In the last lecture I spoke of the
great mystery of the woman and of the
peace that carries her, which hath the seven
heads and the ten horns.
And, dropping down to verse fifteen, he saith
unto me, The waters which thou sawest where
the harlot sitteth are peoples and multitudes and
nations and tongues.
And the ten horns which thou sawest upon
those beasts, ye shall hate the father that
shall make her desolate and naked, and shall
eat her flesh and burn her with fire.
For God has put in their hearts to
fulfill his will, and to agree and give
their kingdom unto the beasts until the words
of God shall be fulfilled.
The woman which thou sawest is that great
city which reigneth over the kings of the
earth.
May God add his blessing to the reading
of this portion and the return of Christ.
Do you not know of any theme of
Bible prophecy or of the word of God
that I personally feel it is as difficult
to speak about in this day in which
we live, as this theme to which we
are directing your attention this evening?
For we are growing up in such an
atmosphere that the theme to speak out against
any system or any other religion is to
invite the accusations of narrowness or conceit or
bigotry or some other such epithet.
Yet, because the word of God devotes a
considerable portion to the fact to which we
want to direct your attention this evening, I
trust that the Spirit of God is going
to give you a hearing ear and an
understanding heart that you will understand we are
not speaking to be bigoted, nor are we
speaking against individuals who may be engrossed or
enmeshed in a system, but we are speaking
to try to declare, as God gives us
wisdom and understanding and ability, that to which
the visible church is steadily moving, and to
try to understand those scriptures that will open
up for us the signposts which we can
mark along the way as we follow this
so-called ecumenical movement with its confirmation and
culmination in a great worldwide religious system that
is under the curse and the wrath of
God.
If I do not speak in accordance with
the word of God, do not give credence
to that which I have to say, for
if that which we will share with you
this evening is based upon the truth of
the word of God, I ask you to
consider it carefully, for the truth of God
is unalterable and invincible and must stand.
In many passages in the New Testament, we
have given to us prophetically the development of
the history of the church, and even though
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ have the
word of God and the truth of God,
we find that the visible church is to
be characterized by progressive and developing unbelief and
apostasy.
That the reception of the truth does not
guarantee faithfulness true to the truth of the
word of God.
The apostle Paul writes, for instance, in 1st
Timothy chapter 4 and says, The spirit speaketh
expressly that in the latter time some shall
depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing
spirits and the doctrines of demons.
Or again, in 2nd Timothy chapter 3 and
verse 1, Paul writes, This know also that
in the last days perilous times shall come.
Peter, writing in 2nd Peter, adds his testimony
to that of the apostle Paul as he
says in 2nd Peter chapter 2 and verse
1, There were false prophets among the people,
even as there shall be false prophets among
you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies,
even denying the Lord that bought them, bring
upon themselves swift destruction, and many shall follow
their pernicious ways, by reason of whom the
truth shall be evil spoken of.
And when we turn over to the book
of the revelations in chapter 2, where John
is giving to us messages addressed to local
assemblies of believers, he writes in Revelation chapter
2 and verse 20, I have a few
things against thee.
Because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth
herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce
my servants to commit fornication, and to each
thing sacrificed unto idols.
And I gave her space to repent of
her fornication, and she repented not.
Behold, I will cast her into a bed,
and then to commit adultery with her in
the great tribulation, except they repent of their
deeds.
And I will kill her children with death,
and all the churches shall know that I
am he which purchased the reins in hearts,
and will give unto every one of you
according to your works.
And again, in chapter 3 and verse 10,
there is the promise to true believers at
the time of the rapture, or the translation
of the church, that Jesus Christ will keep
those true believers from the hour of temptation,
or that is, from the time of the
tribulation that will come upon all the world
to try them that dwell upon the earth.
And, as we thread our way through these
passages of Scripture, we find that the word
of God pictures the progress of the church
as one of degeneracy, of corruption, of ethical
and moral malpractice, as well as doctrinal error
and heresy.
And, at the time when Jesus Christ comes
to take to himself every true believer by
translation, he is going to leave on this
earth all who may have professed to be
believers in Jesus Christ, but who never have
been born again.
He will leave all who are in this
visible church who have never accepted Jesus Christ
as the way, the truth, and the life,
and have received eternal life from him.
