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Focus on the Future - 9

Judgment Day in Babylon

The world has seldom seen a party quite like this one. It’s enough to make Las Vegas blush. Raucous music mingles with the bellowing of drunken dignitaries. Belshazzar, king of Babylon, orders servants to fetch the gold chalices captured from Jerusalem's temple. Spilling wine into them, he toasts the power of pagan gods and mocks the apparently helpless God of heaven.

Just when the feverish merrymaking reaches its climax, suddenly the party is over. Lustful hollering ceases. Scantily-clad women scream and duck under tables. Princes wail in terror. The king’s knees quake uncontrollably. I guess you could say there’s a whole lot of shaking going on.
What's happening? Judgment day in Babylon. Almighty God decides that a line has been crossed. It's time to call Babylon to account for its blasphemy and cruelty.
A superhuman hand descends, burning words of doom onto the palace wall.
Scripture gives us their interpretation: AGod has numbered your kingdom, and finished it.@ AYou have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting.@ Weighed and wanting! Babylon is doomed. That very night, invading Persians and Medes storm into the palace and slaughter the king and his princes. Babylon is out of business.

The event dramatized above really happened, 2,500 years ago. You can read it in your Bible, Daniel chapter 5. God’s sentence on the city of Babylon is final. We read in Jeremiah 25 verse 12: “’I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation … for their iniquity,’ says the Lord; 'and I will make it a perpetual desolation.’” So, according to Jeremiah’s prophecy, Babylon is bankrupt. There’s no hope of resurrecting its fortunes. Indeed, Babylon has lain desolate now for thousands of years, just as God predicted. Different ones have tried to restore the ancient site near modern Baghdad. Every attempt has failed, most recently during both wars with Iraq.

The Left Behind books, which we’ve been mentioning from time to time in this series about the future, say much about Babylon. Most of it is speculation, I’m afraid. Remember, Left Behind is self-described as Aan end-of-time fiction series.@ Fiction has its place, but when it comes to our eternal destiny, nothing substitutes for solid Bible truth. So what does the Bible itself say about Babylon in the last days? Will it be a real city? Or is it symbolic for something else?

To understand Babylon today, it helps to know something about its history. Babylon’s roots go way back to the ancient city of Babel. Remember the tower of Babel in the book of Genesis? Most of us heard about it as children in Sunday school, or maybe Vacation Bible School. After Noah's flood, you know, God made a covenant never to destroy the earth again with a flood. He gave the rainbow to seal that promise.

Unfortunately, Nimrod, great-grandson of Noah, rebelled against God’s covenant. He became a "mighty one on the earth." Genesis 10 verse 8. He assembled his followers in what became the region of Babylon. “We’ll build ourselves a tower,” they decided. “God will never be able to drown us with another flood, no matter how we live.” No wonder they wanted their tower to reach "to the heavens.” Genesis 11 verse 4.

So they spurned God’s covenant with its promises for the faithful. They decided to protect themselves by their own hard work. I guess that’s a temptation for all of us sometimes. There’s quite a bit of Babylon inside each of us, wouldn’t you say? That’s why we need the strength of God to live for Him each day!

Anyway, after Nimrod and his followers, centuries came and went. Babylon became the most powerful nation on earth. Eventually its armies invaded Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. God’s people were taken captive. Finally that nation’s proud follies proved fatal, as we’ve talked about today. Babylon was defeated and later depopulated. Now, thousands of years later, the literal city of Babylon remains uninhabited. But its tradition of false religion survives and thrives in these last days.

Let’s open the book of Revelation. In chapter 17 verse 5, end-time Babylon is called: Athe mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.@ What are these worldwide religious abominations, or popular false teachings? To identify them we must go back to ancient Babylon. We’ve talked about how that city fell, bringing down with it the Babylonian empire itself. Yet its pagan beliefs and ceremonies lived on. Babylon’s worship had influenced the famous code of laws developed by King Hammurabi. And even today, Hammarubi’s Code is reflected in many laws of the United States and Canada. Throughout the world, actually. Many lawyers and judges today might be surprised that Hammarubi’s Code owes much to Babylon’s religion. Religion? Yes, particularly its solar and astrological practices. In other words, Babylonian worship of the sun and the planets has played a part in today’s worldwide legal systems.

