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TractAnswering Objections

The Whore of Babylon

Fundamentalists like Dave Hunt claim the Catholic Church is the Whore of Babylon of Revelation 17–18. But the text itself rules this out: the Whore existed in John's day and persecuted apostles and prophets, so she must be first-century pagan Rome or apostate Jerusalem.

In three points

  1. "Babylon" points to pagan Rome or apostate Jerusalem
  2. Five of the seven kings had already fallen in John's time
  3. The ten horns turning on the harlot fits Rome's destruction of Jerusalem in 70
  4. The Whore killed apostles and prophets, who existed only in the first century
  5. The world maligns Christ's Bride as it maligned him

The vision

John sees a woman seated on many waters and on a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns, dressed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold and jewels, holding a cup of abominations, named "Babylon the great," and drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus (Revelation 17:1-6). So she is an international power (17:15), allied with the Beast, a pagan empire (13:1-10; compare 13:1-2 with Daniel 7:1-8), royal, rich, guilty of false religion ("fornication") and abominations, called Babylon, and a persecutor of Christians. "Babylon" narrows the candidates to pagan Rome and apostate Jerusalem. The Fathers called pagan Rome "Babylon," and many Protestant and Catholic commentators have taken the Whore as apostate Jerusalem.

The seven heads

The heads are seven mountains and seven kings, five fallen, one reigning, one to come (Revelation 17:9-10). The Greek horos usually means "mountain," often a symbol of kingdoms (cf. Psalm 68:15; Daniel 2:35; Obadiah 8-21; Amos 4:1; 6:1). A symbol may have more than one fulfillment. If five kings had fallen and one reigned in John's day (17:10), the Whore existed then; Christian Rome and Vatican City did not. Pagan Rome's emperors fit, so the Beast is Rome, while the Whore could be Jerusalem allied with it in persecution; her "sitting" on many waters shows sitting need not mean location.

The ten horns

The ten horns are kings who give power to the Beast and make war on the Lamb, as 17:12-14 says. Claims that they are the European Community fail, since it has more than ten nations. But the horns and Beast turn on the harlot and burn her (17:16-17), which fits Rome and its allies destroying Jerusalem in A.D. 66-70, as Jesus foretold (Luke 21:5-24). The woman is "the great city" with dominion over the kings of the earth, or "of the land" (17:18), whether pagan Rome politically or Jerusalem in several senses.

Chapter 18

The Whore is a hub of world commerce, as pagan Rome was and Christian Rome is not. Heaven, saints, apostles and prophets rejoice over her judgment, for in her was found their blood (18:20, 24). Apostles existed only in the first century, since an apostle had to have seen the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1), and prophets as a group existed only then and in Old Testament times (Acts 11:27-28; 13:1; 15:32; 21:10). So the Whore existed in the first century, when Rome was not Christian and Vatican City did not exist. Fundamentalists themselves claim Catholicism did not exist then, so by their own argument it cannot be the Whore.

If not the Whore, the Bride

Why is the Bride maligned as the Whore? Jesus said that if they called the master Beelzebul, they will malign his household (Matthew 10:25), and that the world that hated and persecuted him will hate and persecute his followers (John 15:18-20).

Key Scripture

Read online with linked Scripture: catholic.id/tracts/who-is-the-whore-of-babylon/

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