And, the great, professing, visible, but unregenerate church,
as Revelation 2 says, will go into the
tribulation period to experience the wrath of God.
And, that church that will go into the
tribulation period is characterized in Revelation 3 and
verse 20 as separated from the Lord Jesus
Christ, that great head of the church, for
he says, I stand at the door and
knock.
That means that Jesus Christ is on the
outside, not on the inside, and even though
they profess to know him, and acknowledge him,
and profess to worship him, he is a
stranger to them and they to him, and
he has to stand on the outside and
knock and seek admission.
And so, here is a church that gives
lip service to the Lord Jesus Christ, that
professes to be his bride, that professes to
be united to him in this mystical marriage
from which is truly a stranger, and which
the apostle John, in Revelation 17, calls the
great harlot.
Now, I scarcely need to remind you that
one is guilty of adultery when they are
unfaithful to the one to whom they have
been joined in marriage.
The word adultery, or idolatry, are almost used
interchangeably in reference to religious things.
For, if one professes to be joined to
God, and to belong to God, and joins
himself to an idol, or clings to a
false religious system, that idolater is called an
adulterer in the spiritual sense of the word.
Now, as the apostle John begins to introduce
to us this great religious system, which will
become a worldwide religious system subjugating all things
to its authority, John says in Revelation 17,
I will show thee the judgment of the
great harlot that sitteth upon many waters.
Now, if you go back into this immediate
section of the book of the Revelation, beginning
at chapter 15 and going through chapter 16,
you find there angels are emptying vials or
bowls.
These vials or bowls contain the wrath of
God, and in the last part of the
tribulation series particularly, we find that there is
a deportation upon godless men and godless alliances
specific judgment from Almighty God himself.
In dealing with the great judgments that are
going to come upon the earth during the
tribulation series, John singles out one judgment, and
devotes more faith to that than to all
the rest of the judgments together.
He describes the judgment upon the harlot, the
one that claims to be the bride of
Christ, the one that claims to be united
to the Lord Jesus Christ, who is an
adulteress, or has been unfaithful to the one
to whom she professes to be joined.
And so, John is going to reveal to
us God's attitude toward this one who is
called the harlot that sitteth upon many waters.
Now, we will find as we go through
chapter 17 that each part of this vision
is explained to John who records it for
our understanding.
I submit to you that we are not
dependent upon the interpretations of men, for the
third of God himself interprets this vision to
John, and causes John to write the interpretation.
And, if you will drop down to verse
15, you find the waters are explained for
us.
Verse 15 says, he saith unto me, The
waters which thou sawest where the harlot sitteth
are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and sons.
Now, here is the picture of a harlot
that is sitting with influence that stretches out
to the ends of the earth.
Here, then, is a worldwide system, or as
the figure is given to us here, here
is a woman who has brought under her
sphere of influence not just a few who
have submitted to her incitement, but peoples, and
multitudes, and nations, and sons.
And, if you were to go back into
Revelation chapter 13 and verse 8 where we
have a description of the first beast that
is the head of the Federated States of
Europe, we read in verse 7 and so
on, Revelation 13, 7, it was given unto
him, this head of the Federated States of
Europe, to make war with the saints, and
to overcome them, and power was given him
over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
Now, I want you to notice that the
sphere of influence of this political ruler, the
beast or the head of the Federated States
of Europe, and the sphere of influence of
this one who is called the harlot are
coextensive.
They embrace the same geographical territory.
They reach out and bring the whole world,
then, into their sphere of influence.
But, now we notice something else about this
one called the great harlot, and I think
it is significant in verse 1 that this
one is not just called the harlot, but
that the adjective is used The great harlot
that sets this one apart in a peculiar
position, while there may have been others in
this religious sphere who might have been called
harlots, here is one that is greater than
them all, more influential than they all.
The great harlot sits upon many borders pursued,
with whom the kings of the earth have
committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth
have been made drunk with a wine of
her fornication.
Now, we notice that it is not just
the common folk who have been brought under
the influence of this harlot, but rather it
says that the kings of the earth have
committed fornication.
The kings of the earth have been joined
to her, and have become one with her
in her whole program and in her whole
desire, and we find that further it tells
us in verse 3, he carried me away
into the wilderness, and I saw a woman
that's the woman of verse 1, the great
harlot, sit upon a scarlet colored seat, full
of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and
ten horns.
