catholics say it refers to a future fake and apostate Roman Catholic Church that will boot the true Roman Church out of Rome.) Which? It cannot refer to anything other than Roman Catholicism for why wait for a new candidate when the existing one ticks all the right boxes for being the whore?

SHE RIDES THE BEAST

The Church in her beauty rides on the back of the Devil the great beast who the book of Revelation says will eventually turn on her and destroy her.  Thus the Catholic argument that Satan hates the Catholic Church could corroborate that!  The Bible hates the whore too: "Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself."The cup is the innocent blood she shed so if she gets a double taste of her own medicine from her chalice that means her members are getting persecuted probably in a bloody world war or something.

FINALLY

You cannot really believe the Bible if you ignore what it says about the impending Christianity of Rome.  The guesses were very accurate and it's not the first time somebody was able to guess well without being a prophet! 
 
WORKS CONSULTED
 
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ALL ONE BODY – WHY DON’T WE AGREE? Erwin W Lutzer, Tyndale, Illinois, 1989
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DAWN OR TWILIGHT? HM Carson, IVP, Leicester, 1976
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The WWW
 
www.biblelight.net/keating.htm
A Challenge to Catholic Apologist Karl Keating

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