The woman, the whore, is drunk with the blood of true Israel and the true Church. Her bloodthirstiness is not evident at first. She is indeed seductive. She is able to get on very well with the world, with the ‘new thinking’, the new ‘mind-set’ and the new ‘modern ideas’. She plays into the hands of the upcoming political powers with the ‘new and newest, modern theology’. But is she bloodthirsty? That is not the impression she is given at first, because it is not exactly clear what she stands for, what her true motives and intentions are.
The ‘Names of God and of the Lamb’ are on the foreheads of the ‘hundred and forty- four thousand’.1 The great ‘multitude that no one can count’ are giving their lives for that, “they did not love their life even when faced with death”.2 The ‘victors’, the ‘overcomers’ bear the Name of God, of the ‘New Jerusalem’ and ‘Christ’s new Name’.3 On the other hand, the unfaithful, apostate world bears ‘the sign of the beast’ on its forehead. That is clear too.
However, on the ‘forehead of the woman’ (she is respectfully called ‘woman’ as well as ‘whore’, the two terms being interchangeable, like a ‘Janus-head’ with two faces) is a name containing a ‘mystery’: Babylon. Political and military power, science and technology are in the hands of the ‘beast’. Religion, culture, inner motivations and mind-sets, philosophy and faith, are her domain. The ‘beast’ desires all of that also for itself, so that unhindered it is able to achieve its goals. So that such a ‘new way of life and thinking’ even will pave the way for the ‘beast’.
‘Rome’ conquered ‘Greece’ militarily, but ‘Greece’ in a sense conquered ‘Rome’. Because the Romans were so impressed by Greek culture and civilisation that they started to adopt that for themselves. The Greek gods became the Roman gods. Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle dominated the way of thinking of the Romans. The Romans allowed their own civilisation to be led by the Greek pantheon, by Greek philosophies, by Greek humanism that goes by the name of Hellenism.
Greek humanism stands in sharp contrast to Judaism. The differences between the Greek and the Jewish way of life resulted in violent clashes between the Torah observant Jewish leaders in Israel and the Hellenistic humanistic leaders of the Greek Empire in the 2nd century BC. It was a clash between people who lived by their faith in themselves, by their natural abilities, their science and technology, their humanistic mind-set without ‘god’, and people who wanted to serve the one and only God, the Creator of Heaven and earth, the God of Israel, and follow His rules. Deep down this was a clash between the God of Israel, the God of the Bible and all the other ‘gods’. It led to this violent, military clash between the Greeks and the Jewish people. The Jews were forced to live under the Hellenistic successors of Alexander the Great’s Greco-Syrian Empire who ruled Judea before the Roman Empire became the new unrivalled boss over the region. One of these Seleucid Greek rulers was Antiochus IV Epiphanes. He was a Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death in 164 BC. He wanted to dedicate the Temple of Jerusalem to Zeus, the chief Greek god, and to slay pigs there as sacrifices to the Greek gods. The pig was considered to be the most unclean animal to Jews, according to the Law of Moses. He wanted to forbid Sabbath observance, by penalty of death. He forbade circumcision of the Jewish baby-boys on the 8th day, because he considered that a mutilation of the splendid male body represented so beautifully in its naked form by so many great Greek sculptors. The Greek Olympic Games were performed in the nude because of their admiration for the male body. The love between two men was considered by the Greeks as a higher form of love than the love between a man and a woman. That ‘love’ was only necessary for reproduction, to keep the human race going. The Greeks considered the Jews to be ‘barbarians’. Finally the military clashes between the Greeks and the Jews culminated in the Maccabean revolt under the leadership of a Jewish priest, Judas Maccabeus. The Maccabean Revolt was a Jewish rebellion, lasting from 167 to 160 BC, led by the Maccabees against the Seleucid Empire and the Hellenistic influence on Jewish life. Israel won, and is still celebrating today the rededication of the Temple to the God of Israel, in the Feast of Hanukkah.
The Greeks had also already developed a kind of ‘theory of evolution’ in their search for answers about nature and the Universe. A ‘new theory’ without relying on ‘gods’. The ‘Milesian school’ studying nature and how to develop science and technology, mathematics and so forth was a ‘school of thought’ founded in the 6th century BC. The ideas were put forward by three philosophers from the Ionian town of Miletus, located on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. They were Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.
The Greek spirit is also the spirit of ‘Babylon’. Of Humanism, Rationalism, Renaissance, Enlightenment, onwards to the 19th and 20th century with Darwin, Marx, Freud and their followers. French Revolution, Industrial Revolution and Information Revolution. Evolutionism, Communism and Fascism. Developments in Western culture since the 14th and 15th century. Racist thinking was standard fare in all the German universities, based on evolutionary theory since Darwin and was propagated by Hitler. The medical experiments in the concentration camps, the genetic engineering experiments to develop and produce the ‘Übermensch’: all these were developed to increase the glory of the ‘anti-Christ’ Hitler and his ‘beast-people’.
This is the ‘spirit’ of Babylon as well. So ‘streams of blood’ will be flowing again, blood mainly from Jews and Christians. That blood flowed under Fascism and Communism. In Hitler-Germany and in Lenin/Stalin Russia. That blood is flowing in under Communism in China and also in the Muslim countries worldwide. And who knows how soon that will happen again when ‘Babylon’ will be full-on. If you want to know more about persecution of Christians worldwide, go to the website of ‘Open Doors.’ These will be the final convulsions of the ‘old serpent’ however!
• Do not think that religion and politics have nothing to do with each other. Faith and religion are the deepest motivations of people, whether consciously or unconsciously.
• There is no ‘state power’ that ignores the role of ‘religion’. The ‘state’ either attempts to put religion to its service, or it tries with all its power to annihilate it. In the invisible background of every political power and state there are the invisible fallen angels and ‘powers of darkness’. Every nation and state has its own ‘god’.4
• ‘Janus’ is in Roman mythology the ‘god of beginnings’, of ‘gates’ and ‘doorways’. He is often shown with two faces. One looking forward and one looking backward. ‘Janus’ is the two-faced Roman god that glimpses both into the past and into the future.
• ‘Janus’ guards ‘doorways’ and is therefore the ‘god of new beginnings’ and accordingly the month of January was named in his honour.
• The two faces of the god Janus have appeared on opposite sides of Rome’s ‘War Gates’. The gates of a building (not a temple) in Rome named after him were opened in time of war, and closed to mark the arrival of peace – which did not happen very often!
• When Christ was born, Emperor Augustus happened to close these doors, announcing: Peace in the Roman Empire! Little did he know that the true ‘Prince of Peace’ had been born at that same time, in Bethlehem in Israel!
Bible References:
1.Revelation 14:1, 7:3 2.Revelation 7:14; 12:11 3.Revelation 3:12, 22:4 4.Exodus 5:2, 12:12, 15:11, 18,11, 20:3, 22:20, 23:13, 32–33, 34:14–17; Ruth 1:15; 1 Samuel 17:43- 47; 1 Chronicles 16:23–27; Isaiah 36:18–20; Ezekiel 28:1–10; Daniel 1:2, 2:11 and 47, 11:36–39; Acts