Now, let's turn back for a moment to
chapter 13, and we will read there, and
we notice in chapter 13 verse 1, John
says, I stood upon the sand of the
sea, and saw a beast rise up out
of the sea, having seven heads and ten
horns.
Now, once again, what we read in 17
.3 is the same as we read in
13.1, and again we notice that this
woman called the harlot is seen to be
seated aside this scarlet colored beast, the beast
who is known by his mouth, the beast
that speaketh blasphemy.
Second Thessalonians chapter 2, he had God's citizen,
the temple of God, showing himself that he
is God, and that he this beast has
seven heads and ten horns.
Now then, I think there is something that
is very suggestive to us in the third
verse.
When you picture a beast, and a person
aside that beast, it is a picture of
a rider in control.
It is a picture of the beast that
has been domesticated, or tamed, or subjugated to
the authority of the rider, and as we
look at this picture, we find here that
this woman has been able to stretch out
her influence to such an extent that all
parts of the peace, Roman kingdom, or the
federated states of Europe are under the authority
of this woman herself, and that this woman
has become the one in the saddle, the
rider who controls the beast, and tells the
beast where to go, and when to go,
and which direction to go.
So, if you are trying to visualize this
in your mind, you will see that this
woman is a woman who is arrayed in
purple and scarlet color.
She has all the outward trappings of royalty
clothed in robes that would belong to a
king.
She is decked with gold and precious stones
and pearls.
She has all the wealth that belongs to
a reigning monarch, yet she has in her
hand a golden cup full of abominations and
filthiness of her fornication, and here is this
woman clutching this poisonous cup, and she is
on the beast, causing the beast to move
so that she can go abroad to bring
the poison of her cup to added peoples,
and tongues, and nations, and kingdoms to subject
them to her powers, and to her authority.
Again, when we drop down into verse 8,
we find the beast upon whom this woman
sits is described for us.
The beast that thou sawest was, and is
not, shall ascend out upon who sits, and
shall go into perdition, and when you get
down to verse 9, John tells us the
seven heads are seven mountains.
This may refer to the city that is
the capital of this woman's regime, that is
the literal city of Rome built from ancient
times on the seven hills, or the seven
heads may refer to the seven kinds of
government that have operated in reference to the
Roman Empire.
Whichever one you take, we see the identification
here.
She is pointing out the last form of
Gentile world power, the fourth world kingdom of
Daniel chapter 2 and Daniel chapter 7, and
he tells us in verse 12 that the
ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings.
This again takes us back to Daniel chapter
7, in our study several weeks ago, where
the fourth beast that Daniel saw was marked
because it had ten horns, and then out
from among the ten horns there came the
little horn that was to be the great
world ruler who would sit in Jerusalem as
a god to bring all people in subjection
to himself as the head of the federated
states of Europe.
And, we read there in verse 13, that
is the ten kings of the nations that
comprise the federated states of Europe have one
mind, and shall give their power and strength
unto the beast.
Now, verse 13 answers for us the question,
how does it happen that these rival states
of Europe are content to come together under
one head?
What has happened that makes them forget their
national heresy and their natural animosity, and causes
them to unite together into one federated state
of Europe?
Well, here again I have to go back
into chapter 17 and verse 3.
There is a woman that has been enticing,
who has been soliciting, and has been bringing
these kings under her power and under her
authority, and when they drink of the cup
of abominations from her hand, they are superfied
by that potion that they are willing to
listen to her, and to do as she
suggests.
Now, I want to make a suggestion here,
and we will be developing it a little
later, but that which I understand is that
when you go back to Ezekiel 37-39,
you see there that at the time of
the restoration of the Jews to Palestine, there
is to arise a great northern confederacy that
is to be the enemy of God's people
Israel, whom we have previously identified as Russia.
The states of Europe are going to be
terrified.
They are going to fear the rising might
and power of Russia, and there is going
to come one system who is going to
whisper to all these anti-communistic people, I
am your one great barrier against communism.
If you will give me authority, and if
you will come under my influence, I will
raise up a barricade against communism and give
you protection against the king of the north.
