Hidden Babylon and God's Last Warning

HIDDEN

BABYLON

AND

GOD’S LAST WARNING

MARK DAVIDSON

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For

all my brothers and sisters in Christ

who have already, and who will soon, respond to the call,

Come out of her, my people!

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

SECTION ONE

BABYLON THE GREAT IS THE ENTIRE UNSAVED HUMAN RACE

1. Come Out of Whom?

2. A New View

SECTION TWO

SCRIPTURE EXPLAINS: BABYLON IS THE UNSAVED HUMAN RACE AND ITS WORLD KINGDOM OF IDOLATRY

3. Who’s Your Mama?

4. Wives or Harlots

5. The World Kingdom’s Hidden Name

6. The Enduring Name with a Double Meaning

7. Life in the (Really) Big City

8. Of Cities, Nations, and Daughters

9. The Abominations of the Earth

SECTION THREE

THE COMING PUNISHMENT AND HOW TO ESCAPE IT

10. The Crimes—From Idolatry to Murder

11. The Great City:

Three Parts, Three Soils, Three Idolatries

12. God’s Mercy

13. Plagues and Punishment

14. Responding to God’s Last Warning

Appendix A. Chiastics: More Information

Appendix B. The Six Truths of Idolatry

Appendix C. Three Parts of the Great City: Origins

Appendix D. The Timing of the Rapture

Appendix E. The Four Signposts

Appendix F. The Chiastics of the Trumpets and Bowls

Appendix G Quoted Scriptures

Endnotes

Bibliography

About the Author

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

1. Coverage by Chapter of the Harlot’s Name in Revelation 17:5

2. The Parallel Form of Revelation 17:1–18 with 21:9–22:5

3. The Parallel Form of Revelation 17:1–8 with 19:11–21

4. The Convergent Form of Genesis 11:1–9

5. The Parallel Form of Genesis 11:9 with Revelation 17:5

6. The Migration of Noah’s Descendents from Babel

7. The Ancient Cities of Babylon and Tyre Compared to Babel the Great in Scripture

8. The Ancient Cities of Nineveh and Jerusalem Compared to Babel the Great in Scripture

9. Daughters of the Cities and Nations in Scripture

10. The Three Parts of the Great City Compared

11. The Convergent Form of Revelation 16:10–21

12. Comparison of the Four Soils of Matthew 13:18–23 to the Bride and the Three Parts of the Great City

13. The Chiastic Form of the Seven Seals of Revelation 6 with the Seven Angels of Revelation 14

14. The Parallel Form of the Source of the Trumpets and Bowls

15. The Parallel Form of Revelation 5:1–10 with 10:1–11

16. A Summary of the Trumpets and Bowls

A-1. The Genesis Account of the Flood as a Chiastic Convergent Form

D-1. The Seven Rapture Features of the Seven Rapture Passages Compared

F-1. Overall Chiastic Form of the Trumpets and Bowls

F-2. Parallel Form of the Trumpets (to Echo the Bowls)

F-3. Parallel Form of the Bowls (to Echo the Trumpets)

PREFACE

Writing a book about Babylon the Great was something I never thought I would do. For years, the topic seemed to me to be too nebulous and mysterious. However, it seems God had other plans for me.

This book is the result of the third leg of my ongoing journey of discovery God has apparently set me on. I believe when Babylon the Great is seen as it really is, then God’s plea in Revelation 18:4 to Come out of her becomes far more important than we have been led to believe.

In November 1997, after having walked away from church as a young adult, Christ showed me He had to be my God. In that moment I repented of my ways and committed to following Him. In relationship with Him, He revealed to me who He is and how He works. Following Him and obeying Him became all-important.

My journey of discovery started four years later with a prayer. The events of September 11, 2001 made me sense I was missing knowing God’s plan for this world. Earlier in my life I had studied the popular teachings of Bible end-time prophecy, and nowhere did it hint nineteen Islamists would fly passenger jets into America’s centers of capitalism and defense. So I asked the Lord if He would give me wisdom and show me His plans for the end of the age. Praise God, for He did just that.

