Undeniable Prophecies of the Apocalypse – Chapter 4: Babylon

In The Book of Signs, Dr. David Jeremiah offers answers to questions including:

• What does the Bible tell us about the future?
• How much can we understand about biblical prophecy and its application in our lives?
• What signs and signals will precede the end of everything as we know it?
• Which of those signs and signals have already come to pass, which are we experiencing now, and which are still to come?

An epic and authoritative guide to biblical prophecy, The Book of Signs is a must-have resource for Christians seeking to navigate the uncertainties of the present and embrace God’s promises for the future with a renewed sense of hope and purpose.

Speaker 1: Chapter four Babylon.
Speaker 1: When the luxury liner Titanic was launched in 1912, it was the largest and most magnificent ship ever built spanning the length of almost three football fields.
Speaker 1: It boasted an interior rivaling the most opulent mansions and offered its passengers unprecedented luxuries including a heated swimming pool, a Turkish bath, a squash court and a dog kennel.
Speaker 1: The first class dining room served 10 course dinners, a first class parlor suite costs today’s equivalent of $50,000.
Speaker 1: But many of the world’s wealthiest and most prominent people bought tickets to enjoy the prestige and luxury of the ship’s maiden voyage.
Speaker 1: The Titanic was touted to be unsinkable. Thus, it carried only 20 lifeboats.
Speaker 1: A fraction of the 64 needed to evacuate its 2228 passengers because the ship was unsinkable.
Speaker 1: The captain and crew members ignored warnings of drifting icebergs in the northern Atlantic and posted only a half-hearted watch on the fatal night when the ship struck.
Speaker 1: A burg water immediately began gushing into the ship, flooding enough airtight compartments to make sinking, inevitable evacuation began.
Speaker 1: But with limited lifeboat capacity and a crew untrained in evacuation only 705 people were saved leaving 1523 to perish with the ship.
Speaker 1: The tragedy of the Titanic demonstrates how man’s pride and arrogance leads to destruction.
Speaker 1: It was pride in the ship’s prestige and opulence that prompted many rich and prominent people to make the voyage.
Speaker 1: It was arrogance to think the ship unsinkable.
Speaker 1: Thus dismissing the need for life boats plowing headlong through iceberg infested waters and neglecting to train the crew for evacuation.
Speaker 1: As we will see in this chapter early in our world’s history, a city was founded on the same pride and arrogance and will be brought to a similar ignominious end.
Speaker 1: That city is none other than the infamous Babylon. Babylon.
Speaker 1: Babylon is the second most frequently mentioned city in the Bible.
Speaker 1: In the New King James version, it appears 287 times in 253 verses. These references are never positive.
Speaker 1: Babylon’s origins were pagan, humanistic and rebellious against God unholy attributes permanently adhered to the city’s name making it perennially infamous Old Testament scholar Charles H Dyer summarizes the early prominence of Babylon for nearly 2000 years.
Speaker 1: Babylon was the most important city in the world.
Speaker 1: It was the commercial and financial center for all Mesopotamia, the center of a geographical x that linked the orient with the Mediterranean and Egypt with Persia.
Speaker 1: Its tribes and priests spread its cultural heritage throughout the known world.
Speaker 1: The arts of divination, astronomy, astrology, accounting, and private commercial law all sprang from Babylon.
Speaker 1: Though Babylon no longer exists as a cultural and financial powerhouse, it has influenced the world in ways that continue.
Speaker 1: Even today. In the first book of the Bible, we learned that Babylon was the site of the tower of Babel Man’s first attempt to establish a world order devoid of God’s influence.
Speaker 1: In the last book of the Bible, we see that a revived Babylon will be the center of a financial world order which will dominate the tribulation period.
Speaker 1: Why Babylon, what mystery lies dormant in this ancient fallen powerhouse that will elevate it again to a position of world dominance.
Speaker 1: Doctor Henry Morris explains. Babylon is indeed a prime prospect for rebuilding entirely.
Speaker 1: Apart from any prophetic information, its location is the most ideal in the world for any kind of international center.
Speaker 1: Not only is it in the beautiful and fertile Tigris Euphrates plain, but it is near some of the world’s richest oil reserves.
Speaker 1: Babylon is very near the geographical center of all the earth’s land masses.
