P2ALM

Genesis is a book of beginnings. It is the beginning of all time. Within the first 11 chapters, you’ll find the foundations of the Christian faith including the first prophecy of Jesus Christ [Gen 3:15]. It is also and end in that it declares what will happen in the days to come before Christ’s glorious return. In the Book of Isaiah, we read:

“Remember the former things long past, For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is no one like Me, Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’;

[Isaiah 46:9-10 NASB]

God says He declares the end from the beginning and He will accomplish that end. Let’s look at the beginning of days to see what we can find that may shed some light on the end of days.

THE FIRST WORLD KINGDOM

After the Flood, before there was a Hebrew nation, there was Babel. Before God chose Abraham to father the Hebrew people and bring about His plan of salvation, there was a man named Nimrod. Nimrod was, according to Genesis 10:8-9, a man of power upon the earth and a “mighty hunter before the Lord.” All the peoples of the post-Flood world were gathered together under his rule but God interrupted his reign. What does Nimrod and Babel have to do with the end of days and prophecies in Daniel and Revelation? And more importantly, what do they all have to do with the time we are in now? Knowing that God declares the end from the beginning, let’s focus our attention on the account of Nimrod and his kingdom, Babel.

Tower of Babel – Pieter Brueghel 1536

Babel. At the beginning of Creation, in the Book of Genesis, we read that God created the entire Universe and everything in it, up to and including Man, perfectly [Gen 1]. Shortly after, Man rebelled in the Garden of Eden and sin was introduced into the world [Gen 3:1-7]. By the time Noah walked the earth, the state of mankind was so bad that “… every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” [Gen 6:5; 6:12]. God was grieved and flooded the whole earth with a deluge but saved Noah and his family in a great Ark to repopulate the post-Flood world [Gen 6:8; 6:17; 9:1]. After the Flood subsided, and Noah landed on the mountains of Ararat [Gen 8:4], Noah’s family began to increase in number. However, his descendants did not obey God’s command to repopulate the earth by spreading out [Gen 9:1]. Let’s pick up the action in Genesis chapter 11.

Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

[Genesis 11:1-4 NASB]

The entire population of the earth spoke the same language and they all gathered together under a powerful man, Nimrod [Gen 10:8-10], in an arrogant and prideful attempt to make a name for themselves. They were trying to avoid being scattered about the earth by building a city and a tower in the land of Shinar called Babel, or Babylon, which was in willful defiance of God’s command [Gen 10:10, 11:9]. This was the first attempt at a world government. So what happened? God came down and confused their language so they wouldn’t succeed [Gen 11:7-8]. He said, in Genesis 11:6, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.” The confusion of the languages at Babel forced them to separate into their respective people-groups and migrate away from each other with those of common language [Gen 11:7-9]. Therefore, they did not succeed in their attempt. Ever since, it has been on the minds of men to rule the world and history tells us that some men are more inclined to try than others.

THE LAST WORLD KINGDOM

Just as there was a first world kingdom, there will also be a last. God’s Word gives us the same scenario about the time of the end. The entire world is under the rule of a single man, the Antichrist.

The beast. In prophecy, the last world kingdom, is described as a red, seven-headed dragon with ten horns [Rev 12:3, 13:1; Dan 7:7]

Then another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems.

[Revelation 12:3 NASB]

And the dragon stood on the sand of the seashore. Then I saw a beast coming up out of the sea, having ten horns and seven heads, and on his horns were ten diadems, and on his heads were blasphemous names.

[Revelation 13:1 NASB]

“After this I kept looking in the night visions, and behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrifying and extremely strong; and it had large iron teeth. It devoured and crushed and trampled down the remainder with its feet; and it was different from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns.

[Daniel 7:7 NASB]

What in the world are we to make of this strange beast? Thankfully, Scripture helps us out with that.

And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.

[Revelation 12:9 NASB]

Satan is the dragon.

Revelation 17:9-10 NASB [9] “Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits,

The seven heads are seven mountains. These are kingdoms of power and strength. We will look at what the woman is below.

[10] and they are seven kings; five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come; and when he comes, he must remain a little while.

