A Pictorial Illustration to the Mystery of Babylon

"And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee...”    Rev 17:1-5

On the Island of Patmos, God shows the Apostle John the true identity of the Church that will be ruling the world at His Second Coming.  In scripture a woman is used symbolically to depict the church, and the faithful church of saints is described as the bride of Christ.

There is an amazing accuracy of the vision John received centuries before it would all be become a reality. John's attention is drawn to the inscription boldly emblazoned upon the woman's forehead: "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" (Revelation 17:5).

Let us now venture into the Roman Catholic Church and explore her identity. Mystery Babylon is a key phrase used to identify this church.  The worship of the Babylonian Goddess Semiramis and her Son Tammuz was prominent throughout the world.

In Egypt, she is known as the "QUEEN OF HEAVEN" she was the greatest and most worshiped of all the divinities. During and after Egyptian bondage, the Israelites repeatedly departed from the one true God and worshiped this pagan mother. Under the name, "MOTHER OF THE GODS," the goddess queen of Babylon became an object of universal worship. The mother of the gods was worshiped by the Persians, the Syrians and by all the kings of Europe and Asia. In Britain, the Druid priests worshiped the Virgo-Patitura as the "MOTHER OF GOD."

TITLE OF SEMIRAMIS

The worship of Mary and the god-incarnate Jesus originated with the pagan worship of Semiramis and her god-incarnate son. Numerous Babylonian monuments depict the goddess-mother Semiramis with her son in arms. The image of the mother and child was so firmly entrenched in the pagan mind that when the Roman Catholic Church appeared on the scene these pagan statues and paintings were merely renamed and worshiped as the Virgin Mary and her god-incarnate son Jesus. Mary was then crowned as the Queen of Heaven and worshiped. 

                             Queen on the world                                          Queen of Heaven

                            Egyptian Isis                             Isis and Horus

                     Queen of the world                  Pope prayer to the Queen

     The Sign of the Cross

That which is now called the Christian cross was originally no Christian emblem at all, but was the mystic Tau of the Chaldeans and Egyptians--the true original form of the letter T--the initial of the name of Tammuz--which, in Hebrew, radically the same as ancient Chaldee, was found on coins, was formed as in No. 1 of the accompanying woodcut and in Etrurian and Coptic, as in No's. 2 and 3. That mystic Tau was marked in baptism on the foreheads of those initiated in the Mysteries, and was used in every variety of way as a most sacred symbol.

To identify Tammuz with the sun it was joined sometimes to the circle of the sun as in No. 4; sometimes it was inserted in the circle, as in No. 5. Whether the Maltese cross, which the Romish bishops append to their names as a symbol of their episcopal dignity, is the letter T, may be doubtful; but there seems no reason to doubt that that Maltese cross is an express symbol of the sun; for Layard found it as a sacred symbol in Nineveh in such a connection as led him to identify it with the sun.

The mystic Tau, as the symbol of the great divinity, was called "the sign of life"; it was used as an amulet over the heart; it was marked on the official garments of the priests, as on the official garments of the priests of Rome; it was borne by kings in their hand, as a token of their dignity or divinely-conferred authority. The Vestal virgins of Pagan Rome wore it suspended from their necklaces, as the nuns do now.  

The Ankh represents the genitals of both sexes. The cross itself is a primitive form of the phallus, and the loop that of the womb. Again, we continue the symbol of the cross as the giver of life. Yes...even prior to this time was the cross a symbol of the phallus or fertility. This is not the only thing that the phallus has symbolized over the many centuries within and without the pagan world. It has also been used as a symbol of strength.

THE CENTRE of the seal is the ankh or Crux Ansata, an ancient Egyptian symbol of resurrection. It is composed of the Tau or T--shaped cross surmounted by a small circle and is often seen in Egyptian statuary and in wall and tomb paintings where it is depicted as being held in the hand. The Tau symbolises matter or the world of form; the small circle above it represents spirit or life. With the circle marking the position of the head, it represents the mystic cube unfolded to form the Latin cross, symbol of spirit descended into matter and crucified thereon, but risen from death and resting triumphant on the arms of the conquered slayer. So it may be said that the figure of the interlaced triangles enclosing the ankh represents the human triumphant and the divine triumphant in the human. As the cross of life, the ankh then becomes a symbol of resurrection and immortality.

