What is the whore of Babylon - part 6

Okay, so I've spent five posts telling you that the whore of Babylon is the intellectual wing of an anti-God movement doomed to destruction. I've told you that this intellectual wing is made up of persons who have turned intellectualism into a religion and that a high concentration of these religious-gnostics can now be found in the scientific mainstream and are cranking out enough books calling for the end of Christianity that they now have their own section in the bookstore.

Who cares?

The first thing to realize is that when the Bible gives you a long, drawn out description of God's judgement upon a certain group it is not giving you this information so that you can get your jollies laughing at all the poor saps who failed to reach your level of personal holiness. It's a warning. You are being told to avoid a certain thing and being given an explanation of why that thing is to be avoided.

But I'm not a gnostic, you say, so can't we just leave it at that? It's not that simple. One of the teachers of one of the largest Sunday school classes at my former church was teaching a largely gnostic platform. Now, this was a very large group, and this man had a ministry that went beyond the church (he's deceased now, so I see no value in giving his name). How did a man with gnostic leanings get that sort of influence at a megachurch pastored by the president of the Southern Baptist Convention? Because nobody had any feelers out that would have fired off a warning siren at the sound of a teaching system that emphasized the acquisition of arcane bits of theological minutiae over simple trust and obedience in God.

What I am saying is that the traditional view of the whore of Babylon does nothing to prepare the modern church for the threat has long infiltrated it and is right now marshaling outside of it for a prolonged campaign of aggression. We Christians tend to think we are immune to deception -- particularly self-deception -- because we are identified as the "saints". It's true of course, the Bible calls those who have found salvation in Jesus as "saints". The problem is that we have polluted the definition of the word "saint", imagining a perfect creature clad in a shining white toga that levitates from one good deed to the site of his next miracle. This impression came to us from Catholicism, and the pagan demi-gods that the so-called Catholic "saints" replaced in the lives of the ancient Greco-Roman converts.

The Biblical truth is that a "saint" is nothing more than a sinner who has been given a promise of something better by their creator. A saint isn't set apart by his or her own intrinsic goodness, they are set apart by the price that their savior was willing to pay for them. People who put this truth at the center of their lives begin to look more and more like Jesus. They start to sacrifice of themselves for others -- in a host of different ways -- just like He did for us. Contrast this with the disciples of that Sunday school teacher I mentioned before; these young men went around trying to impress everyone with their superior knowledge. Learning is wonderful, it is not, however, a means of salvation, and if you try and make it one you are destined for disappointment.


Now, what is this going to look like when it goes down for the final time?

In a few short years our nation's economy is going to collapse. How long we flounder in bread lines and political gridlock is any one's guess. There's enough national angst to reduce the years to months, but our nation is such a lazy, docile bunch these days that it could take a decade. On top of that there is a host of international facts that could go one way or the other. All in all, I think a fair over/under for this is something like five years. This will end with a national -- at the very least -- and very likely international beast of the apocalypse that goes after the world's remaining resource base (Saudi oil fields, Canadian arable land, ect) with a vengeance. You'll know this stage when it hits because you'll be bombarded with political "mission" statements on your television: these are kind of like Roosevelt's "fireside chats" except that the glorious leader will try and sell you on a grandiose vision of the future where salvation (in both the physical and metaphysical senses) will be achieved through national supremacy and... uh... there's no fireplace.

Along about this time it is going to be "scientifically proven" that Christianity is harmful to psyches and the development of all people, especially children, and will come under government regulation. The teaching of certain Biblical passages will become illegal (in some countries this has already happened) and Christians will be martyred to degree and in places (like the US Bible Belt) that you probably never thought would happen. Those of us who reject the new, sanitized version of Christianity will be going to concentration camps and whatever method of execution this version of the beast wheels out. The scientists who wrote all those peer-reviewed papers proving that we were no good will watch our fates on their televisions and gloat... then the knock at the door and they get to join us in the oven/gas chamber/sausage press.

Somewhere in all this New York city will cease to be something that you and I would recognize as a city. It may get bombed, it may just hollow out when the stock market suddenly goes to zero, whatever form it takes I think New York fits the Biblical description for the representative city in a way that London just can't anymore. In the first "time" the city of Rome was sacked. In the second it was Byzantium. During the third round both Rome and Byzantium got sacked. Next up, during the "half a time", it's the Big Apple's turn. It may not be a "sacking" in the medieval/renaissance sense (Although I wouldn't completely rule that out), but it will be ugly nonetheless.


And this brings us to the final verdict. A whore, or prostitute, is someone who gives away something of immense value (her intimate affection) for a very small and temporal reward. Gnosticism prostitutes the rational mind that God gave each one of us for the small potatoes of a claim to intellectual elitism. And for all its claim to brilliant thinking it does something very stupid when it crawls into bed with the beast. The beast is a very insecure creature and when it has what it wants it turns on the whore. This has already happened historically, and it's already starting to happen again. Bigger than before. Worse than before.

Yeah, I'm depressed too.

Next post, current events: I catch up on the events that were going on while I was cruising around the Caribbean.