The seven heads are seven kings throughout time, each being the king of a powerful world kingdom. These are the Biblical World Kingdoms. God’s Word tells us that the seven kingdoms are Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and the Turk/Ottoman Empire (For some of you, the inclusion of the Turk/Ottoman Empire is an entirely new concept. This is one of the major areas of focus on this web site. I encourage you to examine the evidence. To get you started, some of the Scriptural evidence for this conclusion is taken from Daniel 11). We will get into some details about these beast kingdoms and what the rest of this verse means later. Now, what about the ten horns?

Revelation 17:12 NASB “The ten horns which you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but they receive authority as kings with the beast for one hour.

The ten horns are ten kings of the final beast kingdom that will rule at the same time.

Review: The seven heads of the beast are the seven kingdoms of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and the Turk/Ottoman Empire. The ten horns are ten simultaneous kings in the Antichrist’s future kingdom.

The harlot. We read, in Revelation chapter 17, about a mysterious woman riding this scarlet beast. She is described in this way,

And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality, and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

[Revelation 17:3-5 NASB]

The Destruction of Babel – Gustav Dore c. 1866

The woman is called a prostitute [Rev 17:1]. False religion in God’s Word is often described as a prostitute, adulterous woman, woman or harlot. We are told that the woman is riding the beast with the name Babylon on her forehead. Above, we saw that Babylon is the name of a city and a kingdom. She is a separate entity yet carries the same name. This allows us to conclude that Babylon is the name used for world religious system as much as it is used for a city and a kingdom. Now, follow me through the logic for a moment. If Babylon the Great is the mother of harlots and the mother of all the abominations of the earth, it has to be the origin of all the religious and moral perversion we have today. This false religious system has been riding the beast throughout the ages. She has been present in each of the six kingdoms and will be present in the last. The Scriptural definition of Babylon becomes the first complete, disobedient action toward God by the entire population of the earth, physically, mentally and spiritually! It’s important to note here that God only delayed this process from happening by confusing the languages. This one-time world kingdom still has a role to play in the very last days.

Something shady in the land of Shinar. Six of the world empires listed above have religious mythologies that are remarkably similar. In fact, some of the stories are exactly the same with only the names of those involved being different. We should expect this to be the case when we consider that Revelation 17:3-5 is tying all of these false religions to one source, Babel, the spot of the first world religion. How did the religion come into being that gave rise to all these others? This has been a question on my mind for some time. Until recently, I was only considering that perhaps memories of some of the events during the time right before the Flood produced such stories. However, recently, I came across some of the history of the origin of Middle-Eastern religion that others before me have so painstakingly researched. Dr. Floyd Nolan Jones, in his fantastic book “The Chronology of the Old Testament” (p. 211 & 250) addresses this in a footnote that concisely details the fascinating work of another author, Alexander Hislop. I’ll include it here in full because I can’t write it any better than this:

Hislop, The Two Babylons, op. cit., p. 91-103, esp. p. 93. The origin of this may be traced back to Babylon at the time of the Tower of Babel. The Tower was built under the direction of the founder of the world’s first kingdom, Nimrod-bar-Cush, the son of Cush (“the black one”) and grandson of Ham (“the dark of the sunburned one”). Secular records state that Nimrod (Orion, or Kronos [a corona or crown] “the horned one”) married the infamous Semiramis I. She is reputed to have been the foundress of the Babylonian “Mysteries” and the first high priestess of idolatry. Tradition also ascribes the invention of the use of the cross as an instrument of death to this same woman. Apparently when Nimrod (a black) died, Semiramis became pregnant out of wedlock. The child, like its father, was white. Semiramis acting to save the moment declared that Nimrod’s spirit had become one with the sun (incarnated with the sun) and that he had come to her in the night so that she had miraculously conceived a god-son. As the first mortal to be so deified, Nimrod thus became the actual “father of the gods.” Semiramis presented the infant to the people and hailed him as the promised “seed of the woman” – the deliverer. Thus was introduced the “mystery” of the mother and the child, a form of idolatry that is older than any known to man. The rites were secret. Only the initiated were permitted to know its mysteries, and it (along with all of its “offspring” cults) became known as various mystery religions. The whole system of the secret Mysteries of Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man while Semiramis gained glory from her dead husband’s “deification.” The people did not want to retain God in their knowledge, but preferred some visible object of worship. Wherever the Negro aspect of Nimrod became an obstacle to his worship it was taught that Nimrod had reappeared in the person of his fair-complected, supernaturally conceived son (Hislop, p. 69; Chaldeans believed in transmigration and reincarnation); thus the father and son were one. It was Satan’s attempt to delude mankind with a counterfeit imitation that was so much like the truth that man would not know the real Seed of the woman when He came in the fullness of time.