Speaker 1: It is within navigable distances of the Persian Gulf and is at the crossroads of the three great continents of Europe, Asia and Africa.
Speaker 1: Thus, there is no more ideal location anywhere for a world trade center, a world communications center, a world banking center, a world education center or especially a world capital.
Speaker 1: The greatest historian of modern time Arnold Toby used to stress that Babylon would be the best place in the world to build a future world cultural metropolis.
Speaker 1: Babylon’s rebirth. The book of Revelation reveals that when the enterprise seizes the reigns of world government, his administration will be divided among three power centers.
Speaker 1: Rome will be his political base. Revelation 17 Jerusalem will be his control center for religion.
Speaker 1: Second Thessalonians chapter two and verse four and Babylon will become his financial and economic hub. Revelation 18.
Speaker 1: John lists 28 commodities that will form the foundation of Babylon’s worldwide commerce.
Speaker 1: In the end times, merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet.
Speaker 1: Every kind of Citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron and marble, and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots and bodies and souls of men.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 12 and 13. The striking thing about this list is that these commodities are as desired today as they were in John’s time.
Speaker 1: Clearly, the list is not only literal identifying the possessions men have striven for throughout history.
Speaker 1: It is also symbolic of mankind’s endless pursuit of material wealth that pursuit will continue up to the moment of Christ return.
Speaker 1: Noticed that the first items on the list are gold, silver and precious stones.
Speaker 1: This may indicate a coming collapse of global currencies, forcing a reversion to perennial value standards such as precious metals and gemstones.
Speaker 1: When Babylon becomes the world Commercial center, international banks and corporations will set up operations there.
Speaker 1: Henry Morris explains, the international bankers and the corporation directors and the mercantile barons and the shipping magnets and all their host of money worshiping power seeking underlings who once traversed their orbits around New York and Geneva London and Paris Moscow and Berlin, Johannesburg and Tokyo now find it gloriously profitable to center it all in Great Babylon to sum it up.
Speaker 1: Look for Babylon to rise. Phoenix like from its present obscurity to become the financial center of the world.
Speaker 1: But God will not allow Babylon’s incessant output of evil to plague the world forever.
Speaker 1: The destruction of Babylon will be total and irrevocable desolating even the site where it once stood according to the prophet Isaiah, it will never be inhabited, nor will it be settled from generation to generation?
Speaker 1: Nor will the Arabian pitch tents there? Nor will the shepherds make their sheep fs there?
Speaker 1: But wild beasts of the desert will lie there and their houses will be full of owls, ostriches will dwell there and wild goats will caper there.
Speaker 1: Isaiah 13 2021. Jeremiah elaborates on the desolation of Balin describing it as a heap of ruins, a dried desert of horror and scorn, a layer of jackals and howling hyenas that travelers will avoid a place never again to be inhabited.
Speaker 1: Jeremiah 51 26 37 43. The reasons for Babylon’s destruction.
Speaker 1: In revelation 18, the Apostle John saw an angel descending to earth whose splendor was so radiant.
Speaker 1: It illuminated the entire earth. This angel pronounces judgment upon the city of Babylon and he cried mightily with a loud voice saying baby in the great is fallen, is fallen.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 2, the word for fallen used here is a word that means to fall instantaneously.
Speaker 1: That is the destruction of Babylon will not take place over a long period of time but will happen in a moment.
Speaker 1: Actually, in one hour, we are told later in the chapter chapter 18 verse 19, why is God so determined to judge and destroy Babylon?
Speaker 1: It’s because he cannot allow the influences of a city so antagonistic to his people to contaminate his coming kingdom.
Speaker 1: John identifies five of these influences which we will consider one by one.
Speaker 1: Babylon will be destroyed because of her antiquity.
Speaker 1: John writes Babylon has become a dwelling place of demons, a prison for every owl spirit and a cage for every unclean and hated bird revelation.
Speaker 1: 18 verse two. In Daniel’s time, Babylon was infested with magicians, suits Sayers and astrologers who served as King Nene’s close advisors.
Speaker 1: This demonic occultism will multiply exponentially when Satan’s puppet, the beast co-ops the Babylonian system, a vast web of demonic activity centered in Babylon will reach out across the nation’s intent on possessing the minds of every person on Earth, Madeline will be destroyed because of her influence.
