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[0:00] Revelation 17, verse 3.

[0:15] John writes, So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast,! full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.

[0:30] And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.

[0:44] And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

[0:58] And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. Mystery Babylon. Who likes a good mystery? I prefer non-fiction myself, but some people like to read a novel.

[1:13] They like to read mysteries, detective stories. They like to be a detective to search for all the clues and find out who the baddie is.

[1:24] It's exciting reading. Reading. Reading a thriller. Where we ultimately get to discern and expose the killer. We've got a story today.

[1:35] A story of mysteries, of secrets. A mystery. Something hidden. Something that we want to uncover, to reveal for what it is. And we're going to search out for some clues today in God's Word.

[1:48] We're going to go looking for some fingerprints through history that lead us to find a dastardly monster. Brutal and bloodthirsty. And he is hidden in plain sight.

[2:02] Mystery Babylon. Now, as was talked about, there's been a lot of talk lately about the end of the world. People think it's a big joke. Now, don't they? But the Bible says it will happen.

[2:14] Friends, it will happen. This is non-fiction, remember? Revelation 17. Throughout Revelation. And one sure sign is in Revelation 17.

[2:25] Mystery Babylon. It's a mystery. It's a secret. It's something prophesied yet to come. So it's important that we know about it. If it's in God's Word, if it's about the end of the age, if it's something prophesied yet to come, it's something that we ought to know something about.

[2:44] So we're going to do some detective work today to find out about Mystery Babylon because it's timely because we're living in the end of the age. So to find out more about Mystery Babylon, we need to go back to the Book of Beginnings.

[2:58] So the Book of Beginnings. Back to Genesis. The Book of Genesis. And we're going to follow on. After Noah's time, we read of the great-grandson of Noah.

[3:09] The great-grandson of Noah. In Genesis 10, verse 8. And his name is Nimrod. Nimrod. Genesis 10, verse 8.

[3:22] Nimrod, it means, let us revolt. Let us rebel. He was quite a revolting fellow, Nimrod. He was revolting. He was the world's first dictator.

[3:33] He was powerful. The Bible says he was mighty. A mighty hunter. He was a tyrant, in other words. And he was a rebel. He was a rebel against Yahweh, against God and his plan.

[3:46] And Nimrod founded his own rebellious kingdom. And it was known as Babel. Nimrod's kingdom was known as Babel in the Hebrew.

[3:59] In the Greek, it is Babylon. Nimrod was the founder, the king of the kingdom of Babel.

[4:11] And Babel means the gate of God or gateway of the gods. But divine judgment changed the meaning of Babel to mean confusion. Of course, we know the Tower of Babel.

[4:22] In other words, as we get the English word Babel, the languages were confused. It meant not to mean confusion. Babel was a pretend way of salvation contrary to God's plan.

[4:36] It was a way of works. It was a system of salvation through works. Not a salvation by faith. So this was Babylon. Babylon. It was one of the earliest societies of mankind.

[4:48] It's mentioned 260 times in the scriptures. Second only to Jerusalem. In times mentioned. And it signifies a spirit. It signifies a rebellion.

[5:00] Nimrod, as its leader, was a kind of antichrist. He presided over his own government. He set up his first religious centre.

[5:12] The world's first religious centre. He instituted an idolatrous worship. A religion of paganism. Nimrod's ambition was to have his own world empire.

[5:26] Ruling people by force. In a man-made world kind of unity. He defied God's command to replenish the earth. He rebelled and he said, no, let's all get together.

[5:37] We're going to build a city. Build a tower. You know, the astrologers can do their thing. It's going to be a world unity. But God intervened. God smashed the tower.

[5:48] He confused the languages. He scattered the people. He brought judgment. Right through the Bible we see Babylon or Babel, contrary to Jerusalem. They're in conflict right through the word of God.

[6:02] At Babylon or Babel we see the world's first international, political and religious ecumenical movement. Babylon has been there right through history.

[6:15] Right through the pages of history. The spirit of seduction, of deception. Babylon has never ceased to exist in one form or another. Babylon is a religious system of religious concepts and customs of ancient pagan practices.

[6:32] It's man-made, man-ruled, man-devised. A pretend salvation. And the book of Revelation says this is something we need to look out for as this false religious system of the end times.

[6:47] Revelation 17, when the harlot church shows up, the harlot church is drunk with the blood of the saints. Babylon or Babel.