And, the kings of the earth are going
to listen to that very kind of doctrine,
and are going to drink and swallow that
very kind of teaching from the cup in
her hands, and they are going to unite
because this woman behind the scenes has been
moving and controlling and influencing government to bring
them into a federation, and when this federation
is brought into actuality and into existence, they
suddenly realize that they are no longer in
any authority, but that they are under the
control of this system that is called the
great harlot.
Now, we have one more thing that we
have to do, and that is what is
the harlot system.
And, John wants to give us a clue
that will enable us to identify the harlot
about whom he is talking.
We have had no difficulty with the waters
upon which the woman sits.
John has explained it as many peoples, and
tongues, and multitudes, and nations.
We have no trouble with the beast over
whom this woman is in authority, because John
in verse 8 down to verse 13 has
very carefully identified the beast as the same
one of chapter 13, the federated states of
Europe.
But now, the question is what influence, or
what power, or what system is going to
move through the European and non-communistic states
to bring them together to give them their
own world influence, and then take over the
reins and the control of government herself?
And, John identifies this harlot in verse 5.
Upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery,
Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots, and
of Prominations of the Earth.
Now, you will notice that this woman is
identified, first of all, as Mystery.
And, I am sure you have been taught
in the scriptures enough to know that in
the New Testament, the word Mystery does not
refer to something mysterious.
Rather, it refers to some truth that had
not previously been revealed by God to man.
God had revealed down through the epistles the
progress of unbelief, even in the professing church.
He had manifested to us the apostasy of
the last days.
But, until we come into the book of
the Revelation, it had not been revealed that
there was coming a great world-controlling system
which would be Christ-rejecting and God-dishonoring.
So, John says, I'm going to unfurl the
curtains of divine truth and let you see
exactly the end to which the professing church
is going to come after the departure of
the true believers at the time of the
rapture.
This is what will happen.
Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots,
and abominations of the earth.
Now, in order to be able to identify
Babylon, I want you to go through some
passages of scripture with me, and I want
to take you, first of all, back into
the tenth chapter of the book of Genesis.
This is a chapter into which we looked
earlier, when I pointed out to you that
it is probably one of the least read
chapters in the Old Testament, and if you
have your Bible and turn to it, you
will readily see why.
Because, there seems to be nothing inspiring about
reading a long list of names of who
begat who, and whose sons were who.
Yet, this is very important to understanding our
study this evening.
We notice in chapter 10 and verse 2,
he gives to us the names of the
sons of Noah, Shem, I'm sorry, verse 1,
Shem, Ham, and Jesus.
Then, when we come on down to verse
6, he is going to develop for us
the line of Ham.
Now, I want you to remember that the
word, the name Ham, means the swarthy one,
or perhaps better, the sunburned one, and we
know that the sons of Ham were Cush,
and Cush means the blackened one.
This is to give not their physical characteristics,
but rather their spiritual characteristics, because God made
a new revelation of himself through Noah after
the flood, and Ham turned from the light
of that revelation, and was darkened by the
revelation, and his son Cush further departed from
the revelation given by God through Noah, and
he was known as the blackened one.
And, we read in verse 8 that Cush
begat Nimrod, and Nimrod was the arch-apostate
of the post-Diluvian world.
Now, get the picture then from Noah.
The Ham, the Cush, to Nimrod.
So, here is the fourth generation from the
time that God judged the earth, and revealed
his righteousness and holiness.
We read about Nimrod that he began to
be a mighty one in the earth.
He was a mighty hunter before the Lord,
wherefore it is said even as Nimrod the
mighty hunter before the Lord.
And, the beginning of his kingdom, Nimrod's kingdom,
was Bab-El.
Now, Bab-El means the gate of God.
Now, what tally derives Nimrod, Bab-El civilization?
You get out into chapter 11, and you
have the record there of these people under
Nimrod who went from the east into the
land of Shinar, and dwelt there.
They were trying to get as far away
from the place where God revealed himself as
they possibly could.
They were going away from the source of
light.
In their darkness, they were abandoning not only
the fact of revelation, but the place of
revelation as well.
And, as they got off into the land
of Shinar, they said one to another, verse
3, Go to, let us make brick, and
burn them thoroughly.
And they had brick instead of stone, and
slime they had instead of mortar.
Now, here is an imitation that, whereas they
were accustomed of building with stones and mortar,
they have divine substitutes that befit the substitute
systems that they are raising up here.
