What do you think end-time Babylon is?
There are various views and opinions among prophecy teachers, and likewise among Messianic people, concerning what end-time “Babylon” is going to be. These range from believing that end-time Babylon is the Roman Catholic Church, mainstream Christianity or today’s “Church system,” the United States of America, or a rebuilt Babylon in the Middle East. Some think that “Babylon” is purely a system, whereas others think that it is “just this” or “just that.”
In Hebrew, the word translated “Babylon” is Bavel. BDB defines Bavel as “confuse, confound.”[1] Consequently, it should not be surprising that the world was first confused at Babel (Genesis 11). At Ancient Babel, God confused the languages and humanity was forced to scatter across the face of the planet. It should also be noted how Ancient Babylon (and the surrounding region of Sumer) is the same location where some of the pagan Sun worship and rituals originated which impacted the Ancient Israelites, the same being responsible for a number of errant influences in Roman Catholicism. It can easily be said that the paganism originating in Ancient Babylon, has been permeated throughout the globe.
We tend to be more “open minded” about any specific identification of end-time Babylon, because the very nature of the Babylonian phenomenon is something which is opposed to the Creator God (cf. Revelation 17:5). Understanding that Bavel means “confuse,” implies that this is something which is purposely going to be confusing. So, we see legitimacy in identifying end-time Babylon as composing religious, political, and societal elements, which all make up a world system opposed to the Creator God.
NOTES
[1] Francis Brown, S.R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 93.