It was He who started me on a path of major research delving into world history and Holy Scripture. I discovered that true world history shines a light on Daniel 2:40 and 9:26, showing the Antichrist will be none other than a Muslim Arab living in the Middle East, rather than a Roman, which many had thought he would be.

This in turn led to the discovery of the Four Signposts. These are four signs acting as a prelude to the Tribulation, which show the emergence of the man who will be the Antichrist. Bible prophecy, if read for what it says without the influence of tradition, provides a script identifying this series of events to occur in the Middle East nations surrounding Israel.

The first of the four signs was predicted to be Iraq’s government changing from something brutal to something more civilized. The discovery of that interpretation of prophetic Scripture in late January 2003 was timely. Just weeks later in February 2003, George W. Bush declared that the US military would go into Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein, and instill a democracy. The changing of the lion’s mind of Daniel 7:4 was announced! God gave me the privilege of watching the first of the Four Signposts unfold and so fulfill prophecy right in front of my eyes.

The next event, the Second Signpost, will unleash great chaos and hardship across the world. I realized if the First Signpost was true, the Second would be also, and so I had to warn the Church, and I did so through my book Daniel Revisited.

I thought I was done, but that was only the first leg of the journey.

The second leg of the journey began when I asked the Lord if there was another way to present the material. Could the interpretation of the Signposts be confirmed as correct by proving it from a completely different path using Scripture and logic? God answered this prayer as well.

Noting that the chapters of Daniel 2 to 7 are like mirrors of each other, I searched online for these terms and found an obscure field of Bible study called chiastics. Chiastics is a method of highlighting a flow of words in the Bible so the reader can better see the form of the text. It’s like the Bible is a landscape and the highlighted flow of words in the Bible is a river flowing through the territory, showing us where the rises and depressions are in the land. Where the words of the Bible might lead to a number of interpretations, the form of Scripture directs us along the right path. Chiastics is not much talked about as theologians didn’t give it much thought, since its results clash with traditional prophecy teaching.

The fruit borne of this second leg was my book Chronicles of the End Times. Chronicles dives into much prophetic Scripture, chiastically mapping all of Daniel, all of Revelation, half of Zechariah, and three chapters of Matthew. Like a stroll through a country meadow just enjoying its beauty, many topics were unveiled using chiastics. Scripture has become for me even more beautiful and wonderful as the form of prophetically mysterious chapters yield hints and clues as to what Scripture is really saying.

The many prophetic chapters of Daniel picked up new meaning, such as why the metals are used in the Daniel 2 image, and which parts of Daniel 11 are fulfilled in the end times. It also reinforced the Four Signposts.

The form of Revelation shows the book to be like a manuscript that was dropped on the floor and picked up out of order, and that is how God seemingly instructed John to write it. Knowing how the order is jumbled is the key to seeing the flow of Revelation. Among the many topics made clearer, is the identity of Babylon the Great.

Of all the topics written about in Chronicles of the End Times—and many topics were touched upon—the identity of Babylon the Great and the meaning of the exhortation in Revelation 18:4, to come out of her was highlighted to me as the most important of all the topics to get out to the Church.

Therefore, the warning of Revelation 18:4 was the drive behind bringing this newest book, Hidden Babylon and God’s Last Warning, to print. Hidden Babylon points to a completely different identity for Babylon the Great than what we’ve been taught by the great majority of sources. That new identity results in God’s final warning in Revelation 18:4 having significant implications for each and every one of us who follows Christ.

The research for this book revealed three major themes which are covered in this book.

First, all Scripture indeed points to Babylon the Great being the entire unsaved world of humanity. It includes all the unsaved people from the time of the Tower of Babel to the end time. Arguments have been made that the Harlot is one group or the other, or that it is some end-time religion, but that conclusion is only arrived at when one does not consider all Scripture.

Many treat Revelation 17–18 as the main Bible passage telling us about Babylon the Great. However, it is not. It is only the summary of Babylon the Great, taking in passages from all over the Bible, from books as disparate as Ezekiel, Galatians, and Hebrews, to name only three. Scripture points to the truth, but frequently does so from dozens of places and many perspectives. The Bible student cannot expect to get a true meaning out of a handful of verses—true meaning must come from all Scripture speaking about the same subject being studied.

Second, this research also taught me how essential is the chiastic study of text form. As written about in chapter 2 and appendix A, any Bible passage written in a chiastic form (and that is all of them) cannot be best understood unless its chiastic form is identified and understood. This is especially true of prophetic Scripture. I realize some readers may be hesitant to explore an unfamiliar topic like this, but I cannot recommend enough that Bible students familiarize themselves with chiastic form. Many readers have thanked me for opening their eyes to this method of Bible study. I believe it will be completely worth your time and enhance your future study of the Bible.

Read chapter 2 in which a short tutorial is given. Do not skip the chiastic parts of this book. I encourage you to read appendix A, and additional books on the topic from the bibliography. I believe it will enhance the way you read the Bible.

Thirdly, and most importantly, this research taught me about the great subtlety and universality of idolatry in the human heart. It is the root cause of our acts of sin and all the ugliness in the world today. Idolatry within the human heart works subtly, disguising what it really is to the idolater. It is beguiling, leading a person down a path away from true relationship with Christ. It is no surprise, then, that there are so many places in the Bible where God says to not be deceived. Scripture speaks to this from dozens upon dozens of places, but they must be assembled to bring understanding so it can be dealt with. My prayer is that people become aware of their personal state, surrender all to Christ, and seek to come out of her.

Finally, why did God set me on this path to discover the Four Signposts and the universal nature of the identity of Babylon the Great? I don’t know. I am only a servant of Christ, surrendered to Him, loving His brothers and sisters, and in obedience willing to use the gifts God gave me for His kingdom. I simply follow the trail of bread crumbs, as it were, leading from truth to truth. It might help that I have no formal seminary training (though I do have a graduate degree in engineering). It might also help that I was raised with a healthy questioning of authority when it might indeed need questioning.

Whether there will be a fourth leg to this journey, I do not know. There are so many topics that Chronicles uncovered I would enjoy exploring. But I do not know if there is enough time—whether due to my getting older, or due to the time until the King’s arrival getting shorter.

I thank my readers for coming alongside me and joining me in watching for the Signposts of Christ’s coming. They have truly been a blessing to me. Let us together pay attention to that last warning, Come out of her my people, so together we may all stand firm prior to His coming and confident at His appearing.

—Mark Davidson

3 December 2022

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book in its current form would not have been possible if it weren’t for the time and effort given by my team of reviewers. I am indebted to David Unruh, Michael Wright, Joe Dodd, and Vicki Sutter, as well as others who wish to remain anonymous. All of them are dear brothers and sisters in Christ who I also have the honor to call friends.

Not only am I very thankful to each one of them for having taken the time to read the manuscript and make comments and suggest revisions, but I am amazed at the varied gifts within the body of Christ that were brought to the table. One has a greater background in English, another in apologetics or theology, another in simply sensing when things were missing or not right.

Besides helping with the message itself, they were instrumental in shaping the overall tone. Since this book covers a wide variety of topics within Scripture, as well as some world history, and the message is addressed to the Church at large, certain chapters in this book could have potentially offended some, if not handled with love and care.

In addition, almost all in the team agreed that the topic of studying Scripture using chiastics was indispensable and very valuable; however, it needed to be handled in a way that lets readers see the benefits of the study of Scripture’s form.

I am thankful to my editor, Inger Logelin, who has taken her precious time to apply her gifting and standards to this work. Having also edited some of my earlier books, she has for several years been one of my teachers in this craft of writing.

I wish to also thank the talented people at Westbow Press for bringing this book to press.

Finally, I am indebted to my wife. I praise God for placing this wonderful woman in my life, and I am truly blessed. She continues to handle much in our lives to allow me to write these books. She also took time to assume the role of reviewer of the manuscript, bringing her own gifts to the table.

SECTION ONE

BABYLON THE GREAT IS THE ENTIRE UNSAVED HUMAN RACE

CHAPTER 1

COME OUT OF WHOM?

Come out of her, my people! A voice from heaven calls out this exhortation in Revelation 18:4 to all who would listen. It can only be assumed it is a call from God, for who else in heaven but God could call a people His? If we are God’s people, we are called to come out of Babylon the Great, the woman riding the seven-headed beast, who is also named the great city (Rev. 17:18).

What exactly does coming out of her mean? There has been much confusion on this topic, most coming from not knowing the identity of Babylon the Great, it seems. If we knew who she was, we would know who or what to leave. In effect, the command to Come out of her is just as mysterious as the identity of Babylon the Great herself.

This exhortation is actually a warning due to the ominous nature of what immediately follows in Revelation 18:4: That you may not participate in her sins and that you may not receive of her plagues. Her plagues, as the Bible tells us, are many and severe and take place at the judgment at the end of the age, as well as for eternity.

The warning given in Revelation 18:4 is also the last one given in the Bible. Since this is the last warning and comes with terrible consequences if ignored, it is important to take notice.

This warning seems to be treated by many in the Church in one of two ways. Either it is treated as advice to leave whatever city or religion Babylon the Great supposedly is, or it is treated as a nebulous call to leave some worldwide religious system. Many may have thought over the centuries, I don’t need to worry about leaving her because I’m not part of what I think she is. This goes on even today in the Church.

I know I thought the same way at one point. Up to a few years ago, I didn’t think much of the whole topic. If a specific city or religious group was going to be targeted for extra punishment, I thought, So what? My mind was occupied studying other topics like the coming Signposts and the very hard times to come across the world, as presented in my earlier books. Since as a world we were all going to be suffering hard times anyway, as the trumpet and bowl judgments would supposedly punish the entire world, it never seemed important to me.

I also saw problems with the logic of interpretations saying Babylon the Great was the Roman Catholic Church, or Islam, or Rome, or New York City. All of these positions have one thing in common: they all involve one group of people. When reading Revelation 17 and 18, holes can be found in the logic of all these arguments that Babylon the Great is one particular city or religion.

If the words of Revelation 18:24 are taken literally, then how could all the blood ever shed be in any one city or institution? Just about every religion and city would have blood on its hands from at least one person who was murdered within its boundaries, but how could any one group of people be guilty of all the blood shed on earth?

Commentators such as Barnes, Poole, and Gill, believing that pagan and papal Rome is Babylon the Great, wrote that Rome is responsible for all the blood. In my opinion, the fault with this argument is that it leaves out other political and religious entities, such as Islam, that have slaughtered many more people than Rome.

Also, how could every sea captain gather within several miles of a single port city to watch it burn (see Rev. 18:17)? There are thousands upon thousands of huge cargo, container, and passenger ships traversing the world’s oceans.

No explanation seems as if it could solve these problems.

Babylon the Great has been called a city, a nation, a religion, and a religious system, among other things. This book will prove it is none of these, though admittedly, the religious system label comes closest. Revelation 17 and 18 does not describe a special group that can be easily and physically seen like a city, nation, or religion. Paradoxically, Babylon the Great is all around us and everywhere you look.

In Revelation 17:5, the Greek word for mystery appears preceding the name of the Harlot. The word is musterion (Strong’s #3466, pronounced moos-tay′-ree-on) and is the source for the noun mystery in our English translations. Something that is a musterion is hidden and can only be revealed by God. That might be a clue right there that Babylon the Great is not physical. Even with all the books written about Babylon the Great and their many conflicting arguments, one might say her identity is still hidden.

So what does the exhortation, Come out of her really mean? Does it mean to come out of the Roman Catholic Church or perhaps Islam? No, the answer is broader than that. Perhaps we are to come out of some worldwide religious system? We are getting closer to the truth with that question, but no. The answer is more precise than that.

BABYLON’S PROPOSED IDENTITY

I wasn’t looking for the answer when I stumbled across it. The simple answer I found is two-fold.

First, Babylon the Great is the spiritual place that most people are part of and live in—that is, people who elevate their fleshly desires with their idols as a lifestyle above serving the living God. It doesn’t matter whether a person is an all-out atheist, or calls himself or herself a Christian. If a person does not elevate God in his or her heart and follow Christ, above his or her idols, that person is included in Babylon the Great.

Secondly, Babylon the Great is also the spirit of idolatry that rules the hearts of individuals and enslaves them. This all may sound very indicting, but we will see that Scripture tells us this if we take the time to piece together all the passages.

Before you dismiss this proposed identity for Babylon the Great, please realize that, if true, this has significant impact on the meaning of that last exhortation to Come out, as well as on our understanding of much end-time Bible prophecy!

In the pages to follow, I will propose and then fully prove using Scripture that Babylon the Great is both the spiritual home of all the unsaved and the spirit of idolatry ruling in their hearts. But that answer alone is not the reason for having written this book. No, the main reason for writing this book is to identify what that last exhortation means. It is a message too important to be missed by God’s people in these end times.

There are two groups of people that make up the human race. These two groups have lived side by side with one another for thousands of years. They are the saved and the unsaved; the righteous who rely solely on faith that Jesus Christ finished His work on the cross for them to be made righteous, and the unrighteous. The overarching characteristic setting apart the saved from the unsaved is the difference in the inner desire dominating human hearts.

The saved have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:2). Through obedience to Christ, they follow and serve the real and living God of heaven. After the change in their hearts accomplished by the Spirit of Christ, they want to serve and please Him.

The unsaved, on the other hand, follow and serve whatever their hearts fancy. Known as the sinful nature, the human heart is desperately evil (Jer. 17:9).

Before knowing Christ, each one of us builds our life on whatever our heart yearns for and latches onto. These things can be good, such as a spouse or child or career, or bad, such as an addiction or other bad habit. Whether considered good or bad by others, these things are all evil because they are only replacements for serving the real and living God. The sinful desires of our hearts manifest as idolatry, with the objects of these desires becoming idols in our lives. But God made a way for us to become righteous through Jesus Christ His Son, and to move us away from a life of idolatry to make God the foundation and center of our lives.

God must be the most important thing to you. He must be the foundation of your life. Everyone in Babylon the Great makes anything other than God their gods—either idols of the heart such as pride or self, or physical idols such as money or things. As we will examine in detail, to come out of the Harlot means to throw away, or demote, your idols and make God the center of your life. We must pull down our idols!

SEEING THE ANSWER USING THE FORM OF SCRIPTURE

I woke up to this view of Babylon the Great while researching for and writing my last book, Chronicles of the End Times, when I rediscovered something old and forgotten—an area of academia in seminary circles called chiastics (kī-as′-tiks).

What is chiastics? In short, it is a technique for reading Scripture. When properly used, it allows us to achieve better interpretations. The technique, though often ignored, allows us better interpretations because it helps the reader identify the form of the text of a passage of Scripture.

What do I mean by the form of a text? Any Scripture text has in it a flow, or sequence, of certain words and phrases that move forward as the reader reads the text. That flow of words and phrases is repeated either (1) by a duplicate flow of words and phrases running backwards (i.e., in the opposite direction) in the same text, from the text’s concluding