And they said, verse 4, Let us build
us a city in a tower whose top
may reach unto heaven.
And, that was why Nimrod called his city
Bab-El.
They sought to build a great tower, a
great pyramid that would reach up into heaven,
and they said this is now the way
of approach to God.
God can be reached not through the revelation
given to Adam and again through Noah of
blood sacrifice.
Here is another gate to God, Bab-El.
And, when God looked down upon the tower,
and saw the people were of one language,
God said, verse 7, Go to, let us
go down and compound their language that they
may not understand one another's speech.
So, the Lord scattered them abroad from friendship
on the face of all the earth, and
they left off to build the city.
Therefore is the name of it called Bab
-El.
Now, the letters are exactly the same in
your text, but here Babel differs from Bab
-El in that Babel means confusion, and that
whereas Nimrod said we are going to build
a false religious system that will be a
new approach to God, God came down and
said this thing is confusion.
And so, here at Bab-El, or at
Babel, we find the first organized idolatrous religious
system in the history of the world.
Mark you, before the flood, even though men
had repudiated the revelation given by God, men
never organized a false religious system.
They were believers or unbelievers, but they've never
had a false religion.
Nimrod was the one who introduced at Babylon
the first false religious system that the world
has ever seen, and that is why the
apostle John speaks of Babylon that is the
mother of all, the originator of every kind
of false religious system.
Now, in order to understand something of the
Babylonian religion, and to let you identify for
yourself the outward form of the final Babylonian
religion, I want to take you back into
something of the teachings of this system of
Nimrod, the apostate of his day.
If you want to pursue this further, to
have this very carefully documented, I would direct
you to the work by Kislev entitled The
Two Babylons, where everything I shall say is
carefully documented, and authenticated, and verified, and may
I just say in passing that even in
all the discussions on this question I've ever
read, I have never seen a line of
reputation of that which Kislev presents as he
unfolds this to us.
Now, Nimrod made a mistake that sometimes men
make.
He got married.
It wasn't that he got married that was
the mistake, but he married the wrong girl.
He married a girl by the name of
Samarama.
Samarama had had sufficient of the revelation of
the word of God to know that God
had promised that a seed of the woman
should be the instrument through whom God would
bring blessing to the world.
Samarama took hold of the promise of God
in Genesis 3 15, which is the first
promise of the coming Messiah, and Samarama conceived
an or a son named Tammoth, and Samarama
presented her son Tammoth as a fulfillment of
Genesis 3 15.
She then became the high priestess of the
Babylonian religion, and set herself and her son
up as the object of worship, and without
doubt this great tower which was to be
the means of approach to God was the
temple or the center of worship of this
mother-child couple.
The symbol of this Samaraman and Tammoth religion
was the symbol or the figure of a
mother holding a child in her arms, and
it is referred to as the mother-child
cult.
That Babylonian religion had spread over to Phoenicia,
and in Phoenicia, while they changed the name
to Ashtaroth and Tammoth, it was the same
religious system, and they added the worship of
the sun which became the emblem of the
S.O.N. Tammoth, and they worshipped Samaramas
and Tammoth or Ashtaroth and Tammoth under the
name Thales.
From Phoenicia, it was carried over to Pergamos
in Asia Minor, and in Pergamos we read
in Revelation chapter 2 that Pergamos was where
Satan's seat or Satan's throne was, and Pergamos
became the center of this Babylonian religion.
It spread into Egypt where they worshipped Isis
and Horus, into Greece where they worshipped Aphrodite
and Hera the mother and child, and into
Rome where they worshipped Venus and Cupid.
But, wherever it went, it was the same
mother-child worship.
I was taken back several years ago in
going down into an archeological museum in Mexico
City to see there a recent excavation which
had just been put on display that Mexican
archeologists had authenticated as having belonged to a
period of about 500 years before Christ that
was the center of religious worship among some
of the early Indians in Mexico, and, to
my amazement, that image which was the center
of their worship was the mother with the
child in her arms.
And, I do not hesitate to say that
this Babylonian religion spread to become the religion
of the world that rejected the revelation given
by God through Noah, and then through those
who revealed the truth of God in the
Old Testament.
Now, what was something of this Babylonian religion?
