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- "And what agreement hath
the temple of God with idols? for ye
are the temple of the living God;
as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and
I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come
out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and
touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, And will
be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters,
saith the Lord Almighty."
-
- "And I heard another
voice from heaven, saying, Come
out of her, my people,
that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not
of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God
hath remembered her iniquities."
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- "Go ye forth of Babylon,
flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye,
tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The
LORD hath redeemed his servant Jacob."
-
- "Depart ye, depart ye,
go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the
midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the LORD."
-
- "Remove out of the midst
of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, and
be as the he goats before the flocks."
-
- "Flee out of the midst
of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: be not cut off in
her iniquity; for this is the time of the LORD'S vengeance; he
will render unto her a recompence.
- My people, go ye out of the
midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce
anger of the LORD."
-
- Why we must get out
of Babylon
-
-
- "O daughter of Babylon,
who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth
thee as thou hast served us."
-
- "And, behold, here cometh
a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered
and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images
of her gods he hath broken unto the ground."
-
- "And the great city was
divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell:
and great Babylon came in remembrance before God, to give unto
her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his wrath."
-
- "And he cried mightily
with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is
fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the
hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and
hateful bird."
-
- "And he cried mightily
with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is
fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold
of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful
bird."
-
- "Standing afar off for
the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city
Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment
come."
-
- "And a mighty angel took
up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea,
saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown
down, and shall be found no more at all."
-
- "And there followed another
angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city,
because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath
of her fornication."
-
- "Babylon hath been
a golden cup in the LORD'S hand,
that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of
her wine; therefore the nations are mad."
-
- "And the woman was arrayed
in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious
stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations
and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was
a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH."
-
- {2 Corinthians 6:16-18; Revelation
18:4-5; Isaiah 48:20; Isaiah 52:11; Jeremiah 50:8; 51:6, 45;
Psalms 137:8; Isaiah 21:9; Revelation 16:19; 18:2, 10, 21 Revelation
14:8; Jeremiah 51:7; Revelation 17:4-5. (kjv)}
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-
- Who is Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations
of the earth?
-
-
- Commentary: Re 17:5 by: Jamieson-Fausset-Brown.
5. upon . . . forehead . . .
name--as harlots usually had. What a contrast to "HOLINESS
TO THE LORD," inscribed on the miter on the high priest's
forehead!
mystery--implying a spiritual fact heretofore
hidden, and incapable of discovery by mere reason, but now revealed.
As the union of Christ and the Church is a "great mystery"
(a spiritual truth of momentous interest, once hidden, now revealed,
Eph 5:31-32), so the Church conforming to the world and thereby
becoming a harlot is a counter "mystery" (or spiritual
truth, symbolically now revealed). As iniquity in the harlot
is a leaven working in "mystery," and therefore called
"the mystery of iniquity," so when she is destroyed,
the iniquity heretofore working (comparatively) latently in her,
shall be revealed in the man of iniquity, the open embodiment
of all previous evil. Contrast the "mystery of God"
and "godliness," Re 10:7; 1Ti 3:16.
-
- It was Rome that crucified
Christ; that destroyed
Jerusalem and scattered the Jews; that persecuted
the early Christians in pagan times, and Protestant Christians
in papal times; and probably shall be again restored to its pristine
grandeur, such as it had under the Cæsars, just before
the burning of the harlot and of itself with her.
-
- So HIPPOLYTUS [On Antichrist]
(who lived in the second century), thought. Popery cannot be
at one and the same time the "mystery of iniquity,"
and the manifested or revealed Antichrist.
- Probably it will compromise
for political power (Re 17:3) the portion of Christianity
still in its creed, and thus shall prepare the way for Antichrist's
manifestation. The name Babylon, which in the image, Da 2:32,38,
is given to the head, is here given to the harlot,
which marks her as being connected with the fourth
kingdom, Rome, the last part of the image.
-
- Benedict XIII, in his indiction
for a jubilee, A.D. 1725, called Rome "the mother of all
believers, and the mistress of all churches" (harlots like
herself). The correspondence of syllables and accents in Greek
is striking; "He porne kai to therion; He numphe kai to
arnion." "The whore and the beast; the Bride
and the Lamb."
of harlots--Greek, "of the harlots and
of the abominations." Not merely Rome, but Christendom as
a whole, even as formerly Israel as a whole, has become a harlot.
The invisible Church of true believers is hidden and dispersed
in the visible Church.
- The boundary lines which separate
harlot and woman are not denominational nor drawn externally,
but can only be spiritually discerned. If Rome were the only
seat of Babylon, much of the spiritual profit of Revelation would
be lost to us; but the harlot "sitteth upon many waters"
(Re 17:1), and "ALL nations have drunk of the
wine of her fornication" (Re 17:2; 18:3; "the earth,"
Re 19:2).
-
- External extensiveness over
the whole world and internal conformity to the world --
worldliness in extent and contents -- is symbolized by the name
of the world city, "Babylon."
- As the sun shines on all the
earth, thus the woman clothed with the sun (Israel) is to let
her light penetrate to the uttermost parts of the earth. But
she, in externally Christianizing the world, permits herself
to be seduced by the world; thus her universality or catholicity
is not that of the Jerusalem which we look for ("the MOTHER
of us all," Re 21:2; Isa 2:2-4; Ga 4:26), but that of Babylon,
the world-wide but harlot city!
-
- (As Babylon was destroyed,
and the Jews restored to Jerusalem by Cyrus, so our Cyrus--a
Persian name meaning the sun -- the Sun of righteousness, shall
bring Israel, literal and spiritual, to the holy Jerusalem at
His coming. Babylon and Jerusalem are the two opposite poles
of the spiritual world).
- Still, the Romish
Church is not only accidentally and as a matter of fact,
but in virtue of its very PRINCIPLE, a harlot, the metropolis
of whoredom, "the mother of harlots"; whereas the evangelical
Protestant Church is, according to her principle and fundamental
creed, a chaste woman; the Reformation was a protest of
the woman against the harlot.
-
- The spirit of the heathen
world kingdom Rome had, before the Reformation, changed the Church
in the West into a Church-State, Rome; and in the East, into
a State-Church, fettered by the world power, having its center
in Byzantium; the Roman and Greek churches have thus fallen
from the invisible spiritual essence of the Gospel into the elements
of the world [AUBERLEN].
-
- Compare with the "woman"
called "Babylon" here, the woman named "wickedness,"
or "lawlessness," "iniquity" (Zec 5:7-8,11),
carried to Babylon: compare "the mystery of iniquity"
and "the man of sin," "that wicked one,"
literally, "the lawless one" (2Th 2:7-8; also Mt 24:12).
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