"Yet the cross itself is the oldest of phallic emblems, and the lozenge-shaped windows of cathedrals are proof that the yonic symbols have survived the destructions of the pagan Mysteries. The very structure of the church itself is permeated with (sexual symbolism) phallicism. Remove from the Roman Catholic Church all emblems of Priapic origin and nothing is left...

Above on the right is a Persian triple-horned headpiece depicted on gate A in the citadel of King Sargon II (721-705 B.C.), in Khorsabad (Iraq).  This may well be the origin of the triple-tiered papal tiara as claimed by the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Seven triple tiaras in the display case of the Papal Sacristy of the Sistine Chapel (room of the Copricapi). From left to right they are:

1922 tiara of Pius XI.

1903 tiara of Leo XIII.

1887 neo-gothic tiara of Leo XIII.

1871 tiara of Pius IX.

1834 tiara of Gregory XVI.

1805 tiara of Pius VII.

1820 cloth tiara of Pius VII.

   

A jewel encrusted triregno tiara that is regularly used to dress the statue of Peter in St. Peter's Basilica.

        1922 tiara of Pius XI  worn by John XXIII

1805 tiara of Pope Pius VII

The Blessed Eucharist as a Sacrament 

HOST

(from the Catholic Picture Dictionary)

Mithraism was popular in the Roman Empire with many Emperors following, not just the populace. It had seven sacraments, the same as the Catholic Church, baptism, and communion with bread and water. The Eucharist hosts were signed with a cross, an ancient phallic symbol which originated in Egypt, and the Egyptian cross (the ankh) still shows the original form which included the female symbol.

Such rites were known in Rome as evidenced from Cicero’s rhetorical question about the corn of Ceres and the wine of Bacchus. In Mithraism, a sacred meal of bread and wine was celebrated. “Mithraism had a Eucharist, but the idea of a sacred banquet is as old as the human race and existed at all ages and amongst all peoples, says The Catholic Encyclopedia. (Volume 10, p.404 article on Mithraism.)

In Egypt a cake was consecrated by a priest and was supposed to become the flesh of Osiris. This was then eaten and wine was taken as part of a rite. Even in Mexico and Central America among those who had never heard of Christ, the belief in eating of a god was found. Since, heathen priests ate a portion of all sacrifices, in cases of human sacrifices, priests of Baal were required to eat human flesh. Thus “Cahna-Bal” is the priest of Baal providing us for our modern word for “cannibal.”

During Mass, members of the Roman Catholic Church who are in good standing may come forward and kneel before a priest who places a piece of bread in their mouths which has become a “Christ.” This piece of bread is called the “host’, from a Latin originally meaning “victim” or “sacrifice.”  The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the host “has been the object of a great many miracles” including the bread being turned to stone and host which bled and continued to bleed.   (Vol 7,  p 489 art. Host)

The initials I. H. S. represent the Egyptian trinity of “Isis, Horus, Seb," that is,

the Mother, the Child, and the Father of the gods.

     

After the bread is changed into Christ by the priest it is then placed on a monstrance in the center of a sun burst design. Before the monstrance Catholic will bow and worship the little wafer as God! The Catholic Encyclopedia says:  “In the absence of Scriptural proof, the Church finds a warrant for, and a propriety in, rendering Divine worship to the Blessed Sacrament in the most ancient and constant tradition…” ( vol 5 p 581, Eucharist)

                                     
Egyptian sun image

                                                           

This is the reverse side of a papal medal minted by Pius XI in 1929 to commemorate the Lateran Treaty, which restored Papal sovereignty and made Vatican City an independent state. The sunburst wafer of the Eucharist appears in the sky above the Lateran and St. Peter's basilicas, over the cup of the Mass.