We find that, first of all, Samaritan set
herself up as the way of approach to
God, and with a child in her arms,
she pictured herself as the mother, the one
who would give life.
She adopted the title the Queen of Heaven,
and became known as the Queen of Heaven.
Whether it was Samaritan, whether it was Aphrodite
or Venus, that name stuck of all of
these mother-child forms of the Queen of
Heaven.
She taught that salvation was through her administration
of the sacraments like the sprinkling with water
and ceremonial cleansing.
There was purification by the use of these
symbols that came from her hands.
Now, the tradition which she spread abroad was
that her son Tamar, on one occasion, was
out hunting, and that he was slain by
a wild boar.
That all of the temple's virgins set apart
to this Tamar's worship, or the mother-child's
worship, were called upon for a 40-day
period of fasting, and on the conclusion of
that 40-day period of fasting, on the
Feast of Ishtar, which was another name for
Samarimasu or Asherah, so she said Tamar was
resurrected.
Therefore, the Feast of Ishtar was made an
annual feast, symbolizing the restoration of Tamar from
the dead.
They set aside the egg as sacred to
Tamar, which was exchanged on the Feast of
Ishtar as a symbol of life out of
death.
The evergreen tree, the symbol of life, was
made the symbol of Tamar, and it was
elevated to a position of prominence in the
midwinter of the supposed birth of Tamar.
The Queen of Heaven was worshiped by offering
her round tapes that were marked with the
letter T, which in the Babylonian and later
Phoenician alphabet was a cross or an X,
and these cross buns or tapes were offered
to Tamar and to the mother of Tamar
on these yearly occasions.
Now, at the time that Ahab, king in
Israel, married a foreign girl, he married a
girl who had been brought up in this
mother-child cult worship, and it was not
long before the nation Israel had given themselves
over to the worship of Asherah and Baal,
the mother-child worship.
I remind you that when God called Abraham
out of Ur-Vakali, God called Abraham out
of a home that was devoted to the
worship of this mother-child, the Queen of
Heaven, and yet Abraham's father kept his idols,
the mother-child idols, until the day of
his death.
But now the nation Israel is going back
to that very thing, and I want you
to to look at several passages of scripture
with me.
First of all, go to Jeremiah chapter 44.
In Jeremiah 44, we find God telling why
he is going to send the children of
Israel into captivity in Babylon, and I want
to begin reading at verse 16.
This is on page 821 in your Q
Bible.
44, 16.
As for the words that thou hast spoken
unto us in the name of the Lord,
we will not hearken unto thee.
Now, here is Israel replying to the prophet
Jeremiah, we will not hearken unto thee.
We will certainly do whatsoever things goeth forth
out of our own mouth, now notice, to
burn incense unto the Queen of Heaven, to
pour out drink-offerings unto her as we
have done we and our fathers, our kings,
our princes.
Verse 18.
Since we left off to burn incense to
the Queen of Heaven, and to pour out
drink-offerings, we have wanted all things.
Verse 19.
When we burned incense to the Queen of
Heaven, poured out drink-offerings unto her, did
we make her cakes to worship her?
There are those round cakes with the letter
T that were offered at the Feast of
Ishtar, along with the exchanging of the Ishtar
eggs.
They made their cakes to worship her, and
dropping on down into verse 25, thus saith
the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel,
saying, You and your wives have both spoken
with your mouths, and fulfilled with your hands,
saying, We will surely perform our vows which
ye have vowed, to burn incense to the
Queen of Heaven, to pour out drink-offerings
unto her.
Ye will surely accomplish your vows, perform your
vows.
And here, the nation of Israel has repudiated
their worship of Jehovah, and has said, We
are going to worship only one, that is,
the Queen of Heaven, Ahasuerus and Tamas or
Phael, as the names were known in the
day that the prophet lived.
Now, turn again into the prophet Ezekiel, if
you will please, and here we find in
Ezekiel chapter 8 page 847, the prophet Ezekiel
is told to do a little peeking and
eavesdropping, and he is told to go in
through a secret door into the temple that
was set apart to the worship of Jehovah.
And in verse 6, Ezekiel 8, God said
to him, Seeest thou what they do, even
the great abominations that the house of Israel
committeth here, that I should go part off
from my sanctuary?