[7:01] Babylon or Babel. Babylon or Babel. We see Babylon or Babel as a powerful satanic system. A satanic system.

[7:12] And we see it threefold. It's threefold. It's spiritual or ecclesiastical. It is political.

[7:22] It is political or governmental. It is political or governmental. And it is commercial or economic.

[7:36] Babylon. All three of those things. We're really just going to talk about the spiritual, the ecclesiastical or the religious aspect. The mystery religion, Babylon.

[7:47] Babylon. It has always existed in various forms right through the pages of Scripture. And it is still with us today. It is still present today.

[7:59] The Bible calls it the mother of heathen and pagan systems. In 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 7, there is a spirit that is at work that is called the mystery of iniquity.

[8:13] There's that word again. Mystery. 2 Thessalonians 2 verse 7, the mystery of iniquity. Now, a mystery is something hidden. It's secret.

[8:24] It's subtle. It's camouflaged. It's out of sight. It can go unnoticed. It's a seducing spirit of evil. And back in Revelation, the assembly at Laodicea had their eyes so blurred that they could not see their own lukewarmness.

[8:40] One of the things that God prescribed was that they would have something to fix their eyesight. And as God's church today, we need to see clearly, to have a clear vision about what is going on.

[8:53] Revelation 17, 18, it says, It was a deceiving influence.

[9:06] It was a kingdom, a powerful force that had an influence over all the world of that time. So we need to do some research today.

[9:20] We need to do some detective work in this mystery that is called Mystery Babylon. We've got to go right back in time. Right back in time. Right back to Babel. Right back to Babel.

[9:32] Right back to Nimrod. Right back to Nimrod. History tells us of Nimrod and his wife, Semiramis. She was the founder and the first high priestess of the Babylonian mystery religion.

[9:44] After Nimrod died, he came to be worshipped as Babel. Another of his names was Babel. The sun god.

[9:56] Nimrod came to be worshipped. Semiramis gave birth to a son named Tamas, who she claimed to have conceived miraculously.

[10:09] And Tamas was supposedly the reincarnation of Nimrod. Effectively, Nimrod became a false messiah. A false messiah.

[10:20] The sun was said to have been killed and then brought back to life. The religious system of Semiramis, also called Ishtar, had many secret and immoral rights in its idol worship.

[10:32] And the mother of Nimrod, Semiramis, came to be called the Queen of Heaven. The Queen of Heaven. She was worshipped along with the child. Now I'm going to press a button now and I'm going to reveal something.

[10:45] Who's excited? Now we're going to reveal a little bit more about the mystery. The mystery. Mystery Babylon. Mystery Babylon. Down through history we see the mother-son cult.

[10:59] That is, mystery Babylon. The mother-son cult. Revelled through different names through history. Heathen, pagan gods names. Heathen, godless names.

[11:11] Yet, having some common elements in this secret, mother-son worship. Different names but the same worship. Ashtaroth and Tamas from Babylonia.

[11:24] Isis and Horus or Osiris from Egypt. Aphrodite and Eros from Greece. Venus and Cupid from Italy.

[11:36] Isi and Iswara from India. Sa'dil and Dios in Asia. Maya and Buddha in Buddhism. Devaki and Krishna in Hinduism.

[11:50] Asherah and Baal in Canaan. And they had many other names. Many other names in more distant places. Even in Tibet, in China, in Japan.

[12:02] Even in the Koran. The Muslims' holy book, so they think. Mary's name is mentioned. 30 times. 30 times.

[12:13] The only woman mentioned by name in the Koran. Babylonism spread throughout the whole earth. Babylonism.

[12:24] It touched all nations. Canaan was full of this sinful worship. God told Israel to destroy Canaan and its inhabitants.

[12:35] But Israel ended up joining in. The Babylonian system as well. So the religious system that we see marks through history.

[12:46] Through many nations. Began in Babel or Babylon. And Babylon became the mother. The mother. The source of all the pagan religions of the world.

[12:58] Including the various secret societies. Freemasonry. Mormonism. You name it. It can all be checked back. To see where it came from.

[13:09] Where it stems from. Revelation 17.5. We see that Babylon is called the mother of Harlots. In the last days. We are to look out for this evil.