In the great temple of Babylon, the golden image of the Sun was exhibited for the worship of the Babylonians. In the temple of Cuzco, in Peru, the disk of the sun was fixed up in flaming gold upon the wall that all who entered might bow down before it. The Paeonians of Thrace were sun-worshipers; and in their worship they adored an image of the sun in the form of a disk at the top of a long pole.

                         Dagon the Fish-God

Dagon, the fish-god, represented that deity as a manifestation of the same patriarch who had lived so long in the waters of the deluge. As the Pope bears the key of Janus, so he wears the mitre of Dagon. The excavations of Nineveh have put this beyond all possibility of doubt. The Papal mitre is entirely different from the mitre of Aaron and the Jewish high priests.

That mitre was a turban. The two-horned mitre, which the Pope wears, when he sits on the high altar at Rome and receives the adoration of the Cardinals, is the very mitre worn by Dagon, the fish-god of the Philistines and Babylonians. There were two ways in which Dagon was anciently represented. The one was when he was depicted as half-man half-fish; the upper part being entirely human, the under part ending in the tail of a fish. The other was, when, to use the words of Layard, "the head of the fish formed a mitre above that of the man, while its scaly, fan-like tail fell as a cloak behind, leaving the human limbs and feet exposed." Of Dagon in this form Layard gives a representation in his last work; and no one who examines his mitre, and compares it with the Pope's as given in Elliot's Horoe, can doubt for a moment that from that, and no other source, has the pontifical mitre been derived. The gaping jaws of the fish surmounting the head of the man at Nineveh are the unmistakable counterpart of the horns of the Pope's mitre at Rome.

  A woman (church) dressed in scarlet and purple.

Rev 17:4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication:

 

    

Here you see the Pope wearing purple and an Archbishop wearing reddish-purple.Pope John Paul II celebrated mass in the Basilica of the Resurrection in Jerusalem on Sunday, March 26th 2000, dressed in a purple Lenten robe and a miter trimmed with scarlet red.

Rev 17:4 And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.

Janus & Jani

Janus: in Roman religion, the animistic spirit of doorways (januae) and archways (jani). The worship of Janus traditionally dated back to Romulus and a period even before the actual founding of the city of Rome. There were many jani (i.e., ceremonial gateways) in Rome; these were usually freestanding structures that were used for symbolically auspicious entrances or exits. Particular superstition was attached to the departure of a Roman army, for which there were lucky and unlucky ways to march through Janus.

The most famous Janus in Rome was the Janus Geminus, which was actually a shrine of Janus at the north side of the Forum. It was a simple rectangular bronze structure with double doors at each end. Traditionally, the doors of this shrine were left open in time of war and were kept closed when Rome was at peace. According to the Roman historian Livy, the gates were closed only twice in all the long period between Numa Pompilius (7th century BC) and Augustus (1st century BC).

Some scholars regard Janus as the god of all beginnings and believe that his association with doorways is derivative. He was invoked as the first of any gods in regular liturgies. The beginning of the day, month, and year, both calendrical and agricultural, were sacred to him. The month of January is named for him, and his festival took place on January 9, the Agonium. There were several important temples erected to Janus, and it is assumed that there was also an early cult on the Janiculum, which the ancients took to mean "the city of Janus." (Britannica)

Janus was represented by a double-faced head, and he was represented in art either with or without a beard. Occasionally he was depicted as four-faced--as the spirit of the four-way arch.

Now, what means the name Janus? That name, as Cornificius in Macrobius shows, was properly Eanus; and in ancient Chaldee, E-anush signifies "the Man." By that very name was the Babylonian beast from the sea called, when it first made its appearance.

The name, as given in Greek by Berosus, is O-annes; but this is just the very way we might expect "He-anesth," "the man," to appear in Greek. He-siri, in Greek, becomes Osiris; and He-sarsiphon, Osarsiphon; and, in like manner, He-anesh naturally becomes Oannes. In the sense of a "Man-god," the name Oannes is taken by Barker (Lares and Penates). We find the conversion of the H' into O' among our own immediate neighbours, the Irish; what is now O'Brien and O'Connell was originally H'Brien and H'Connell (Sketches of Irish History).