But turn ye yet again, and thou shalt
see greater abominations.
And he brought me to the door of
the court, and when I looked, there was
a little hole in the wall.
And he brought me to the door of
the court, and when he looked and saw
the hole in the wall, some of them
had digged in the wall, and I had
digged in the wall, and there was a
secret door.
He said to me, Go in, behold the
abominations that they do there.
So, I went in and saw.
Now, mind you, the prophet has come into
the inner sanctuary of the temple that was
set apart to the worship of God after
it had been erected by Solomon, and dedicated
by Solomon to the glory of God.
So, when he went in, what did he
see?
Every form of creeping things and abominable beasts,
and the idols of the house of Israel
portrayed upon the wall round about.
Now, what were these idols?
The mother-child cult has come right into
the sanctuary of the temple of Jehovah in
Jerusalem.
And when you go down into verse 13,
he says, Turn thee yet again, and thou
shalt see greater abominations that they do.
Then he brought me to the door of
the gate of the Lord's house which was
toward the north, and behold there sat women
weeping for Hamas.
What was that?
Well, that was that forty-day period before
the feast of Ishar that was set apart
to special penance in honoring the Queen of
Heaven, and praying in memory of the restoration
of Hamas after it had been slain by
the wild war.
And here, God pictures a nation of Israel
has been delivered completely into the hands of
the worship of this mother-child cult.
Now, this continues as we suggested it spread
to Egypt.
It spread into Greece with Aphrodite and Hera.
It spread into Rome with the worship of
Venus and Jupiter, and we go back into
Roman history.
We find that at the time of the
Caesars, approximately the time of Christ, the Caesars
upon their coronation were crowned not only emperor
of the Roman Empire, but these emperors were
crowned Pontifex Maximus, which is a Latin for
the High Priest.
And so, every Roman emperor from the time
of the Caesars who was crowned was given
a double crown, Emperor of Rome, and also
the Pontifex Maximus, or the High Priest of
the mother-child cult.
Therefore, there was a union of church and
faith with the Roman emperor, also now the
Highest Priest, administering and controlling the system that
was set apart to the worship of the
mother-child with the Lent and the hot
cross funds, and the Easter eggs, and they
freeze it at the midwinter, and all the
rest of it.
Yet, it was faith and religion united in
one.
Now, we come down to the time of
Constantine.
You who are students of Roman history will
remember that Constantine was engaged in civil war
with Maximus.
The forces of Maximus, it appeared, were much
stronger than those of Constantine, and there was
within the Roman Empire a great and powerful
force that was neither for nor against him,
that is the neutral in the body of
Christians of believers.
Constantine said that he had seen a vision.
He had seen a great flag unfurled across
which was emblazoned the word, En Pulse Signo
Vincente, in this fine conqueror, and when he
looked into the corner there was a cross,
a red cross, upon that field of blue.
And, Constantine said, this is a sign, and
he announced to the Roman Empire that should
he be a victorious over Maxentius, that he
would proclaim that Christianity was the official religion
of the Roman Empire.
Now, he could do that because he was
the high priest of the religious system that
was recognized in Rome, and as you are
familiar with it, in the year 312, Constantine
defeated Maxentius, and as Pontifex Maximus, he declared
that Christianity is now the religion of the
Roman Empire, and everybody in the Roman Empire
is now a Christian.
They went to the same temple, worshiping the
same mother-child god, following the same calendar
year with the same rituals of Lent and
Easter and Easter eggs and hot cross buns,
but now it has officially become Christian.
And, I submit to you that that act
of Constantine brought Babylonianism into the professing Church
of Jesus Christ, and it has continued through
this day with a man who today bears
the title of Pontifex Maximus, who is leading
a system set apart not to the worship
of Jesus Christ, but to the worship of
the mother-child cult following the same rituals
and the same paganism that marked the Babylonian
religion that God cursed and caused confusion in
the tenth chapter of Genesis.
And, that system will continue and will grow
and increase until that system set apart to
the worship of the mother-child cult will
reach out through its machinations, and because of
the fear of the rise of Communism, will
bring multitudes into its fear and unto its
authority, and it will finally become a world
-dominating system that has a hold upon the
hearts and the minds of men, so that
John says that here is this one, this
hallowed system that has been set apart to
the worship not of Jesus Christ, but of
a mother-child cult and false system.