Eventually this mystery religion spread from Babylon to all the surrounding nations. Everywhere the symbols were the same. The image of “the queen of heaven” (Semiramis, Jer. 44:19, 25; compare Isa. 47:5 where she is referred to as “the” or “our lady” – notre dame in French) with the babe in her arms was seen everywhere. It became the mystery religion of the seafaring Phoenicians and they carried it to the ends of the earth. It was known as Baal (Nimrod, the sun-god) worship in Phoenicia where the mother was known as Astoreth and the child as Tammuz (Tammuz Adonis). In Egypt the cult was known as that of Osiris, Isis and Horus. The mother and child were worshiped as Aphrodite and Eros in Greece, Venus and Cupid in Italy (in Rome the child was formerly called Jupiter). The Chinese called the mother goddess Shingmoo or the “Holy Mother”. She is pictured with child in arms and rays of glory around her head (Hislop, p. 21). Among the Druids, the “Virgo-Paritura” was worshiped as the “Mother of God”. In India, she was known as Indrani. In and near India, the mother and child were known as Devaki and Krishna; in Asia they were Cybele and Deoius. They were known by many other names in other parts of the world, but regardless of her name and place, she was the wife of Baal, the virgin mother (Hebrew = alma mater), the queen of heaven who bore a child although she supposedly never conceived. The mother and child were called by different names, due to the dividing of the languages at Babel. Over time, some of the rites and parts of the doctrine and story varied from place to place and cult to cult, but the essentials always remained the same.

The mystery religion of Babylon, which had begun under Nimrod’s direction until its dispersal at the Tower of Babel (Gen. 10 and 11; Isa. 47), continued over the centuries to flourish in the “land of Shinar.” When the city of Babylon fell in 539 BC, the high priest fled with a group of initiates and their sacred vessels and images to Pergamos (Rev. 2:12-17; see J.D. Pentecost, p. 365-367, where he cites H.A. Ironside). There, the symbol of the serpent was set up as the emblem of hidden wisdom. From there, many of them crossed the sea and settled in the Poe Valley of northeast Italy where the Etruscans lived. When Rome conquered the Etruscans, the Etruscans brought their Babylonian cult religion to Rome where the child was known as Mithras (the mediator). Thus, when Christianity came to Rome, the whorish cult, the counterfeit, was waiting to join in an unholy union with it. These mystery cult teachings eventually invaded the Catholic church which is still full of its traditions, the roots of which lie deep in paganism. Every Roman emperor belonged to this cult. Everyone of means (the upper class) was an initiate. It was the “country club” to which to belong, much as is Freemasonry in many parts of the world today (The Lodge drew its basic teachings from various denominations within this mystery religion. The major writers within freemasonry freely confess this, but almost no one reads these works to so learn.).

This is why in the Books of Isaiah, Jeremiah and other places we read about the Queen of Heaven [Jer 7:18, 44:17-19, 25].

“Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; Sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no longer be called tender and delicate.

[Isaiah 47:1 NASB]

Our Redeemer, the LORD of hosts is His name, The Holy One of Israel. “Sit silently, and go into darkness, O daughter of the Chaldeans, For you will no longer be called The queen of kingdoms.

[Isaiah 47:4-5 NASB]

God is declaring the One, True Redeemer and sarcastically speaking judgment directly against the source of all idolatry, Semiramis I of Babel. This is also why the beast’s future kingdom in the Book of Revelation is referred to in this way.