[13:21] Seducing spirit of Nimrod. And Babylon. The Babylon mystery religion. Is a counterfeit of the true Messiah. We've heard about the bloodline of the seed line of the true Messiah.

[13:34] The enemy had his counterfeit line. The enemy had his counterfeits. Right down through history. And the counterfeit was ultimately the Madonna and child.

[13:45] The Madonna and child. We see it plastered around Orthodox and Catholic churches. With the halo. The sunburst if you like. Which is characteristic of pagan idolatrous worship.

[13:59] Back in the days of Julius Caesar. The emperor became the high priest. Of the Babylonian cult. Let's have a think about some of the signs.

[14:11] Of Babylon mystery religion. One of the names.

[14:24] Of the Pope. Pope. How does it go? Pontifex. Pontifex. Back in the days of Julius Caesar.

[14:36] The emperor was the high priest. Of the Babylonian cult. And he wore on his crown the name Pontifex Maximus. Pontifex.

[14:47] It means the bridge maker. So the Pope was actually claiming to be the bridge maker. The bridge between God and man. And not just the bridge maker. But Maximus.

[14:59] The greatest. The greatest. It became the title of the high priest of mystery Babylon. And today the Pope. The Pope wears this title. He's called himself the sovereign pontiff.

[15:12] Of the college of Pontus. And the successor of Peter. However the truth is. That he is the successor. Of Babylonian high priests. Now what were some of the things in Revelation 17?

[15:25] One of the things was the colour. Scarlet. Scarlet. Scarlet. And purple. These are the colours of the Roman Catholic clergy.

[15:40] Scarlet. Scarlet. Scarlet was what robed the Babylonian high priests. They wore tall hats. Tall hats that looked like this. Now. We would know that as a mitre.

[15:56] But what it really is. Is what the pagan high priests would wear. And it's a fish's mouth. It's actually the mouth of a fish. The Dagon fish god.

[16:07] That is where we get it from. They remained celibate. Apart from open immorality. When it pleased them. They sprinkled holy water, so called, on the people.

[16:20] They had their smells and bells. It was Babylonism. This is what the Roman Catholics adopted. And when Constantine became the ruler in AD 312, he claimed to see the vision of a cross in this sign, Conquer.

[16:35] And he named Christianity the official state religion. And when he did that, the various gods and goddesses, the practices of Babylonian mystery religion, they just got tweaked a little bit.

[16:47] They just got given some Christian-sounding names. And all the priests of the mystery Babylon, the Babylon mystery religion, were just told, you can keep your traditions, just as you kind of go along and toe the line.

[17:00] And the head of the Babylonian order in 378 AD became the ruler of the Roman church. So effectively, Satan united Rome and Babylon into one religious system.

[17:13] And then they used the term Christianity for it, with just a few changes. We see through history the worship of the Virgin Mary in 381 AD.

[17:25] And all the festivals of the Roman Catholic Church are of Babylonian origin. Easter means Ishtar. It's one of the titles of the Babylonian Queen of Heaven, whose worship by the children of Israel was an abomination in the sight of God.

[17:41] These things are shocking. It's shocking. It's eye-opening. It's unbelievable. It's staggering. I can say personally, I've come through many days of trying to grapple with some of this truth.

[17:59] But you can search the internet, you can search the records and do research and you can find that these things are true. They're hidden in plain sight.

[18:10] The temples became the churches. The priests and the nuns became the leaders of Christianity. The statues and the festivals were given new names. And the colours were the same.

[18:21] Scarlet and purple. The holy water. The keys of the Pope. The statues which supposedly shed tears or winked. The rosary. The sacred heart.

[18:31] The lamps. The candles. The wafer. Changed into God. The priests and the nuns. The pontifex maximus. It stems back to Babel. To Babel.

[18:42] To Babylon. It's a shocking but true discovery. And one of the features in Revelation 17 of this Babylon mystery religion is the blood of the saints.

[18:58] The blood of the saints. Now I don't know if you've ever read Fox's Book of Martyrs. But I recommend that you do. It tells the story of this vile, satanic system that is called the Roman Catholic Church today.

[19:13] Where the blood of many was shed. Someone has calculated there could be even more than 500 million. 500 million died at the cruel hands of Romish religion.

[19:28] Many simply Bible believing Christians. Savagely tortured and brutally murdered. How different is this mystery Babylon religion from true biblical Christianity?

