Babylon

[B-A-C]

Where is Babylon?
The old Babylon was in Mesopotamia. (modern day Iraq).
This was mostly destroyed in 331 BC. By 275 BC, the city was mostly empty.
In 1 Pet 5:3; Peter talks about "she who is in Babylon".
Since Babylon didn't exist at this time, most scholars believe this is a code name for the church in Rome.
This is how certain letters made it past the Roman censors.

But where is the Babylon of the end times?
It's hard to say....
There have been many empires over the centuries....
The Greek empire, the Roman empire, the Ottoman empire, the empire of Alexander the Great,
the French/Napoleonic empire, the Persian empire, even the British empire, and now finally...
the United States.... is the United States... Babylon?
Some people think so. But the United States has only been a country for a very short time
(240 years) in the over all scheme of things. Rome was a world power for over 1,000 years.
There have been some very short lived empires... the Third Reich of Nazi Germany was only
a world power for less than a decade.

Whoever Babylon is... it seems they have been against God for most of their existence,
but the United States was founded as a Christian nation, with Christian values, and has
only recently in the last 3 or 4 decades become mostly corrupt.

I don't know when Jesus is returning, it could be tomorrow... it could be a few thousand years.
Yet the signs lean towards the end coming very quickly.
Still, I think we over rate the United States influence on the world over the last 3,000 years
compared to many other empires. It could be, the United States is simply another empire
that will come and go in a long list.

Some believe Babylon to be a physical place... a real geographical city.
Others believe it is simply a spiritual metaphor for the state of the world.
Yet there were times in the past when the world was evil, and this metaphor is not used in the Bible
for those times.

Daniel saw a vision of four great beasts in Daniel 7.
There have been several commentaries on how these relate to the empires listed above.
Lion = England, or Persia
Bear = Probably Russia
Leopard = Germany or France

The fourth beast... could be Babylon, whatever that is.. (the United States?)
Us Americans tend to be conceited enough to think we are the greatest and most evil empire
that ever existed, but I don't think that's the case... at least not yet.

But no matter who Babylon is... it seems the Lion, the Bear, and the Leopard will be a part of it.

 

[B-A-C]

Babylon is often used by numerologists to determine when Jesus is returning.
Often verses like Matt 1:17; are quoted. I tend not to take these very seriously, because I personally
feel any date that might be suspect by man's wisdom is not the date God would pick. No man knoweth the hour...

In the time of Rome, there was homosexuality, orgies, and drunkenness, these things are not new to these
times, or the US did not invent these things.

However, when I look at verses like Rev 14:8;
I wonder if there has been any country that through Hollywood, radio, television, movies, and the internet...
has any other country had the influence upon the world that the US has? (good and bad).
If the US is indeed Babylon, ( I tend to lean more towards it being a city than an entire country).
Then Rev 16:19; is very bad news for the US.
Not that it matters that much because the government of earth will be quite different after Jesus returns.
In today's world... I wonder if there is any other country (city?) that applies more to Rev 18:2; than the
US? "She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit".