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"self-righteousness" Tagged Sermons

BABYLON – The Symbol of Rebellion

The 7th and final bowl judgment is first mentioned here as a summary, the final judgment upon this earth before Jesus returns to set up His kingdom right here, head quartered in Jerusalem.
Before we get into the details of this text, I need to unpack for you a few details that pertain to this particular subject called “Babylon”
1. There are two distinct Babylon’s mentioned in Revelation. The first one is called “Mystery Babylon” and the description is found in the 17th chapter of Revelation. It deals with a spiritual entity. A counterfeit of the true spiritual worship.
2. The Second one is revealed in the next chapter, which is the 18th chapter of Revelation, and this one represents a Commercial Babylon, a counterfeit to the true riches found in Christ Jesus alone.
Notice the name written on the forehead of a WOMEN:
“Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.” It’s a mystery. It’s a hidden truth. The Bible is full of examples how God at the proper time reveals mysteries to His people. We call it progressive revelation. To the prophet Daniel, who by the way was living in Babylon when God sent His people into captivity because of rebellion against His law, God revealed many mysteries. Yet, God did not unpack every mystery to Daniel.
In other words, these words, these prophecies will be unsealed at some specific time, the time of the end, which always refers to the time when the Lord will judge the nations and set up His kingdom on this earth. Daniel did understand many things, but not all things. The Apostle John did understand many things, but the Lord did not unseal everything.
In other words, John saw everything, but he could not understand everything. Then an angel said to him: why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the women and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. John must have gotten excited to hear those words. The angel will explain everything to me. But not so; The angel simply says: I WILL TELL YOU THE MYSTERY OF THE WOMEN AND OF THE BEAST AND OF THE SEVEN HEADS AND TEN HORNS. Again, the angel goes on to tell the mystery, but as you can see, the mystery deepens with every word the angel says. We will unpack those words next week. For now, let’s go all the way back in the Bible, where the word Babylon is mentioned and see if we can connect the dots.
How did it all start? In heaven it started with Lucifer aka Satan. The conspirator is Satan himself. Why is Satan doing this? What’s his purpose? What is his goal?
There is an earthly conspiracy underway. The goal is to enthrone the Antichrist, the “child of the devil” as God of the earth. The spiritual conspiracy is that Satan wishes to enthrone himself above God in heaven. Satan wants to be the supreme ruler in the heavenlies, while the imitator of Christ wants to be enthroned on the earth as the supreme ruler. This conspiracy is called “THE PLAN” by those who are following the new age movement. The secret societies refer to it as ‘THE MYSTERY’. And the Bible calls it: Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.
Did you notice the phrase: AND THE BEGINNING OF HIS KINGDOM was Babel. A kingdom has a king, the first king on this earth was Nimrod.
The name Nimrod means: “rebellious, revolt, indignation or disgraceful”.
The word Babel or Babylon means: “confusion”.
In other words Nimrod (rebellion against God) is the founder of Babylon (confusion).
I want you to know that today, when we hear Babylon or the name of Nimrod, most people think that this man was of little intelligence, probably clumsy, and a red-neck at best. The only thing this man had going for him and his people is that he knew how to hunt game.
But that’s not the true picture. Nimrod was a mighty leader, the founder of the first great empire of post-flood civilization – the kingdom of Babylon.
In order to understand what is revealed in this 10th chapter of Genesis, we need to back up a little bit. The flood of Noah devastated the world Noah once lived in. After the waters receded, and Noah and his family left the Ark, God commanded the survivors to “Be fruitful and multiply, and FILL THE EARTH.” (Genesis 9:1) God repeated the same command in verse 7.How the reacted to this command is eye-opening. Nearly 200 years after the flood, the descendants of Noah began to multiply in great numbers. Noah’s close descendants became the patriarchs of a great number of families, who, eventually, had developed into nations. This disbursement would set the stage for the eventual Babylonian Empire, and the Babylonian Religion.
Noah’s grandson Cush was one of these early patriarchs; the one who became the leader of many. He decided not to follow God’s commandment to “fill the earth”, but instead, he wanted to bring all of the people together. It was Cush who started to unite everyone into one huge nation. With that, he started the unification movement and the center of it all was THE TOWER OF BABEL. We do not find much information about Cush or Nimrod or the Tower of Babel in the Bible. Genesis 10:8 simply states how it all began. However we can learn many details from other ancient texts that Cush and Nimrod would become legendary throughout the secular/religious world.