That verse 6 of Revelation 17 is drunken
with the blood of saints, and with the
blood of martyrs of Jesus, and when I
saw her, I wondered with great amazement.
Wondered how one system so far from the
word of God, and so corrupt, and so
blood-denied, so persecuting of the truth of
God, to deceive the hearts and minds of
men, to become a worldwide system that propenses
to be the bride of Christ, but which
God says isn't a harlot, and that is
to be brought under the judgment of God.
May I remind you again, I am speaking
as I understand this portion of the word
of God, not about individuals who may be
enmeshed in a system.
I am talking about a corrupt system that
today is the perpetrator, and the one that
continues, carries on the first false religious system
that was ever organized by Satan upon the
face of this earth.
I do not have as a least doubt
in my own mind that every false and
unbiblical doctrine found in Romanism today has come
because it is mystery, tabulance, the mother of
harlots, and the abomination of the earth, and
that which is contrary to the word of
God, with their teaching on the place of
the marriage, and the worship of the mother
and child, and their teaching of purification by
ablution, priestly ablution, and men having the power
to forgive sin, has come not from the
word of God, but it has come because
Constantine, as the high priest of that system,
said this is all now Christian, and everybody
in the empire is now a Christian.
But, yet the word of God has something
to say about the end of this system.
We find, if we understand this passage correctly,
that when the true church, those who have
accepted Jesus Christ as personal savior, are lifted
out of this world when the Lord Jesus
appears in the air to translate his own,
that then this corrupt, false, professing Babylonian system
that we know as Romanism is going to
increase, is going to grow stronger and more
powerful until it has become the only hope,
the only defense against Communism.
And then, as we saw in chapters 38
and 9 of Ezekiel in our study several
weeks ago, Communism is going to be destroyed
by a judgment from God that will wipe
out world Communism as an influential system.
And that leaves one great system now in
control, the Roman system that sits, as he
says in verse 15, upon peoples and multitudes
and nations and tongues, and the Roman system
will have worldwide influence, bringing all things under
its control.
But now, I want you to look very
carefully into verse 16, for we read there
in Revelation 17, 16, that ten horns which
are sourced upon the beast, that is the
federated states of Europe, the great political powers,
shall hate the harlot.
Now, why will they hate her?
Because they're so under her control.
They're going to want to do something about
it.
And so, they shall hate the harlot, and
they shall make her desolate and naked, and
eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
For God hath put it in their hearts
to fulfill his will, and to agree and
give their kingdom unto the beast, so the
words of God shall be fulfilled.
Now, as I understand this briefly, this is
what John teaches, that in the middle of
the tribulation period, this coalition of nations and
the head of the federated states of Europe
will say, I am nothing but a prophet,
and he will say to all the heads
of nations that are federated with him, we
are nothing but prophets, and this one who
calls himself the Pontifex Maximus in this worship
of the Queen of Heaven, that one is
the one who is actually in authority.
We've got to get rid of him.
And, this coalition of nations is going to
rise up, and is going to wipe out
the Roman system, and I believe that that
destruction of Rome and the Roman system and,
if I can use the term today, the
whole Vatican state, we have it described for
us in chapter 18.
I cannot go into it this evening, but
you take it and read it, and there
you will find multitude from all over the
world will watch this great holocaust, and they
will lament and mourn because the splendor of
this system is no more.
But, that which this passage reveals to me
is that God is going to let this
system come to its fruition until it has
gotten a stranglehold on the world, and God
is going to move all these puppeteers who
are subservient to it to rise up, to
come together, and to destroy this system.
And, as we studied it last time, it
is the destruction, first of all, of world
communism, and second, it is the destruction of
Romanism that clears the way so that the
beast and the false prophet can come to
worldwide power and worldwide authority, ruling under Satan's
power over every kindred and tongue and heart
and nation.
Now, I've spoken very plainly this evening to
that which is my understanding of this portion
of the word of God.
I've talked long.
You have been very patient, and I thank
you.
But, I do want to point this out
in closing, that while we can understand the
plans and motives of a system, we ought
to have a God-given compassion for those
who are trusting this system to save them.
I, personally, am much more afraid of the
rise of Romanism in this country than I
am the rise of Communism.
I believe I have