Mystery Babylon in the New Testament (2)

I don’t love boring post titles like this one. However, in this case the alternative was my working title, Babylon 5. You can thank me later.

Yes, this series has run longer than expected. We are done today. In yesterday’s post, we briefly examined the current frontrunners for the real-world, present-day religious and political entity toward which scripture’s “mystery Babylon” symbolism is pointing us. Eschatologists in the Reformed tradition put forward apostate Judaism as its prime candidate, while the more popular names in the Dispensationalist school have historically envisioned Roman Catholicism in the role of the great prostitute seated on many waters or, as John refers to her, “Babylon the great”.

Hey, we’re Protestants. We have to protest something. Or someone. And yes, I know more than a few saved Catholics. Let’s not go there.

Mystery Babylon in the New Testament (1)

The New Testament writers reference Babylon 11 times. The first four mentions are purely historical, denoting the ancient city and its empire. My interest today is in the final seven, which talk about a Babylon that has endured throughout history. Six of these are in Revelation.

Few attentive readers of scripture doubt that John’s usage of “Babylon” in Revelation is primarily or exclusively symbolic. It has to be. The city was a ruin then and remains one today, buried under millennia of dirt. The empire is long gone. To the extent that Babylon continues to be a factor in our world, it is primarily a spiritual and philosophical influence rather than a visible political entity. I’ve been calling her “mystery Babylon”, not least because interpreters of scripture struggle to determine exactly where and how the Babylonian spirit currently manifests and how it will manifest in the end times. That is certainly mysterious.

Of course, there are always opinions about it. One favorite speculation over the centuries has been that Roman Catholicism is mystery Babylon.

The Spirit and Destiny of Mystery Babylon

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality.”

It’s not enough for the chronic sinner to quietly sin in a corner. Whatever tattered shreds of conscience he retains will trouble him just enough that he must rationalize his behavior, and that requires seeking the validation of others.

To secure their approval, he needs them to be thinking the same way he does. The quickest way to pervert their intellects along the same lines as his own twisted reasoning is to introduce them to his favorite sin, so they can experience the very same sort of moral tension with which he is struggling. So the sinner in the corner becomes the cause of stumbling in the public square, and sin spreads. Maybe if everybody’s doing it, it won’t feel so bad.

Mystery Babylon in the Old Testament

Looks like this is turning into at least a three-parter. I’ll post the next instalment this coming Sunday, LW. Meantime, we should have a look at three significant Old Testament passages that almost surely informed the writings of Peter and John about what we might call “mystery Babylon”, the spiritual descendant of the Chaldean-controlled city that was both the enemy of Israel and the enemy of her God.

The writers of the New Testament were comfortable with the idea of Babylon as a spirit, temperament or idea, one that promotes the glory of man rather than the glory of God.

Not Just an Excuse to Babylon

The writers of scripture use the Hebrew/ Aramaic word translated “Babylon” or “Babel” nearly 300 times between Genesis and Revelation. That’s an awful lot of references to look up. If you had asked me before I looked which book of the Bible mentions that great city the most, I would have bet on one of the OT historical books. In fact, almost half the Strong’s entries are in Jeremiah, of all places (141). 2 Kings is a distant second with 28. Revelation, which dedicates parts of three chapters to her, has only six.

At some point, the attentive Bible student says to himself, “Hmm, Babylon is actually a major theme of scripture. Maybe I should look into that.” All right then. I hope you’ll find it’s not just an excuse for me to … babble on.

On Being Babylonian

If you’ve been paying attention to politics in Europe and south of the border, you’ll know that the so-called rules-based international order — the neo-liberal status quo in the West — is staggering around like a drunk looking for somewhere quiet to vomit. Tens of millions of voters across Europe, Canada and the US simply aren’t buying anything their leaders are telling them anymore.

Projecting power around the globe ain’t what it used to be, folks.

An Unfortunate Beverage

“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the wrath of her sexual immorality.”

It’s not enough for the chronic sinner to quietly sin in a corner. Whatever tattered shreds of conscience he retains will trouble him just enough that he must rationalize his behavior, and that requires seeking the validation of others.

To secure their approval, he needs them to be thinking the same way he does. The quickest way to pervert their intellects along the same lines as his own twisted reasoning is to introduce them to his favorite sin, so they can experience the very same sort of moral tension with which he is struggling. So the sinner in the corner becomes the cause of stumbling in the public square, and sin spreads. Maybe if everybody’s doing it, it won’t feel so bad.

Mining the Minors: Habakkuk (3)

So far, Habakkuk’s prophecy has taken the form of a Q&A session with God. The prophet has bemoaned God’s apparent lack of interest in the perversion of justice and corruption within his nation. God has replied that it’s actually going to get worse before it gets better: he is in the process of raising up the Chaldeans and using them to discipline his arrogant and erring people.

Naturally, that revelation provokes further questions.

Mining the Minors: Habakkuk (2)

Manifest Destiny was an ideology promoted by newspaper editor John L. O’Sullivan in the 1850s in order to justify the annexation of Texas and Oregon by the United States. He maintained it was God’s will for the new nation to expand “from sea to shining sea”. Though contested by some, his idea had sufficient currency to get itself trotted out repeatedly to validate the acquisitions of New Mexico and California, and later the purchase of Alaska.

All Manifest Destiny really means is “It should be obvious we deserve whatever we want.” But attaching God’s name to it was magic in selling it to the nation.

Mining the Minors: Micah (19)

Last week we suggested that in his final chapter, Micah is speaking with the voice of Israel’s remnant in a manner that may be understood both historically and prophetically.

Both ways of looking at the chapter were predictive at the time these words were given to Micah to share with his nation, but they were fulfilled with respect to the first timeframe, and still await fulfillment in the second. One is a matter of history, and we can look back through the later prophets and historians of the Old Testament to see how the things Micah predicted occurred roughly a century afterward.

The second way of looking at the chapter connects it with the book of Revelation.

Flood Myth-takes

It is often said today that the flood account in Genesis is spiritual truth taught in the form of myth. Confronted with the claims of secular scientists about the age of the earth and of humanity, many Christians have beaten a hasty retreat from reading Genesis literally into reading it more like one of Jesus’ parables: it means something important, sure — just not quite what it says.

I say meh to that.

A Tale of Two Floods

Scratched into twelve clay tablets in cunieform script, the ancient Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh is thought to be the oldest written story in existence. Well, parts of it anyway. It recounts the adventures of a quasi-historical king of Uruk believed to have ruled around 2700 B.C. Tablet XI of the Epic contains one of three surviving Babylonian flood stories, each of which has a number of elements in common with the Genesis flood account.

The Gilgamesh account is only one of many flood myths found in various ancient cultures around the world. Christians who discover the spate of other flood stories in circulation are alternately reassured and disconcerted: reassured because one might reasonably expect a genuine historical event to wind up recorded in more than a single place, even if grossly distorted by time, miscommunication and cultural baggage; disconcerted because not a few of these flood stories are alleged to be older than the story in Genesis.

Should we be reassured or concerned? Let’s consider.