Speaker 1: In the next verse, John adds, for all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
Speaker 1: The kings of the Earth have committed fornication with her.
Speaker 1: And the merchants of the earth have become rich through the abundance of her luxury.
Speaker 1: We can easily imagine newspapers and TV channels lauding Babylon for its enlightenment, openness and tolerance.
Speaker 1: News speak euphemisms for the rampant immorality and deep depravity that will ooze from the city like pus from a sore jet setters will flock to Babylon to indulge in debaucheries that will make the debaucheries of Vegas Paris and Hong Kong seem bland governments and corporations will normalize these sordid pleasures spreading their influence throughout the world.
Speaker 1: Bible expositor, John Phillips believes Babylon will become the World Crime Center.
Speaker 1: The crime syndicate already enormously wealthy and powerful, feudal, ruthless and omnipresent will move its headquarters to Babylon.
Speaker 1: There can be little doubt that the syndicate controlling the vice traffic of the world and insinuating itself into all kinds of legitimate businesses will ultimately look to the beast as its head in the tribulation period.
Speaker 1: The diabolical influence of Babylon will dominate humanity’s social, political, cultural and economic life.
Speaker 1: The only way to rid the world of this toxic contamination is to destroy the city from which it spews Babylon will be destroyed because of her infidelity.
Speaker 1: The third reason for God’s judgment against Babylon is that her sins have reached to heaven and God has remembered her antiquities revelation 18 5, the Greek word here translated as reached presents a fascinating picture.
Speaker 1: It means to be glued or welded together. It’s a deliberate allusion to the ancient tower of Babel.
Speaker 1: Predicting that the revived Babylon will build its own tower of sins, stacking one upon the other like bricks until they reach heaven.
Speaker 1: Just as God destroyed Babel’s original tower.
Speaker 1: He must also demolish this unholy replica to rid the earth of the diabolic infidelity of the beast.
Speaker 1: Babylon will be destroyed because of her insolence in the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously in the same measure.
Speaker 1: Give her torment and sorrows for she says in her heart, I sit as queen and am no widow and will not see sorrow.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 7, the newly revived Babylon will actually glory in its opulence.
Speaker 1: It’s debauchery, its occultism and its ruthlessness.
Speaker 1: Thinking the power and all it commands, renders it superior and inviable, but just as the unsinkable titanic now lies at the bottom of the ocean.
Speaker 1: Babylon’s pride will bring it down as pride always does.
Speaker 1: Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.
Speaker 1: Proverbs 16 18, Babylon will be destroyed because of her inhumanity.
Speaker 1: When I discussed the catalog of Babylon’s global trade commodities, I withheld for our present discussion.
Speaker 1: The final chilling item on that list. Bodies and souls of men.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 13, Babylon will be the hub of worldwide sex trafficking, abducting untold thousands of men and women into forced prostitution.
Speaker 1: In the tribulation period. Babylon will utterly disdain the idea that man is created in the image of God.
Speaker 1: The system will see humans as did the intelligent simians in the classic film Planet of the Apes.
Speaker 1: As nothing more than animals to be bought, sold, used and discarded at will.
Speaker 1: Babylons in humanity will also be revealed in its wholesale slaughter of God’s people.
Speaker 1: And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints and of all who were slain on the earth.
Speaker 1: Revelation. 18 24 I saw the women drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus revelation 17 6.
Speaker 1: In the tribulation period, Babylon will execute God’s prophets and all who refuse the mark of the beast.
Speaker 1: In fact, simply being a believer and standing for moral purity and Christian ethics will be enough to warrant execution.
Speaker 1: The reality of Babylon’s destruction.
Speaker 1: Babylon’s new tower of depravity built from the bricks of her sins will rise to unprecedented heights.
Speaker 1: Finally prompting God to take action. John describes the suddenness of God’s judgment in this way.
Speaker 1: Therefore, her legs will come in one day death and mourning and famine and she will be utterly burned with fire for strong is the Lord God who judges her revelation.
Speaker 1: 18 8. John goes on to describe the utter finality of Babylon’s destruction and then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea saying thus with violence, the great city of Babylon shall be thrown down and shall not be found anymore.
Speaker 1: The sound of harpist musicians, flutes and trumpeters shall not be heard in you anymore.