The name E-anush, or "the Man," was applied to the Babylonian Messiah, as identifying him with the promised seed of the Woman. The name of "the Man," as applied to a god, was intended to designate him as the "god-man." We have seen that in India the Hindoo Shasters bear witness, that in order to enable the gods to overcome their enemies, it was needful that the Sun, the supreme divinity, should be incarnate, and born of a Woman. The classical nations had a legend of precisely the same nature. "There was a current  tradition in heaven," says Apollodorus, "that the giants could never be conquered except by the help of a man."

That man, who was believed to have conquered the adversaries of the gods, was Janus, the god-man. In consequence of his assumed character and exploits, Janus was invested with high powers, made the keeper of the gates of heaven, and arbiter of men's eternal destinies. Of this Janus, this Babylonian "man," the Pope, as we have seen, is the legitimate representative; his key, therefore, he bears, with that of Cybele, his mother-wife; and to all his blasphemous pretensions he at this hour lays claim.

The very fact, then, that the Pope founds his claim to universal homage on the possession of the keys of heaven, and that in a sense which empowers him, in defiance of every principle of Christianity, to open and shut the gates of glory, according to his mere sovereign will and pleasure, is a striking and additional proof that he is that head of the beast from the sea, whose number, as identified with Janus, is the number of a man, and amounts exactly to 666.

        Symbol of the keys to Heaven                The Vatican Symbol

The Cup of Doctrinal Fornication made of gold

(Rev 17:4), "making all nations DRUNK with the wine of her fornication"

(Rev 17:2; 5; 18:3), is divinely called "MYSTERY, Babylon the Great"

In leading proof of the Babylonian character of the Papal Church the first point to which I solicit the reader's attention, is the character of MYSTERY which attaches alike to the modern Roman and the ancient Babylonian systems. The gigantic system of moral corruption and idolatry described in this passage under the emblem of a woman with a "GOLDEN CUP IN HER HAND" 

Five hundred diamonds encrust this golden chalice, first used by Pope Pius IX on December 8th, 1854, at the Mass proclaiming the Immaculate Conception of Mary.

She has practiced fornication making all nations drunk with the wine of her fornication. (Rev 17:4) Roman Catholicism has become the ecumenical leader in a move to unite not only the separated brethren of Protestantism but all of the world’s religions in a new world church.

While the Pope’s embrace of all religions’ shocks conservative Catholics, it is actually consistent with history. From the very beginning under Constantine, when the statues of Isis and Horus were renamed Mary and Jesus, and Pope Leo I (440-61) boasted that St. Peter and St. Paul had replaced Romulus and Remus as Rome’s protecting patrons.

John Paul II had traveled the world to promote Catholicism's traditional tolerance of pagan religions. At the Universities of Calcutta and New Delhi in his 1986 visit to India, the Pope told huge Hindu audiences that he had not come there to teach them anything but to learn from their "rich spiritual heritage." As worldwide ecumenism's diplomat-at-large he went on to declare, India's mission...is crucial, because of her intuition of the spiritual nature of man. Indeed, India's greatest contribution to the world can be to offer it a spiritual vision of man. And the world does well to attend willingly to this ancient wisdom and in it to find enrichment for human living.¹

Such praise of Hinduism by the leader of world Christendom seems inconceivable. Yet such tolerant acceptance of all religions is exactly what will be required to unite mankind under Antichrist. We cannot stop the ecumenical movement, but we must rescue as many individuals as possible before it is too late. The Pope has repeatedly made his intentions clear. Speaking in Geneva, Switzerland to leaders of the World Council of Churches representing 400 million Protestants worldwide, John Paul II declared, From the beginning of my ministry as bishop of Rome, I have insisted that the engagement of the Catholic Church in the ecumenical movement is irreversible.²

The Pope also makes it clear that there can never be any "compromise on the issue of papal authority." Yet this fact seems not to deter Protestant participation in the Pope's ecumenical movement. Nor has it diminished the praise heaped upon him, even by prominent Evangelicals, for his "spiritual and moral leadership."³