“To the degree that she glorified herself and lived sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and mourning; for she says in her heart, ‘I SIT as A QUEEN AND I AM NOT A WIDOW, and will never see mourning.’

[Revelation 18:7 NASB]

God is revealing the location of the true revived kingdom to us. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. We will see this in greater detail later.

Review: Babel was the site of the first idolatrous world religion that arose from Nimrod and his wife, Semiramis. Semiramis has many other names, many of which can be found within the pages of the Bible. She is known as Ashtaroth, Ashtoreth or the Queen of Heaven (Middle-East), Astarte (Cyprus), Diana or Artemis (Ephesus/Asia Minor), Cybele (Asia Minor), Isis (Egypt), Aphrodite or Ceres (Greece), Venus or Fortuna (Rome), Shingmoo (China, Disa (Scandinavia), Nutria (Etruscans), Virgo-Paritura (Druids), and Isi or Indrani or Devaki (India).

Islam. The current popular religion of the peoples of the Middle-Eastern lands is now Islam. Interestingly, there is evidence that the Islamic god, Allah, can be traced back to this cult, the beginnings of sun and moon worship. Consider the symbol of Islam is the crescent, or moon. References to crescents can actually be found in the Bible [Jdg 8:21, 26; Isa 3:18; 46:1]. This is deserving of a more detailed study.

The Mithras objection to Christ’s deity. I want to take this opportunity to address a common objection you may hear as to whether Christ is the Savior and Son of God. I’ll call it the Mithras Objection. As we saw above, Mithras is the Roman name for Tammuz, the son of Semiramis of Babel. You may hear people try to point to the fact that the god-son story of Mithras pre-dates Christ. They will say that Christ only borrowed from this earlier religion in order to build a following and become popular. Therefore, Christ is not really the Son of God and Savior of the world. There is no doubt that a person who was eventually known as Mithras pre-dates the First Advent of Jesus Christ. A good question to ask is, why was it necessary for the story of Mithras to be created before Christ walked the earth? Or, for what reason would someone make up a story like that which mimics the prophecy of Christ unless there was a realization of a coming Christ as the One, true Savior? In other words, we are asking, logically, which do you think came first, the prophecy of Christ in Genesis 3:15 or the story of Mithras? There’s no rational reason to speak out against something that doesn’t really exist, or, is at least no real threat. This is the equivalent of drawing the attention of the entire world to the very thing you so desperately don’t want it to know. This was Satan’s way of attempting to pre-empt any belief in the true Savior, Jesus Christ, by introducing a false savior in order to confuse mankind. Furthermore, consider that Jesus went to His death when, if He was merely out to deceive people for His own glory, could have easily fled the area many times. I also want to point out that when a story is written has no bearing on which story actually came first. Many dissenters will say that since some of the pagan stories of the creation of the world and the Flood, etc., were written before Moses wrote the Pentateuch, this somehow proves the Bible arose from these pagan religions and therefore cannot be true. Keep in mind, in contemporary terms, one of the very definitions of plagiarism is copying and publishing someone else’s original work and claiming it to be one’s own before that someone does.

Interestingly, this same line of reasoning above can be applied to the existence of God as well. The belief that there is no God had to rise from a single someone. In other words, someone had to first have the thought before others did. Who was the first person to claim there is no God and why would he claim such a thing? Why would someone ever think to say there is no God unless someone had first declared there was, or he first had a knowledge of His being? In fact, I submit to you he would have never had the thought of denying God if there really were no God. He would never know there wasn’t. Scripture confirms this by telling us that man innately knows God exists and deliberately suppresses this truth [Rom 1:18-20]. Therefore, claiming God doesn’t exist only serves to prove that He does.

Pandering paganism. You will hear people claim that the core belief of Christianity is based on earlier pagan religions. They fail to follow the history far enough to see that it goes back much farther than even the story of the Roman Mithras. They grab onto someone else’s undigested thoughts and tout them as some kind of Christ-discrediting truth. They fail to think through it enough or do the research to see that these pagan religions only arose as a result of the original prophecy of Christ in Genesis 3:15. This harlot in Revelation is the first false religion at Babel that gave rise to all the others, it is the false religious system that has been riding the Satanic beast kingdoms through the ages [Rev 17:9-10] and it is also the prophetic end product of this religion with whatever intricacies it may possess. It’s important to remember that Christ never differentiates one religion from another. He says we are either with Him or against Him [Luke 11:23].