Speaker 1: No craftsman of any craft shall be found in you anymore.
Speaker 1: And the sound of a millstone shall not be heard in you anymore.
Speaker 1: The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore.
Speaker 1: And the voice of Bride, groom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 21 to 23 the word anymore which occurs six times in this passage is translated from the strongest Greek term available to express.
Speaker 1: Not at all or never again. It is a picture of what happens when God pronounces judgment.
Speaker 1: It is sudden, it is thorough and it is final.
Speaker 1: In the moment before Babylon’s destruction, the city will bustle with all the normal activities abounding in any metropolis along with the world shaping enterprises of its elite citizens, the wealthy and powerful, the rulers of nations in banking and commerce will be working and shopping and marrying and attending parties and theaters and orchestral performances and sports events.
Speaker 1: Thousands of communication lines will hum between banks, government agencies, corporate headquarters and their subsidiaries around the world.
Speaker 1: Then suddenly in one short hour, it will all cease to exist. Babylon will be gone.
Speaker 1: And as the center of a vast web of interconnected globalism.
Speaker 1: It will pull the world down with it down will come the world’s financial system and the global market, banks and corporations will collapse all corporate stocks and national currencies will become fireplace.
Speaker 1: Kindling bank accounts will evaporate and workers will be abruptly unemployed.
Speaker 1: The destruction of Babylon will trigger a global depression far eclipsing any disaster.
Speaker 1: The world has yet seen the reactions to balan destruction.
Speaker 1: The world will react to Babylon’s fall with shock and horror.
Speaker 1: Everyone will reel with the cataclysmic impact of it on their own lives to grasp the extent of this impact.
Speaker 1: Let’s examine the reactions of three specific groups which will be most severely affected by the city’s collapse.
Speaker 1: The monarchs will mourn the kings of the earth who committed fornication and live luxuriously with Babylon will weep and lament for her when they see the smoke of her burning, standing at a distance for fear of her torment saying alas alas that great city, Babylon, that mighty city for in one hour, your judgment has come.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 9 in 10, when the beast, political and financial empire goes down with Babylon’s destruction, all the power and wealth of the world’s rulers will collapse, leaving them shattered in the wake of crushed dreams and lost glory.
Speaker 1: The merchants will mourn and the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over Babylon for no one buys their merchandise anymore.
Speaker 1: The merchants who became rich by her will stand any distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing and saying, Alas alas that great city that was clothed in fine linen, purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls.
Speaker 1: For in one hour such great riches came to nothing.
Speaker 1: Revelation 18 11 and verses 15 through 17, the word merchants used here is translated from the Greek Iori, which specifically means wholesalers who trade massive quantities of goods with the fall of Babylon.
Speaker 1: The world’s stock markets will crash beyond recovery.
Speaker 1: Drying up all possibility of investment in the merchants, businesses with no more banks to issue credit.
Speaker 1: Their ruin will be sudden and total. In one short hour, the God of Mammon will be reduced to ashes.
Speaker 1: The Mariners will mourn every ship master, all who traveled by ship sailors and as many as trade on the sea stood at a distance and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying what is like this great city, they threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing and saying, Alas alas that great city in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth.
Speaker 1: For in one hour she is made desolate. Revelation. 18 17 to 19.
Speaker 1: Imagine the captain of a merchant ship laden with imported goods sailing northwesterly through the Persian Gulf toward Babylon.
Speaker 1: The waterway is crowded with similar ships carrying Babylonian cargo. Suddenly the captain gapes in disbelief.
Speaker 1: Massive columns of black smoke rise on the horizon. Their undersides glowing orange from the angry flames devouring the city.
Speaker 1: The captain groans and tears at his hair as he grasp the meaning of the site, the market for his cargo is destroyed.
Speaker 1: Financing for future shipments no longer exists.
Speaker 1: He is ruined along with all the other maritime shippers of the world, all commercial shipping is suddenly and literally dead in the water.
Speaker 1: The rejoicing over Babylon’s destruction.
Speaker 1: When Babylon is destroyed, the monarchs, merchants and Mariners of the world will mourn but the apostles and prophets in heaven will rejoice, rejoice over her.
Speaker 1: Oh heaven and you holy apostles and prophets for God has avenged you on her revelation. 18 20.
