This is one place where we go outside the Scriptures to understand the full impact of something foundational to the entire Bible, and especially the book of Revelation. The people to whom the Bible was written were far more familiar with ancient religion and culture than we are today. It is therefore important that we study the implications of the ancient religions surrounding Babylon.

The first head of a government

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Nimrod was in a sense the first head of the beast. He came to be worshipped as the one who had emancipated the human race from bondage to God’s law. Rabbinic tradition says that the reason for building the Tower of Babel was so that if God were to again deluge the earth, there would be a means of escape. He appears to be the basis for Atlas, the god who lifts the earth away.

When Nimrod was killed, some “Babylon mystery religion” writers claim his wife Semiramis presented her pregnancy as miraculously conceived, declaring her son the fulfillment of the “seed of the woman” promise. These accounts assert that Semiramis proclaimed a kind of virgin birth, and that her child (often identified with Tammuz) was hailed as the serpent-slaying savior — while in reality directing worship back to the serpent and sun-god complex.

This appears to be the origin of the name Zero-Ashta, said to mean “the seed of the woman.” (It is often mis-cited as “Zoar Astra”; Zoar is a different place entirely, and the transliteration is disputed.) The result was that Semiramis herself was also deified — she became the first female deity, worshipped almost universally as the goddess of Venus. The image of a mother with a child at her breast spread throughout the entire ancient world and became the icon of the “divine mother.” She is referred to as the “Queen of Heaven” in Jeremiah.

These philosophies swept the known world

• The “Mother of Harlots” — the spiritual harlotry rooted in Babylon
• Moloch — the sacrifice of children
• Egypt at the time of the Exodus — children thrown into the Nile as sacrifice

Baal worship swept Canaan at the time Israel entered the land — Baal meaning “Lord” or “Master.” Each Baal spirit was believed to lord over a specific domain — a river, a crop, a region — and Baal was seen as the source of blessing: good crops, rain, fertility. Baal Melqart was the god of power and war; Asherah, goddess of fertility and sex, was honored with phallic poles, and her priestesses were temple prostitutes.

The same spirit appeared under different names: Isis in Egypt, Ishtar in Syria — all expressions of the same root religion originating in Babylon.

Connection to the book of Revelation

John is taken “in the Spirit” to two locations in Revelation: first, to see Babylon (Revelation 17); second, to see the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21).

Both visions require being “in the Spirit.” The phrase “this calls for wisdom” signals the need for spiritual discernment. We will confuse Babylon with the Church unless we are viewing through the Spirit. The true Church is not visible to the natural eye.

Who is the harlot?

Revelation 17:5 — on her forehead: “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots.”

Genesis 10:8-12 is Nimrod’s own line. He is a son of Cush, and the cities credited to him are Babel, Erech, Akkad and Nineveh. The Canaanite nations Israel later drove out are a separate list a few verses on, in 10:15-19, and they descend from Canaan rather than from Nimrod. What the chapter does establish is where this begins: Babel. And Babylon is under judgment from here to the end of the Bible.

“That is why it was called Babel — because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world.” — Genesis 11:9

The spirit of Babylon corrupted the nations in body, soul, and spirit — appealing always to the appetites. I John 2:16 identifies the three channels:

• Lust of the flesh — sex, food, drunkenness; “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die”
• Lust of the eyes — greed, money, affluence
• Pride of life — arrogance; “I am above judgment” and “I will do my own thing”

Babylon mystery

Babylon is a deceitful mystery. Her philosophies are slowly revealed as one gets drawn into her entrapments. The trail of Babylon has always been a trail of the blood of those who refused to worship her.

• She corrupted Israel — Isaiah 13, 14, 21, 46-48, 50-51 all speak to this
• Daniel 4:30 — Nebuchadnezzar: “Is not this the great Babylon I have built as the royal residence, by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty?”
• She is drunk with the blood of the saints
• She is the spirit behind governments and political systems — her perfume can be smelled in Sodom, in New York, in London
• We no longer think of Babylon as a religion, but we still worship her. We aspire to her philosophies — the worship of the appetites, the spirit of entitlement, the self as god.

And it did not stay outside the church. Babylon’s religion came in with us — political machines that in the name of religion have accumulated wealth and power, the amassing of silver and gold and beautiful things, the appetite for political power, the competition among ourselves.