Do you find that surprising? Well, there’s more. When the Persians conquerors Babylon, they borrowed much from its solar ceremonies. They blended with it their own heritage of sun worship. The name of their sun god was Mithras.

So what, you might be thinking. Well, hang tight with me, friend, and we’ll see the significance to us of pagan worship from Babylon and Persia. In fact Mithras was later honored by Roman worshipers as Sol invictus—that’s “the invincible sun.” And when the Roman Empire became Christianized, so did many of its pagan customs. That’s how in the centuries after Christ, ancient Babylonian beliefs preserved in the Roman Empire found their way into the Christian church.

Actually, we shouldn’t be surprised about Christianity’s vulnerability with pagan “abominations” (to use the Scripture term we just quoted). Remember, Jesus and the apostles had warned about it in the New Testament. We studied that this week, you recall. The result was a compromised Christianity that corrupted the pure gospel with pagan rites and ceremonies. Many Christian leaders played politics, too, with the Roman emperors. Finally Christianity itself, as an institution, came to represent Babylon. Through its Crusades and Inquisitions, it breathed the very spirit of the antichrist. All in the name of gentle Jesus.

Reformers arose within the church. They identified institutionalized Christianity as Babylon, representing the antichrist power. They exposed many false ideas and teachings. But the process of recovering neglected truth took time—beyond the lifetime of all the Reformers. It took centuries to descend into Babylonian darkness and it would take centuries to reclaim the light.

There’s so much to talk about today and so little time. But would you find it interesting to highlight a few of the pagan teachings from Babylon that entered Christianity? Many of them promoted sun worship. But why worship the sun? Well, the sun brings light, warmth, growthBall needed for life itself. Reigning supreme over nature, the sun is the natural object of worship for those who reject their Creator.

Adoration of the sun became an issue even in Jerusalem. King Solomon, the very one who built God’s temple, defiled the city with sun worship. And Ezekiel chapter 8 records the revolting scenario of men bowing to the sun.

Unbelievable! Faithful prophets called God’s people away from the sun to their Creator. Yet the Jewish people persisted in paganism. Finally the Lord gave them up to be captives in Babylon, the source of their sun worship.

Sun worship from ancient Babylon spread to corrupt the world. Ancient records and art forms show how each nation reverenced the sun in the traditions of its own culture. The Romans maintained Babylonian sun worship traditions, naming the days of the week according to their heathen religion. Sunday they reverenced the sun. Monday the Moon. Tuesday, Mars. Wednesday, Mercury. Thursday they honored Jupiter. Friday, Venus. Saturday? You guessed itBSaturn. Just as the sun rules over the planets, Sunday attained preeminence above the other days of the week.

Think about it. What do Easter eggs and bunny rabbits have to do with the resurrection of Christ? They were pagan fertility symbols. The church adopted them to celebrate new birth in Jesus. The Encyclopedia Brittanica states "Christianity ... incorporated in its celebration of the great Christian feast day [Easter] many of the heathen rites and customs of the Spring festival."

Other heathen feasts infiltrated the church. For centuries pagans had celebrated the birth of their sun god on December 25. You've heard of that date.

Now there's nothing wrong with exchanging gifts on Christmas. My family, the Melashenko clan, has a wonderful tradition of getting together and sharing every Christmas season. We know it’s not the real time of Christ's birth. And we certainly realize, as I’m sure you do, that there’s nothing sacred about bunnies or colored eggs at Easter time.

Here's the question that should concern us. Since our Christian holidays have roots in sun worship, how do we know another area of Christian worship, perhaps something really important, has not been tampered with too?

Something worth studying into, don’t you think?

This business about Babylon is nothing to sneeze at. It’s serious in God’s eyes. The book of Revelation contains a solemn appeal for His people to break free from Babylon’s confusion. “Come out of her, My People.” Revelation 18 verse 4. Did you notice that God has people in Babylon? True believers are sincerely deceived about false teachings. God claims them as His own. But He also calls them to escape the trap of false teachings. Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” John 10 verse 27.

My friend, have you heard God’s voice in what we’ve studied today? Then I pray that you’ll take your next step along the pathway of truth. It’s always a challenge to leave that comfort zone and move forward by faith into the courageous zone. But God will be with you every step of the way. And please know that we at the Voice of Prophecy are committed to helping you along your spiritual journey. Bible answers await your questions. Connie, tell our listeners what we have for them today.