Philologos
Bible Prophecy Research
Title: Babylon
Submitted by: research-bpr@philologos.org
Date: August 1, 1998
Update: June 12, 2002
URL: http://philologos.org/bpr/files/b001.htm

Babylon

Letter from Aelius Aristides to Rome:

"Around the Mediterranean lie the continents far and wide, pouring an endless flow of goods to you. There is brought from every land and sea whatever is brought forth by the seasons and is produced by all countries, rivers, lakes, and the skills of the Greeks and foreigners. So that anyone who wants to behold all these products must either journey through the whole world to see them or else come to this city. For whatever is raised or manufactured by each people is assuredly always here to overflowing. So many merchantmen arrive here with cargoes from all over, at every season, and with each return of the harvest, that the city seems like a common warehouse of the world. One can see so many cargoes from India, or, if you wish, from Arabia Felix, that one may surmise that the trees there have been left permanently bare, and that those people must come here to beg for their own goods whenever they need anything. Clothing from Babylonia and the luxuries from the barbarian lands beyond arrive in much greater volume and more easily than if one had to sail from Naxos or Cythnos to Athens, transporting any of their products. Egypt, Sicily, and the civilized part of Africa are your farms. The arrival and departure of ships never ceases, so that it is astounding that the sea - not to mention the harbor - suffices for the merchantmen...And all things converge here, trade, seafaring, agriculture, metallurgy, all the skills which exist and have existed, anything that is begotten and grows. Whatever cannot be seen here belongs completely to the category of nonexistent things."

(Roman Civilization Sourcebook II: The Empire)

There is no doubt that by Babylon is figured Rome. There is no commentator of note, ancient or modern, Romanist or Protestant, who does not acknowledge so much.

Babylon, in the Apocalypse, is the symbolic name by which Rome is denoted. The power of Rome was regarded by the later Jews as that of Babylon by their forefathers.

(Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, 1872)

Research the word Vatican in many Latin / English - English / Latin dictionaries, or most encyclopedias and you will likely find that Vatican City and St. Peter's Basilica of the Roman Catholic Church were built upon what was called in Latin vaticanus mons or vaticanus collis. You will also find in the dictionaries that the words vatic / vates / vatis all mean prophecy or prophetic.

vatic = prophecy
anus = of
mons / collis = hill / mountain

So vaticanus collis means hill of prophecy.

On coins minted in Vatican City there is the inscription "Citta del Vaticano," which means Vatican City or City of Prophecy. There is a woman standing on the word "fides" which means faith. In her right hand she holds a cup with a wafer or "host" in it. In regards to the word "mother": "The holy fathers, as well in general councils as in their writings and doings, have called the Holy Roman Church the universal mother..."

This is a quote from John Paul II from a Vatican Information Service press release dated 17 September, 1997: "Thanks to greater attention to the mystery of the Church and Mary's relationship with her, the Virgin has begun to be invoked more frequently as 'Mother of the Church.'"

The word "mystery" is also a term used to refer to the Mass, specifically when speaking of changing the wafer/wine into the body/blood of Christ.

The word "Catholic" means universal.

The Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church historically claims authority over all secular rulers, and has exercised that assumed authority by deposing kings or queens who did not acknowledge the Pope's superior secular and ecclesiastical authority.

On a coin "minted by Pope Leo XII during the jubilee year of 1825 the church is portrayed as a woman seated on the globe with a cup in her hand. The inscription on the reverse reads SEDET SUPER UNIVERSUM which translated means 'The world is her seat,' declaring her universal or world wide authority."

The Vatican is not only a city, but since the Lateran Treaty of 1929 signed with Mussolini it is again also a country, with diplomatic relations with nearly every other nation on earth, and the Pope is the head of state." They have their own state flag, post office, bank, radio station, etc. They are a little country within a larger country.

The pope has a tiara which "declares him to be king of heaven, earth, and hell."

(www.biblelight.net)

See also "The Two Babylons or The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife" by Alexander Hislop.

Chapters online from the book "A Woman Rides the Beast" by Dave Hunt 
Chapter 1—A Woman Rides the Beast!
Chapter 6—A City on Seven Hills
Chapter 7—Rome's Fraudulent History
Chapter 9—Infallible Heretics
Chapter 12—Unholy Mother

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