Hi Jerrod. I don't know you so maybe you could tell me if you believe that there is a Mystery Babylon? And if so, could you identify it?
Thanks
There definitely
WAS, and I guess to some extent there are still vestiges of it, who would like to bring it back to life.
I can identify it, but I need a paragraph or so of history...
The Bible says 2 million people came out of Egypt following Moses, and not all of them were actually Israelites. After tromping through the desert for a while, they invaded a land where they were supposed to evict/slaughter the current inhabitants and not intermarry with them. But they didn't evict them and they did marry them.
They adopted a pagan monarchy and then they adopted pagan religion, and built a pagan temple, and apostatized until they were carried away "beyond Babylon." In Babylon, they proceeded to adopt a good bit of Babylonian religion, and mix it with the existing combination of Judaism and Canaanite religion. They brought that mess to Persia and then back to Israel, where they (re)built their pagan temple.
Basically, the Israelite nation was established as a mixture. There was a mixture of Abraham's true descendants, and false ones. There was a mixture of the Lord's true religion, and false.
The false element of the Jewish nation, and its associated Canaanite religion, is "Mystery Babylon."
For the most part, God has stomped it down and burned it with fire whenever it started to crush the righteous. That is what Tishba B'Av is about.
Different bits of it still exist - some within modern Judaism, some in the Masonic Lodges, some elsewhere. As a single entity, it no longer exists. It is a shattered mirror, and bits of it are all over the place.
Jarrod