Jeremiah says of Babylon that it was “a gold cup in the Lord’s hand; she made the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore they have now gone mad.”1 The ‘wine’ that the ‘whore’ holds in her hand contains the elements by which she seduces the nations. They are very effective means for she misleads ‘the kings of the earth’ and ‘all the people who worship the beast’ and bear his mark.2 Every time the comment is added: ‘those who live/dwell on the earth’.3 The colour of the woman’s robe is the colour of the ‘dragon’, of Satan,4 and it is the colour of the beast.5 That ‘beast’ is robed in blasphemous names,6 with which the anti-Christ deifies himself7 and requires divine honour to be given to its image.8 Man has become ‘super- man’, ‘divine’ in his own mind. The ‘whore’ shows definite similarity to the ‘false prophet’ in this respect.9 She is clothed in purple and scarlet, symbolising great wealth and opulence and power, and she is weighed down by the jewels and the gold. Although this leads some commentators to think of the robes of bishops, cardinals and popes of the Roman Catholic Church, this cannot have been in John’s thoughts, because that Church did not yet exist—although what he sees then may be referring to the Roman Catholic Church in the distant future. Who can tell? Whatever you might bring against the ‘Church of Rome’, however, it does not fit the Biblical description of the ‘anti-Christ’ or the ’false prophet’. For even though many unbiblical doctrines have been taught and never revoked during the past centuries, Rome has never denied the Father and the Son, or denied that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and that is the spirit of anti-Christ according to the Epistles of the Apostle John. “Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the ‘anti-Christ’—denying the Father and the Son.”10 In her hand she has the golden cup full of abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. Solomon actually fell because of his many wives, who imported idolatry into Israel. Solomon was fabulously rich11 but his many wives brought him down, leading him to worship other gods; “Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and did not follow the Lord fully, as David his father had done.”12 Consequently the kingdom split in two after him. The ten tribes became collectively the kingdom of Israel, and the two tribes collectively the kingdom of Judah. Jezebel, Ahab’s wife, was also intoxicated by the blood of the believers in Israel and she also introduced the cult of Baal and Ashtoreth to Israel.13 She met her end made up like a ‘whore’.14 The ‘woman’ misleads the world to turn away from God with promises of luxury, opulence and unfettered pleasures of life and lust. The word ‘abominations’ is also used by the Lord Jesus, when He speaks of the ‘abomination that causes desolation’,15 which means: ‘the abomination that leads to destruction’. That is the ‘abomination’ the ‘whore’ has in her golden cup. She rides on the ‘beast’ that, for a while, is charmed by her. Soon enough however, the ‘beast’ has enough of her and tears her apart.16 The vulgar flaunting of the prostitute’s coarse lust of materialism, with which the ‘kings of the earth’ initially purchase her favours, contrasts with the sober distinction of the ‘woman’ described in Revelation 12.17 The ‘prostitute’ is not a majestic ‘Queen’, but a woman like Livia, the Emperor Augustus’ wife, the mother of Nero, who, hidden in the background, used all kinds of manipulation to dominate firstly Augustus and, thereafter, her son Tiberius. Or she is a woman like Salome who, following a sensuous dance, requested the head of John the Baptist.18 Beast and whore, political power and religious power, anti-Christ and ‘false prophet’ (with false prophecy and teaching) who are going to promote themselves during the end times.
• The ‘whore of Babylon’ is not the ‘false prophet’. They meet their end differently. The ‘whore’ is made destitute and stripped naked by the ‘beast’, with her flesh eaten by the ‘beast’, and she is burnt by fire.19 The ‘false prophet’ is seized and cast into the ‘lake of fire and sulphur’,20 together with the ‘beast’.
• Ashtoreth, the moon goddess of the Phoenicians, representing the female principle in nature, their principal female deity; frequently associated with the name of Baal, the sun-god, their chief male deity (Judges 10:6; 1 Samuel 7:4; 12:10 ). These names often occur in the plural (Ashtaroth, Baalim), probably as indicating either different statues or different modifications of the deities.
• This deity is spoken of as Ashtoreth of the Zidonians. She was the Ishtar of the Accadians and the Astarte of the Greeks (Jeremiah 44:17; 1 Kings 11:5, 1 Kings 11:33; 2 Kings 23:13). There was a temple of this goddess among the Philistines in the time of Saul (1 Samuel 31:10). Under the name of Ishtar, she was one of the great deities of the Assyrians. The Phoenicians called her Astarte.
• Solomon introduced the worship of this idol (1 Kings 11:33). Jezebel’s 400 priests were probably employed in its service (1 Kings 18:19). It was called the “Queen of Heaven” (Jeremiah 44:25).
• Some researchers identify this ‘moon-goddess’ with “Allah” the god of Islam. The 19th-century scholar Julius Wellhausen also viewed the concept of Allah (al-ilah, the god)” to be “a form of abstraction” originating from Mecca’s local gods. In Old Testament times, Nabonidus (555-539 BC), the last king of Babylon, built Tayma, Arabia as a center of Moon-god worship. Segall stated, “South Arabia’s stellar religion has always been dominated by the Moon-god in various variations.”
• Many scholars have also noticed that the Moon-god’s name “Sin” is a part of such Arabic words as “Sinai,” the “wilderness of Sin,” etc. When the popularity of the Moon-god waned elsewhere, the Arabs remained true to their conviction that the Moon-god was the greatest of all gods. While they worshipped 360 gods at the Kabah in Mecca, the Moon-god was the chief deity.
• Mecca was in fact built as a shrine for the Moon-god. This explains why the crescent moon is the symbol of Islam. It is placed on top of mosques and minarets and displayed on hats, flags, rugs, amulets and even jewellery. The Muslim symbol of a crescent moon is the ancient symbol of the moon god.
• In the 1940’s, the archaeologists G. Caton Thompson and Carleton S. Coon made some amazing discoveries in Arabia. During the 1950’s, Wendell Phillips, W.F. Albright, Richard Bower and others excavated sites at Qataban, Timna, and Marib (the ancient capital of Sheba). Thousands of inscriptions from walls and rocks in Northern Arabia have also been collected. Reliefs and votive bowls used in worship of the “daughters of Allah” have also been discovered. The three daughters, al-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat are sometimes depicted together with Allah the Moon-god represented by a crescent moon above them. The archaeological evidence demonstrates that the dominant religion of Arabia was the cult of the Moon-god.
Bible References:
1.Jeremiah 51:7 2.Revelation 17:2 3.Revelation 3:10, 6:10, 8:13, 11:10, 13:8, 14 4.Revelation 12:3 5.Revelation 17:3 6.Revelation 13:5–6 7.2 Thessalonians 2:4 8.Revelation 13:15 9.Revelation 13:11–18 10.1 John 2:22, 4:2-3; 2 John 7 11.1 Kings 10:14–29 12.1 Kings 11:1–13 13.1 Kings 16:29–33, 18:4, 21:5–16, 25 14.2 Kings 9:30–37 15.Matthew 24:15 16.Revelation 17:16 17.Revelation 12:1 18.Matthew 14:1–12 19.Revelation 17:16 20.Revelation 19:20