John Paul II continues to openly promote New Age pantheistic ideas. Although the New Age movement has been thoroughly exposed by a number of writers, its basic tenets continue to gain an ever wider acceptance, even among evangelicals, and will play an important role for Antichrist. As early as 1961, James I. McCord, president of Princeton Theological Seminary, urged Christians to accept as a gift from God the New Age, with its accompanying syncretization of Christianity and other religions. McCord was pleased to note that "Our most widely read historian, Arnold Toynbee, is an apostle of an amalgam of Christianity and Mahayanian Buddhism."⁴

The energetic Pope is several steps ahead of both McCord and Toynbee in his personal diplomacy with Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims and the adherents of many other religions. Nor is he out of line with such New Age events as The World Instant of Cooperation and Harmonic Convergence. As we have earlier pointed out, John Paul II openly promotes the same belief: That united prayers for peace of every kind, from yoga to witchcraft rituals, are releasing powerful "spiritual energies" to heal our planet. The Roman Catholic Church, like the World Council of Churches, has been promoting global cooperation among all religions for many years.

In the fall of 1988, I worshipped God in a Buddhist temple. As the smell of incense filled the air, I knelt before three images of the Buddha, feeling that the smoke could carry my prayers heavenward. It was for me a holy moment for I was certain that I was kneeling on holy ground.... I will not make any further attempt to convert the Buddhist, the Jew, the Hindu or the Moslem. I am content to learn from them and to walk with them side by side toward the God who lives, I believe, beyond the images that bind and blind us.⁵

"His Holiness" the Dalai Lama of Tibetan Buddhism has long been the Pope's trusted friend and has been well received by Roman Catholic leaders around the world.

In 1979, at the start of his first U.S. tour, the Tibetan God-king-in-exile was feted at Roman Catholicism's New York City landmark, St. Patrick's Cathedral, where he participated in a "prayer service" described by Time's "an extraordinary interreligious festival." New York's Terence Cardinal Cooke was the host. The Dalai Lama, who declared that "all the world's major religions are basically the same," was given a standing ovation by the overflow crowd of nearly 5,000.¹ Said Cardinal Cooke, who "shared his sanctuary with a rabbi and a Protestant minister as well as his Buddhist guest":  This is one of the dramatic movements of the Spirit in our time. We make each other welcome in our churches, temples and synagogues.²

John Paul II's first Assisi ecumenical prayer meeting in 1986

Unholy Pagan Ecumenical Mass Service in Assisi.

        Indian worship by Alter             Pope John XXIII with radical  socialists            

                                   A pagan blessing for the Pope

Pope John XXIII with a High-Lama (Buddhist  leader)

The inverted cross is the symbol of satanism and a antichrist insignia.

Catholic and Muslim representatives plan to meet in Rome in the spring to start a “historic” dialogue between the faiths after relations were soured by Pope Benedict XVI’s 2006 comments about Islam and holy war, Vatican officials said.

"I'm eradicating the word Protestant even out of my vocabulary  ... I'm not protesting anything ... It's time for Catholics and non-Catholics to come together as one in the Spirit and one in the Lord." — Paul Crouch on TBN

The evangelical church today is being seduced as never in its history. It faces a danger so grave that, it must be addressed again with new insight and vigor. If evangelicals succumb to the seduction, as they increasingly are doing, then their gospel witness will be submerged in confusion and could eventually be lost—a tragic and new dimension to the apostasy from which the church and the world will never recover.

The Coming World Religion

Most astonishing and alarming is the fact that (with few exceptions) evangelical leaders and even the major cult watchers refuse to acknowledge this threat. I am therefore compelled to address the subject once again with renewed concern.

To deny that Roman Catholicism is a cult is to repudiate the Reformation and mock the millions of martyrs who died at Rome's hands, as though they gave their lives in vain. Were Luther, Calvin and the other Reformers alive today, they would denounce Roman Catholicism as the largest and most dangerous cult on earth!

