Bein' a Berean
…outside the box but inside God's Word...
I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Revelation 18:4-5
The “HER” in this verse refers to "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." It is reasonable to conclude from this verse that God’s people were in whatever the great harlot represents. Some hold that she represents the Roman Catholic church, however, there may be another explanation.
To learn what she represents we do well to follow this wicked woman as a symbol in scripture.
One of the most blatant references to her comes out of Zechariah 5:5-8:
Then the angel who was speaking with me went out and said to me, "Lift up now your eyes and see what this is going forth." I said, "What is it?" And he said, "This is the ephah going forth." Again he said, "This is their appearance in all the land (and behold, a lead cover [kikkar] was lifted up); and this is a woman sitting inside the ephahephah." Then he said, "This is Wickedness!" And he threw her down into the middle of the and cast the lead weight [eben] on its opening.
This woman is hidden inside an ephah1. An ephah is a basket used in commerce, similar in volume to our bushel basket, to measure a specific volume of grain or the like.
'You shall have just balances, just weight sephah [eben], a just, and a just hin; I am the LORD your God Leviticus 19:36
The lead weight [eben] used to cover this ephah is a specific round weight, a talent worth, used on scales to measure weight.2
This woman was hidden within things pertaining to commerce.
In Zechariah’s vision this woman in the ephah, described as wickedness, is taken to Babylon and given a place of prominence. Babylon is also connected to the woman in Revelation:
…and on her forehead a name was, a mystery, "BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH." Revelations 17:5
The woman described in Revelation 18:11-13 is also associated with commerce:
"And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys cargoes their any more—cargoes costly of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet, and every kind of wood and every article of ivory and every article made very wood and bronze and iron and marble, and cinnamon and spice and incense and perfume and frankincense and wine and olive oil and fine flour and wheat and cattle and sheep, and cargoes horses and chariots and slaves and human lives."
The repeated references to things of commerce suggest she is connected to, or has influence in, commerce and may well, today, represent the banking cabal that directs the activities of governments. This cabal has its roots in an organization of international bankers, now situated in the "City of London," started by Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) who is known for the words and related principle:
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!”
This Rothschild organization today controls the laws and actions of governments by, among other things, controlling the money/debt. It uses the armies of stronger nations to force lesser nations into submission. It enslaves the people of those nations which are under it’s control.
One of the reasons that the Roman Catholic church has been labelled as the harlot is derived from the scripture which identifies her as sitting on seven hills:
Here is the mind which has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits… Revelations 17:9
Although Rome is well known for having been built on seven hills (Constantinople/Istanbul also sits on seven hills) there is more on those hills than the Catholic Church. A corporation known as Undroit, a subsidiary of the Vatican has its head office just blocks from the Vatican. Unidroit owns the copyright to the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) which has been adopted as the basis for all commercial dealings between nations.
The main focus of our modern systems of commerce involves profit through interest—usury—a practice forbidden by the Lord:
If you lend money to My people...you shall not charge him interest. Exodus 22:25
However, in Nehemiah 5:1-5 (and similarly in Leviticus 25:35-37) we read:
Now there was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, ... “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others.”
Nehemiah and the people had recently returned from 70 years of captivity in Babylon where Zechariah’s wicked woman was given a place of honour. Already then the practice of usury or interest was known to reduce people to bondage and slavery by slowly draining them of all their belongings.
As a Biblical principle of law, it was recognized that charging interest of one’s countrymen was forbidden, however, if interest is charged by a corporation, being a fiction of law and not a countryman, does it violate God’s law?
As we today watch every nation succumb to tremendous debt it will soon become a reality that we are slaves to those to whom that debt is owed. Soon governments will revolt and destroy this harlot and another enslavement will begin.3
However, having lived with this abomination for many years the church has been deceived into the harlot’s agenda. Does a Christian denomination exist that has not incorporated for the commercial reason of giving tax receipts, borrowing money, and not trusting God with issues of liability?
The process of incorporating is one of re-forming and submitting an organization to the dictates and directives of the one through which it is incorporated—a government whose laws are controlled by the banking cabal. An incorporated church is a commercial institution under the authority of the government rather than a body of people under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
To opinions of incorporated churches on issues like abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, politics, etc. are controlled or forbidden by the government that grants every church their charter/permission to operate.
Can it be any more obvious that our Western institutional churches have become little more than a powerless commercial puppet rather than a powerful spiritual force against evil that it was meant to be?
There is only one solution, “Come out of her, my people,”—un-incorporate—“so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues…”
...also read The Church of Caesar
1 An ancient Hebrew unit of dry measure, equal to a tenth of a homer or about one bushel (35 litres). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
2 a round, a round district, a round loaf, a round weight, a talent (a measure of weight or money)
3 Revelation 17:16 And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked, and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire.