Speaker 1: What a contrast of emotions. While the opportunists who profited from Babylon grieve its destruction.
Speaker 1: The apostles and prophets in heaven who were martyred by the Babylonian system will exalt at the end of its diabolic wickedness from the time of its founding, Babylon had unleashed on the world, an unholy system of defiance against God.
Speaker 1: It has enslaved God’s people, cut them to pieces, boil them in oil, cast them into furnaces and lions dens, nail them to crosses and will soon inflict similar horns on all who refuse the mark of the beast.
Speaker 1: But God promises justice to those who suffer for him as he repeatedly assures us vengeance is mine.
Speaker 1: I will repay Hebrews 10 30. During the tribulation, the martyrs under the altar in heaven.
Speaker 1: Cry out for justice asking how long oh Lord, holy and true until you judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth revelation 6 10, they are told to rest in confidence that God will indeed avenge their suffering at the proper time.
Speaker 1: That promised justice will come down hard and fast with the destruction of Babylon.
Speaker 1: Raising a resounding cry of rejoicing from the apostles and prophets, not in vindictiveness for their persecution, but in gratitude that the earth is finally cleansed of an insidious evil.
Speaker 1: When you are treated unfairly or endure some form of abuse or when you see others promoted at your expense through underhanded means.
Speaker 1: Do you wonder if God has forgotten you? Do you like the martyrs waiting in heaven?
Speaker 1: Wonder how long it will be before God sets things right?
Speaker 1: It’s a common experience that often leads people to question Christianity. If God is good, why doesn’t he eradicate evil?
Speaker 1: The Bible addresses that age old question extensively in the books of Job Habakkuk and in Psalm 73.
Speaker 1: But while pondering these deeper explanations, it helps to know that God never ignores evil.
Speaker 1: His judgment against those who wrong us may not be immediate.
Speaker 1: But the biblical record shows that when the time is right, he will avenge every evil committed against his own beginning with Satan’s seduction in Eden and culminating with the destruction of Babylon, our response to Babylon’s destruction.
Speaker 1: Now that we have seen how kings merchants, shippers, apostles and prophets will respond to Babylon’s destruction.
Speaker 1: One additional response remains to be addressed. How will you?
Speaker 1: And I respond, John shows us the way when he writes and I heard another voice from heaven saying come out of her, my people lest you share in her sins and lest you receive of her plagues revelation.
Speaker 1: 18 4 God calls us to get out of Babylon that is to separate ourselves from the Godless spirit of the age, which is the spirit of Babylon that now permeates our culture.
Speaker 1: I fear that today, many believers are not heeding this call.
Speaker 1: They attempt to maintain dual citizenship in Jerusalem and Babylon, which Paul tells us is impossible for what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness and what communion has light with darkness and what accord has Christ with Beli or what part has a believer with an unbeliever.
Speaker 1: And what agreement has the temple of God with idols for you are the temple of the living God.
Speaker 1: Second Corinthians 6 14 to 16. As God’s temple, we must keep a clean house for him to occupy.
Speaker 1: We must sweep out the contaminations of self-love, worldly pleasure and materialistic ambition.
Speaker 1: John warns us to get out of Babylon.
Speaker 1: Lest you share in her sins and lest you receive of her plagues.
Speaker 1: The unholy attractions of Babylon are like bait in a trap, luring victims to share in the destruction reserved for that city and its diabolical system.
Speaker 1: Even before this plague of destruction descends, the security Babylon offers is a sham bank accounts, investments, economic expansion, and even gold and silver will prove to be unstable.
Speaker 1: As a house of cards, we find real security only in God.
Speaker 1: When we reject Madelin and remain in Jerusalem, we can share Paul’s confidence in God’s promise for.
Speaker 1: I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor Principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Speaker 1: Nothing. Whether it’s the growing instability of present culture or the persecution, famines and distress of the coming tribulation can separate us from God.
Speaker 1: The world system is as precarious as the shifting tectonic plates beneath California. But God’s promises never shift.
Speaker 1: They remain unshakable and solid. We rightly grieve to see so many rushing headlong toward Babylon like lemmings to the sea.
Speaker 1: But it’s right that we also celebrate the coming triumph of good over evil, removing for all eternity, this perennial enemy of God that has inflicted so much misery on his people.