Review: Satan, the dragon, is the founder of all false religion. The harlot religion was birthed at Babel and spread around the world by the dispersion. This harlot religion rode the beast kingdoms through the ages. Since it is the religion of the Antichrist’s future kingdom, it is still active today in many forms and will certainly be active in the future. Three of these forms are Roman Catholicism, the New Age Movement and Islam.

Meandering mythologies. The harlot, this false religious system that arose out of Babel, started with Nimrod. When the peoples were dispersed, they carried this story with them. I am also of the opinion that, perhaps, some of the other stories we read in mythologies concern the exploits of the rebellious angels and the Nephilim, the mighty men of renown, before the Flood [Gen 6:1-4]. Consider many religions have stories of half-human, half-divine beings or demi-gods. Demi-gods, in mythology, have one parent who was a god and one who was a human. These beings are also known as Titans in Greek Mythology, descendants of Gaius and Uranus or earth and sky. I believe it is quite logical to assume that Noah’s grandsons would have asked their fathers what the world was like before the Flood. These stories would have been passed on by Noah and his sons, the only survivors of the pre-Flood world. All of these, the account of Nimrod and the exploits of the Nephilim, would have been distorted through time compounded by the sinful nature of Man and the differences in languages after the peoples were dispersed at Babel. The people would have taken these mythologies with them.

For further evidence something like this could have actually happened, consider that you will hear a flood myth embedded within most every belief system around the world. The dispersion would also account for the reason why there is such striking similarity in megalithic architectural design around the world from ancient times and also why certain scientific knowledge about our earth has been numerically encoded in these myths and structures. These structures are based on the tower, or ziggurat, of Babel, what we might call today a pyramid. One example would be Egypt, which scholars agree seemed to have inexplicably popped up out of nowhere as a fully-developed society. Interestingly, Egypt is listed as the first head of the future beast kingdom.

This harlot of false religious belief branched off from the dispersion at Babel and has spread around the world. It has slithered through the ages in many forms but still remains the harlot, mother of all the abominations of the earth, straight from the mouth of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. The most important thing to remember is that all false religions, no matter what they will claim, have one binding connection, the Genesis 3:5 lie that you can be a god, because worshiping anything besides the one, true God is worshiping yourself and placing yourself in that role.

Honing in on humanism. At Babel, man, in his proud arrogance, decided to grab his future for himself according to his own rules. Consider this, when man puts his future in his own hands it is called humanism, a term we are familiar with today, which teaches that man is all and man is good. By default humanism is in opposition to God [Rom 1:25; Jam 4:4-6]. Who, then, does this leave as God? Man. It is a religion based upon the presupposition of the non-existence of the supernatural. Humanism denies the existence of the One it is seeking to usurp as though He is already dead. What this truly means is that the foundation of Humanism is the very real existence of God! Secular origins science fits into this category, which is why it can never arrive at any kind of truth about origins. Humanism stems from the Genesis 3:5 lie. It is the root of it all and no matter what label Man attaches to his Godless beliefs, it all starts at the same place, back in the Garden.

From beginning to end. It was Nimrod who built Babylon. It was the source and geographic location of the first world religion and government and it will be the source and geographic location of the last.

© P2ALM 2011

Tags: aphrodite, artemis, ashtaroth, ashtoreth, astarte, babel, babylon, beast, bible prophecy, ceres, cybele, devaki, diana, disa, end-times, eschatology, fortuna, harlot, Indrani, Isaiah 46:9-10, isi, isis, kronos, last days, middle east, mithras, nephilim, nimrod, nutria, one world government, one world religion, orion, prophecy, queen of heaven, semiramis, shinar, shingmoo, tammuz, titans, tower of babel, venus, virgo-paritura

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