[19:41] It's completely different and opposed to it. Real Christianity, real biblical faith is exclusive. It's exclusive. It's absolute.

[19:52] There is no alternative. There is one way. One saviour. The teaching and practice that we adopt as a church must be biblical biblical and sound.

[20:07] It's been said that there's really only two religions. The truth of the almighty expressed in his word, the Bible and the false.

[20:18] Every other belief. These two religions cannot be mixed. We cannot mix the truth with false religion. We cannot adopt a mixture but rather return to the original.

[20:33] Not to the rituals and traditions that are based on Babylon but to the liberty, the freedom that is in Christ and his truth. It's been said that the enemy will give us enough of the truth to deceive the faithful and enough of the false to damn their followers.

[20:53] Rome is a substitute. It's substituted religion for truth. And today the ecumenical movement is controlled by Rome. Spurgeon says you cannot have unity without forsaking truth.

[21:09] And to forsake truth for the sake of unity is to betray Jesus Christ. We cannot have a unity that is at the expense of the truth.

[21:20] So friends, today this is a shocking message I know but I put it to you that history tells us and the word of God gives us these signs that mystery Babylon has been evident from the very beginning.

[21:36] Right back to Babylon. In Psalm 119 the psalmist says that I hate every false way. We cannot afford to be neutral or passive.

[21:47] We must hate that which is false and reject it out of hand. The Bible is the final authority upon which we stand. We're not going to be turned unto fables and religious deception.

[22:00] We don't want to follow that which is unbiblical man-made traditions man-made religions man-made ordinances and liturgy and sacraments and ceremonies that are counterfeit and contrary to the word of God.

[22:15] They even want to defile the very Bible that we hold. We want to get back to the divine pattern, the biblical pattern. It's been said that most error is counterfeit truth.

[22:26] We heard about the Messiah. We heard about the seed of the woman. The enemy wants to counterfeit and put a substitute for the true and the real Messiah.

[22:39] A counterfeit is a look-alike. It looks alike to the real but it isn't the real. Friends, my message today is to urge you to discern.

[22:51] To urge you to discern biblical truth. Biblical truth. It's becoming a lost art. At the end of the days the world will unite in a one world system of Babylon.

[23:06] There will be a synthesis, a synthesis, a paganisation, a joining together, a synthesis where it's kind of like a blending, a blending together, a so-called unity that is really quite false, a uniting together, a one world church that will be controlled by Rome or effectively will follow on from what we know as Rome today I believe.

[23:34] Babylon biblically speaking stands for false religion, for idolatry, for rebellion against God. And Babylon is a false religion, a false system of worship, a false church system.

[23:50] What does Babylon mean? It means confusion. It means confusion. confusion. When the Tower of Babel occurred, we saw the confusion of languages, the disorder, the Baal worship, can stand back to that, the system of man's works.

[24:11] The enemy was there, right there, at Babel. A system of man's works, of nature worship. We could read the words environmentalism today.

[24:22] Gaia worship. Christianity has been hijacked. It's been hijacked. There's a synthesis, a mixture of pagan origins, a cover-up that is going on today.

[24:38] The Bible is our only authority for truth. It tells us in Jeremiah 10, verse 2, to learn not the way of the heathen.

[24:48] Learn not the way of the heathen, but rather the way of the scriptures. The Babylonian system of worship has always been a snare to God's people.

[25:01] It's always been there dogging their steps. Through Israel, through the church, we see that the enemy, through spiritual deception, loves to just con people and draw us into error.

[25:15] So, ultimately, in the end of the world, there will be the ultimate culmination of worship of Satan himself. In Revelation 18, verse 4, talking about Babylon, God says, come out of her, my people.

[25:32] Revelation 18, verse 4, come out of her, my people. God wants us to be a separate people, separate in doctrine, in belief, to that which is contrary to the word.

[25:46] It says in Isaiah 8, verse 20, to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

[25:57] He tells us, come out, so that we will not partake of Babylon's sins and receive her yet future plagues. Friends, this doesn't sound like much of a Christmas message today.

[26:12] A Christmas message. It's interesting the word Christmas. I know some people say happy Christmas to me this morning. I've said it myself on occasion, I must say.

[26:25] Christmas. It means a mass. Christmas means a mass. We don't believe that.

[26:35] We don't believe in having a mass. God's. We believe in the Bible. Friends, again, please help me, let me couch this as carefully as I can.

