Can someone explain Babylon the Great?

MichaelM

I want to know what you guys believe "Babylon the Great" is. The witnesses told me its all false religions and is described as some woman on a beast with many heads and some chalice or something symbolizing all false religion. I think that was the jist of it

quietlyleaving

When I was first researching I concluded that Babylon the Great was Apostate Christianity. Some commentators thought she was Jerusalem.

Nowadays I see revelation as relevant to the time period that it was written in and as being fulfilled then.

best wishes on your journey

emptywords

don't know the main stream religions see BTG to be, the Christadelphins believe it to be the Catholic Church, the JW as you would know see it to be all religion that is not JW, especially christedom.

Narkissos

Every reader in the late 1st or early 2nd century could understand it was a representation of Rome (pictured as the goddess Roma sitting on seven hills, having the empire over the kings of the earth, etc.).

Once you dismiss this contextual answer anything becomes possible, as the history of interpretation shows...

snowbird

To quote Narkissos:

Once you dismiss this contextual answer anything becomes possible, as the history of interpretation shows...

Amen to that. As Ray Franz calls it "interpretive flights of fancy."

Snowbird

sweet pea

Michael, if you want a great bible that explains what most people with faith (except those in cults...) are guided to believe about the scriptures, get yourself a Life Application Study Bible (it will blow you away!). Here's the explanation it gives for Rev 14:8..

"Babylon was the name of both an evil city and an immoral empire, a world center for idol worship. Babylon ransacked Jerusalem and carried the people of Judea into captivity (see 2 Kings 24 and 2 chronicles 36). Just as Babylon was the Jews' worst enemy, the Roman Empire was the worst enemy of the early Christians. John, who probably did not dare speak against Rome openly, applied the name Babylon to this enemy of God's people (Rome)-and, by extension, to all God's enemies of all times."

So, there you have it. It's not just JW's who know their bible :-) . There's a lot of very clued up people of faith out there - just walk into a Christian bookshop and you will be overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of information there - it makes a mockery of JW's claim that the FDS provides spiritual food at the proper time (rather it provides extremely biased, mind controlling, patronising drivel much of the time - sorry Dad if you're reading this).

LiveLife

Michael,

Why would anyone be required to have an explanation for everything Scriptural in order to debunk an explanation they are handed? Nothing in the Bible says Babylon the Great is the "world empire of false religion" so their positive assertion is falsified by a simple lack of evidence in favor of the assertion. They are easily proved to have interpreted Scripture without any basis whatsoever—what they would call "human interpretation."

They say they believe that interpretations belong to God. But they also believe God reveals things to the faithful and discreet slave (the remnant of the 144,000). And they also believe they must accept these revelations as though they were directly from God. Lastly, they believe that the faithful and discreet slave are nothing more than fallible men who can make mistakes in their understanding of things.

The upshot of it is, they believe that either God cannot communicate clearly enough or that the faithful and discreet slave cannot understand clearly enough to get all the revelations from God correctly revealed, but that Jehovah's Witnesses should behave as though the FDS never gets it flat wrong.

I can explain Babylon the Great from the JW perspective. From my own perspective, there is no need for a Christian to care what Babylon the Great "represents" in our present day and plenty of reason to suspect it doesn't represent anything at all in our present day.

Christianity does not depend and never has depended on an ability to accurately interpret Biblical symbolism. Once again, JWs confuse the issue of Christianity by missing the point entirely. Christianity is about relationship with Christ.

Live Life

ninja

This is just some thoughts I have been having recently.......Babylon the great is called the "MOTHER" of the harlots and killer of the prophets.....this harlot has killed the prophets throughout the ages....she also has "MYSTERY" written on her forehead.....the mystery religions ....where one can only find inner secrets through initiations and blood oaths have been around since the earliest times....you can find it today in freemasonry and among other secret fraternities...it has involvement in the catholic church "P2" through the banco ambrosiano scandal...see "P2" in wikipedia...the mormon church was started by Joseph Smith (a known mason)....there are even the threads here that pop up every now and then that hint at CT Russell being a mason....George W Bush is a member of "skull and bones" (another secret fraternity at yale university) along with the man who contended for the presidency with him...John Kerry............freemasonry and the mystery religions seem to have quite a bit of influence in Governmental and religious affairs.......my problem with it is......the god of freemasonry is LUCIFER.....google "mystery religions" and "freemasonry" and have a read for yourself

blondie

The WTS once taught that Babylon the Great was the Catholic papacy. In recent days, "the worldwide system of false religion," translation: every religion but the WTS. The WTS believes the "great tribulation" begins with the destruction of BTG and follows with Armageddon where the remainder of non-jws will be destroyed.

Can someone explain Babylon the Great?

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