The deviation by Catholicism from biblical Christianity goes to the heart of the faith, to salvation itself, and thus affects the eternal destiny of those who are deceived thereby. Roman Catholicism rejects salvation by faith and preaches a false gospel of works that cannot save. Salvation is not in Christ but in the Church through submission to its edicts and sacraments. The Basic Catechism of Christian Doctrine calls the sacraments "the chief means of our salvation."

The first of the seven sacraments is baptism, which is performed upon 98 percent of Catholics as infants. It is declared in Canon 849 to be the means "by which men and women are freed from their sins, are reborn as children of God...." The Basic Catechism declares that baptism "is necessary for salvation ...cleanses us from original sin, makes us Christians...."

Another sacrament is the Mass, which the Catechism declares to be "one and the same Sacrifice with that of the Cross, inasmuch as Christ...continues to offer himself...on the altar, through the ministry of his priests." Canon 904 states that "the work of redemption is continually accomplished in the mystery of the Eucharistic Sacrifice," thus denying Christ's triumphant "It is finished!"

Let me remind you of Hugh Latimer's last words, spoken through the flames to his companion who was bound to the same stake "Be of good courage, master Ridley...for we shall by God's grace this day light such a `candle' in England as I pray shall never go out!" Tragically, the "candle" lit by hundreds of thousands of faithful martyrs burned at the stake, if not already out, is barely flickering and in danger of being snuffed completely. Paul Crouch, head of the largest Christian TV worldwide network, demeans the martyrs by calling the issues they died for mere semantics; and he makes a mockery of the Reformers by declaring orthodox the heresies that sparked the Reformation.

Those who believe Rome's lies and follow her gospel of works for salvation are lost. Failing to recognize this fact, many evangelical leaders and cult experts have themselves been deceived by Rome and need to be confronted and informed. How tragic to assume that Catholics are Christians who merely have some peripheral beliefs and practices which seem peculiar to Protestants but which will not prevent them from being saved. A false gospel is a false gospel, and it damns those who believe it, whether preached by Mormonism or Catholicism. A cult is a cult. Roman Catholics, like the members of other cults, need to be treated with compassion, warned of cultic lies, and presented with the true gospel which alone can save them.

If you are concerned about the growing cooperation between Catholic organizations and major evangelical ministries such as Inter Varsity, Campus Crusade For Christ, Youth With A Mission, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Chuck Colson's Prison Fellowship, Paul Crouch's TBN, Pat Robertson's CBN, etc., please write to them and ask where they stand on this critical issue.

Rev 17:5  “MYSTERY BABYLON THE GREAT THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES

AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

Endnotes

1 "Spiritual Vision of Man," L'Observatore Romano (Feb. 10, 1986), 5.

2 The Fresno Bee (June 13, 1984), C12.

3 FGBMFI Voice ad (Nov. 1981); Focus on the Family Citizen (June '90), 10; Wilson Ewin, "The Spirit of Pentecostal-Charismatic Unity," Billy Graham quote in Bible Baptist (Jan./Feb. 1980), 72-89.

4 Time (Oct. 27, 1961), 62.

5 Diocese of Newark, The Voice (Jan. 1989).

6 Time (Sept. 17, 1979), 96.

7 Newsweek (Sept. 17, 1979), 115.

8 John Cotter, A Study In Syncretism (Canadian Intelligence Publications, 1983), 90-91.

9 David DuPlessis, as told to Bob Slosser, A Man Called Mr. Pentecost (Logos, 1977), 207-213; Stanley M. Burgess, Gary B. McGee, and Patrick H. Alexander (Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, Zondervan, 1988), 253.

10 Burgess, et al., op. cit., 125; New Covenant (Feb. 1973), 14-17.

11 Leon Joseph Cardinal Suenens, A New Pentecost? (Servant Books, 1975), 24.

12 Alan Geyer, "Religious Isolationism: Gone Forever?" (The Christian Century, Oct. 23, 1974), 980-81.

13 Catholic Register, Toronto, Canada (Sept. 21, 1974).

14 Our Sunday Visitor (Dec. 31, 1978).

15 Los Angeles Times (Jan. 7, 1989, Part II), 7.