[26:49] As a church, we've had Christmas services and as a home, we've got various Christmas decorations, although we're inclined to throw them in the bin now, to be honest. We've had a change of heart.

[27:01] We see that some of this stuff is not what it should be. Now, we all have to come to our own personal convictions on these things. I'm not wanting you to think that I'm bashing you today about Christmas.

[27:12] But it does bear investigation. It bears investigation. Where does it all come from? Where does all of these things come from? And I can talk much more about all of the detail of Christmas, which I don't want to labour today, but just do some research.

[27:29] Google on the internet Christmas and the word pagan, and you'll find lots of evidence of what it all comes from, where it all stems from. And we've all got to question that.

[27:39] We've got to question that. I believe it's right and biblical to question what we do, and what we traditionally do, what we do as a church, what we believe. Shouldn't it be in here?

[27:51] We certainly can't find the big fat man in the red suit in here. Certainly not. He's nowhere in there. He's an imposter. They're all imposters, every one of them.

[28:03] Down at the shops, walking around the place. They're an imposter. They're a substitute. Even Santa himself stems back to pagan ideas. It's amazing.

[28:15] I urge you to do some research. This is not just something I've dreamt up. It's something that I've earnestly sought the scriptures about. I know there's a good DVD that Paul has, Truth or Tradition.

[28:27] It's a wake-up call. It's a wake-up call. That's not to say we can get together as families and enjoy some fellowship and some food and think about our Lord's birth. But it definitely wasn't on December the 25th.

[28:41] Whose birthday was on December the 25th? Nimrod. It's Nimrod's birthday, not Jesus' birthday. No one even pretends that it's Jesus' birthday.

[28:53] It's got nothing to do with Jesus Christ. December the 25th was Nimrod's birthday and alike to the other pagan gods that people look to in the past.

[29:05] Now you might say I'm a Christian, I don't even think of Nimrod when I have my Christmas lunch and that's up to you. And we all need to come to our own convictions about that. Again I say please, please understand that I'm just trying to faithfully declare what I understand to be in alignment with God's truth and word.

[29:26] And for me there's much that is popular myth, there's much that is tradition that actually stems back to Babel and Nimrod.

[29:37] And these are things we ought to all be enlightened about and think about very carefully because God says come out of her, my people.

[29:48] Revelation 18 verse 4. I close with this really, it's a loving challenge today. A loving challenge that we need to separate from error no matter how popular it is.

[30:01] No matter how common it is, if it's not got a biblical basis then we don't follow that. We're going to gather with our family on December the 25th. We're going to enjoy some time with our family on December the 25th.

[30:15] We're not going to think of Nimrod and all of that rubbish. I urge you to worship him on December the 25th and on every day, 365 days a year we can worship him.

[30:29] Every day, think of him. Think of his birth, think of his coming again, think of his dying in your place and separate from that which is unbiblical. The mystery has been revealed.

[30:42] The mystery has been revealed. Nimrod, Babel, Babylon. A man-made, man-ruled, man-devised plan of salvation. A works-based harlot church.

[30:55] How popular is Christmas? How popular is this time of year? It's kind of the in thing, isn't it? Jingle bells. You know, how are they following?

[31:07] We know that the majority are hell-bound. They're not worshipping the Messiah of the Bible. They're worshipping a counterfeit. Let us pray.

[31:18] Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are our Lord, our Saviour. We thank you, Lord, that you are the God of heaven and earth. And we pray, Lord, we know that there was the seed of the woman, the true Messiah who came, and of who we think today and who we think of all the time.

[31:40] Our Saviour, our Lord, our Master, who died on the cross for man's sin, who rose from the dead. God clothed in flesh that you came and cared for mankind. We can think of you today and on December the 25th and on every day of this year.

[31:55] Lord, help us to be a prepared people, knowing that in the end of the days there will be a mystery Babylon who will be a counterfeit, a substitute, a false religious system, a uniting of all kinds of ideas, yet all with that idea that man can make his own path, that man can find his own gateway to the gods of Babel.

[32:17] Lord, we reject that today and we look to you and we pray, Lord, help us to be a biblical people who will love your truth more than the things of men, more than the traditions of churches and of history, but we will love you and your word and stand strongly for it until you come again for your people.

[32:36]  In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen.