When we speak of “Babylon,” we think of a religious system of organized denominations. We know Mystery Babylon rides the beast in Revelation 17. But many have looked at Babylon as more than just a religion. It is a city. Revelation calls it a “great city.” “And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” Revelation 14:8.
What is a city? What was a city comprised of in biblical times? Through much of ancient history, there were independent city-states. Some were joined in a political alliance with other city-states, but not a national entity such as we think of today.
(Is the “woke culture” a threat?)
A city had a ruler and government. It was nearly impossible for people to live in close proximity without government to protect against crime, make civic improvements, and defend them from external enemies.
Because of the superstition of the pagans, Gentile city-states had a religion. Usually, every citizen of that city had the same religion. There was no freedom of religion. It was always idolatry, usually with mythological beliefs that the ruler was a god. The ruler of the city-state was also the head of the official religion; a king-priest. It is a mere formality today, but the Queen of England is also the official head of the Church of England. That has been the historical pattern. In the Bible, Nimrod in Genesis 10 was the first king-priest of idolatry and built the city of Babel. Melchize dek was king of Salem and priest of God. Genesis 14:18.
But a city had not only a government and a religion; it also had commerce. There were stores selling goods, shops manufacturing items, and tradesmen conducting business transactions. Without commerce, there can be no significant city. Babylon of the book of Revelation is a great city – so it has to have commerce. Maybe it is all religious trade, but maybe there is something more to it.
Some put their faith in false religion. Radical Islamic suicide bombers have faith in a false hope of paradise with 72 blue-eyed virgins. Others think salvation comes through prayers over beads. They are citizens of the city of Mystery Babylon. But Babylon is more than false religion. It is false ideology, which demands the loyalty and faith of the people. Babylon includes false faith in materialism. Some put faith in money. Material success draws worshippers just as much, maybe more, than apostate, powerless, watered-down Christianity. People are deluded into thinking more money will solve all their problems.
Some people put their faith in the political system to solve every problem of humanity. Some people think governmental programs are the cure-all for all the ills of society. They, too, are citizens of that great city.
The Three Parts of Babylon
But Revelation 16:19 says, “And the great city was divided into three parts…” What are the three parts of Babylon? Sometimes a biblical metaphor can be interpreted and applied different ways to illustrate different points. That is, you can use the reference to the three parts of the city of Babylon to demonstrate different truths and not be guilty of preaching false doctrine.
Preachers in the body of Christ have interpreted the three parts of Babylon different ways – and maybe all of them are correct. Bro. William Sowders and many others have taught that the three parts of Babylon are Catholicism, Protestantism, and Pentecostalism. Maybe that is true, but what about other false religions – such as Islam, Hinduism, and apostate Judaism? I tend to think that John was seeing the massive Roman Empire divide into three parts – the western Roman Catholic Empire, the Eastern Orthodox Empire, called the Byzantine Empire, and the Islamic caliphate that took the Middle East and northern Africa. That actually happened during the Dark Ages.
My mentor taught there were three parts to Babylon: Religious, Civil, and Commercial. And under the duality of the scriptures, Revelation 16:19 can be applied to several different situations in several different times. And they can all be true in the right application. Let’s examine the great city from the view that the three parts of Babylon are: religious Babylon; political Babylon; and, commercial Babylon.
Babylon is a threat to the body of Christ. All three aspects of Babylon are a threat. We know the threat false religion poses – both from institutions of Christianity, and certainly from zealous jihadists following radical Islam. We also know the threat posed by the beastly government. Govern mental authority has frequently been used to suppress the free exercise of religion. But do we really appreciate the threat posed by the commercial/economic aspect of that great city, Babylon?
There has always been a commercial aspect to Babylon. See Acts 19:24-27. This is why Jesus was so upset with the moneychangers in the temple in John 2:14-16. The deceitfulness of riches can choke the word, like Jesus said in Matthew 13:22. The desire for material things and good times in the world is a subtle temptation. Satan is sometimes subtle like a serpent. Paul said in II Corinthians 11:3 that Satan beguiled Eve through his subtilty.
Financial gain has been the ruin of many saints of God. Early on, the Lord warned against the corrupting influence of success: “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” Deuteronomy 8:11-14.
The Woke Culture
But Satan is not always the subtle serpent; at times he is open and direct in his attacks, like a roaring lion. I Peter 5:8. “Corporate America” is becoming ever more a roaring lion, a beast. It is becoming ever more satanic in directly attacking and seeking to silence Christian beliefs and practices.
Major companies, and the government, and many smaller employers, are embracing the “woke culture.” The term, woke, originally referred to an awareness of racial prejudice and discrimination. It held that nearly all white people are racist, and benefit from white supremacy.
Wokeness demands that all white people should feel tremendous guilt for past evils. And those are real evils, things like slavery and Jim Crow laws, things that no persons in their right minds support. But wokeness says the past is not the past. Basically, it makes you guilty today for the crimes oth
R u m o r s s p r e a d t h r o u g h t h e w e b c a n g e n e r a t e h a t r e d a n d p a s s i o n b e f o r e t h e t r u e f a c t s e m e r g e .
ers committed in the past. Wokeness imputes guilt to white people today because their whiteness implicates them in this whole systemic order of racism.
But wokeness has expanded to more than just racial injustice. It now embraces an awareness of other issues of so-called social inequality, for instance, regarding gender and sexual orientation. Since the late 2010s, it has also been used as a general term for left-wing political movements and perspectives emphasizing the identity politics of people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and women.
Large corporations, like Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Coca-Cola, Bank of America, and Delta Airlines, are prohibiting their employees from expressing their own sincerely-held religious beliefs on things like gay marriage, transgenderism, and other aspects of wokeness. Any employee who publicly challenges this woke philosophy is not merely endangering their chances of promotion, but now is at risk of being fired. Corporate America is at war with Christian principles. Biblical principles are not sufficiently “woke.”
What about the employees’ Constitutional rights? They don’t have any. The Constitution grants you rights against governmental abuse. The First Amendment does not apply to non-governmental corporations. The Bill of Rights, and its First Amendment, limits only government actors, not private actors. This means that private employers can restrict employee speech in the workplace without running afoul of the First Amendment.
(Under Civil Rights laws, it is illegal to discriminate against an employee because of that person’s race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. But it is difficult to prove that being fired for speaking out against abortion or gender-fluid lifestyles is discrimination. Courts are increasingly less likely to find religiousbased discrimination when threats and termination of employment is couched in social or political, rather than obviouslyreligious, terms.
You have to keep your religious views private. You can believe what you want to, but don’t speak those religious views – or they might offend a lesbian, or transgender, or gender-fluid co-employee or customer. If your right to be free of religious discrimination comes into conflict with someone else’s right to be free from gender identity discrimination, guess which one will win?
Also, political views are not protected. You can be fired for a political view and there is nothing you can do about it. Opposition to woke philosophies is increasingly characterized as political, rather than religious.
The irony in this is that these massive corporate interests owe their birth, their growth, and their success to our society’s basic freedoms. Our Bill of Rights liberated the entrepreneurial spirit and allowed big business to succeed. The very corporations that benefitted from American freedoms are restricting those freedoms for their employees. Those employees are seeing their ability to exercise free speech and freedom of religion being snuffed out.
Employer-required ‘Diversity training’ designed to reduce ‘unconscious’ or ‘implicit’ bias is an $8 billion a year industry in the US — Starbucks recently sent its 175,000 employees on a ‘bias training’ day. James Damore, a software engineer at Google, dared in 2017 to question company dogma about why more women aren’t employed as tech engineers by appealing to some rudimentary scientific facts about average differences in men and women’s interests. He was fired for ‘advancing gender stereotypes’ — a decision that was then rubberstamped by the National Labor Relations Board.
Jesus isn’t “woke.” He doesn’t support the LGTBQ+ agenda. He isn’t pro-abortion. And He doesn’t punish the children for the sins of their ancestors. I fear wokeness will threaten the body of Christ in the future. We probably don’t know all the threats that are looming, but we can certainly see some of them. It isn’t my intention to launch a detailed refutation of wokeness today. But I want to point out the danger of commercial Babylon to Christian beliefs and specifically, the body of Christ.
And there is also commercial Babylon in the form of internet forums. These, too, will loom as threats to the operation of the body in the future. Social media platforms can censor your religious views and ban you from proclaiming what you believe. You have no remedy if a social media platform censors you. You can be “cancelled” at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all.
You are not an employee of social media platforms – so you cannot claim employment discrimination, and Civil Rights laws have not been applied to the internet. Social media platforms are private companies, and they can censor what people post on their websites as they see fit. The First Amendment does not apply there.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and others were planted and prospered because of American freedoms and economic opportunities. But the wokeness philosophy of commercial Babylon is morphing into an anti-Christian, and soon an anti-body of Christ, evil power.
Those internet platforms can be used to quickly arouse opposition to a particular church. Lies, half-truths, and sensational claims can be spread at light-speed, and generate opposition before the whole truth is known. Rumors spread through the web can generate hatred and passion before the true facts emerge.
This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t just socialists versus conservatives or Democrats versus Republicans. There is something more going on than a political divide, or even a cultural consensus. This is a spiritual battle, and not merely a cultural one. Evil forces are seeking to undermine biblical foundations of our churches, our family, our work environments and our society. We are in a spiritual battle. See Ephesians 6:11-12. There are spiritual, supernatural, principalities, powers, rulers of darkness, and spiritually wicked powers pushing wokeness as a weapon against saving truth.
Ever since the outbreak of COVID-19, many of our churches have leaned on live-streaming services over the internet. We’ve had various world-wide minister’s meetings, youth meetings, and other meetings on Zoom. This has been a tremendous benefit – especially in keeping the overseas works connected together in this body. But these platforms we use, like
Boxcast, Facebook, GoogleMeet, and others, are also part of commercial Babylon.
Social media sites are already de-platforming faith-based organizations. The voice of faith is being silenced. Neither the body of Christ nor Babylon will be able to proclaim Bible truths on social media sites in the future. Commercial Babylon is under control of the devil, just as much as religious Babylon or political Babylon.
I fully expect the body to be bounced off all social media platforms. It will be exceedingly difficult in the future to livestream the Gospel of the Kingdom. And there will not be much we can do about it. “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD: And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it.” Amos 8:11-12.