How can Babylon the Great be the WORLD of false religion? (page 3)

NotFormer

blondie, the change from "not a religion" to "a religion" is interesting. It was obviously a holdover from Rutherford's "a snare and a racket" that they didn't use the term for themselves. So why, a bit after Rutherford was safely off the scene, did they suddenly allow themselves to be labelled as such?

A guess would be that the perpetually smoking gun of their charitable status (thanks to Vidiot for constantly pointing that out) is involved. That for registration as a 501c charity, (or to register with some other government body) they needed to use particular wording, religion being one such word. The word was going to show up on searchable documents, so they wisely announced their change of tack.

They did something similar in the 90s with the whole UN thing, but interestingly, weren't as forthcoming, and got caught.

Why did they make an honest change in the 50s, but didn't do so in the 90s? In the 80s or early 90s they could have had new light that the UN was not the beast after all, and then them writing positive articles about the UN wouldn't have been so jarring.

Vidiot

At the time, there were a lot more JW lifers still alive, who’d cut their teeth on WT oracle Fred Franz’ Cold-War-centric End Times script … my Dad knew it backwards and forwards (and by extension, so did I). A change-up that radical would have alienated too many of ‘em at once, and the Org was way slower to risk that kind of thing back then.

Not to mention that Franz left no protege after he kicked the bucket, and most of the really creative thinkers had been purged out of Bethel during the apostate witch-hunts of the late 70s and early 80s… IMO, it’s doubtful they could’ve come up with a plausible alternative “understanding” even if they’d wanted to.

And, also, I think some of ‘em just liked it… viewing the United Nations as the Wild Beast was something unique to JWs, not to mention useful… since their eschatology didn’t have an actual “Antichrist”-type individual*, the UN could stand in as an actual, tangible villain in their narrative.

*that the rank-and-file might be tempted to spend endless hours trying to identify, the same way thousands of other American fundagelicals have been doing for the past fucking century. 🙄

Diogenesister

Jeffro Ridiculous historical revisionism. The ‘Bible Students’ didn’t regard 1919 as any special ‘release’ from ‘Babylon the Great’ at all, and they held many beliefs at the time (some of which weren’t changed until decades after) that JWs now regard as ‘false religion’.

I know. I'm kinda surprised they're still doubling down on that 1919 stuff....you'd think they'd be quietly trying to drop it. Or at least not mention it.

Jeffro

Jeffro:

‘Babylon the Great’ was Rome.

peacefulpete:

The final redactor no doubt had contemporary Roman events in mind, but theunderlying texts were thoroughly Jewish and likely predate 70CE.

The initial chapters and much of the end times elements of Revelation were almost certainly from other Jewish works, some of which could predate 70, to which references to Roman opposition and imagined divine punishment were added. The parts about ‘beasts’ (alluding to various emperors and the empire itself) and references to time periods (in reference to the tribulation from 66-70) were necessarily later additions.

In its present form, ‘Babylon the Great’ unequivocally refers to Rome (at the time of writing). Whether there was some earlier work that referred to Jerusalem as ‘Babylon the Great’ is impossible to say, but the presentation in what we have as Revelation is not about Jerusalem.

mikeflood

Ohhh,...some unbalanced Borg member use to say "if it's not the religion, it's Wall Street and the financial system".

Like somebody said , they could change the 'interpretation' any time, no excuses.

Jeffro

LeeMerk:

Babylon (Babel) was the original kingdom that setup its opposition to God.

No.

Vanderhoven7

My take is that Revelation was written about 67 AD when the 7 churches were present and largely fulfilled with the destruction of Jerusalem (Babylon, city where our Lord was crucified) in 70 AD.

LeeMerk

Jeffro, yes

Babylon exalted itself in place of God. There's a theme going on.

ThomasMore

Conspicuously the writer NEVER alludes to the destruction of Jerusalem, probably because it had not happened. Since Jesus personally told John about the coming destruction, he would CERTAINLY have brought it up as confirmation of the prophecy. AND, he was the only one supposedly writing AFTER 70 CE.

What this leads us to is that the writer(s) of Rev wrote it before 70 CE.

As to BTG’s identity, my computer is running out of ink. Later…

NotFormer

mikeflood: "Ohhh,...some unbalanced Borg member use to say "if it's not the religion, it's Wall Street and the financial system".

Like somebody said , they could change the 'interpretation' any time, no excuse"

There was an end-times preacher who wrote a lot of books in the 80s and 90s from New Zealand. For some reason, he got it in his head that the seven heads of the beast were world financial centres, such as London, New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo (?), and even Sydney. I suppose Sydney was impressive to those of us in the Antipodes at the time, but Melbourne has always been the financial centre; most of corporate Australia is headquartered there. It just goes to show that you can make a silk purse from any sow's ear 👂🌽. 🙄

How can Babylon the Great be the WORLD of false religion?

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