We shall now look at the contents of the woman's golden cup. The scriptures describe these contents as "abominations", "filth", and "wine" (Revelation 17:4, 18:3). With this wine, the woman has seduced the inhabitants of earth who have imbibed thereof and have subsequently become not only drunk, but also mad! (cf Revelation 18:3, Jeremiah 51:7). These are grave charges indeed. So what, really, is this wine?!

It all began in ancient Babylon shortly after the Great Flood of Noah's day. Descending from the mountains of Ararat, the people came to the fertile alluvial basin between the great rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris. They decided to settle there, starting an agricultural community. Under the favorable conditions, they multiplied quickly, since the land's plenitude could easily support them. The only drawback was that there was much human-wildlife conflict as the animals that had emerged from the Ark were also multiplying just as quickly. That was the situation, until a huge powerfully built fellow by the name Nimrod strode into the scene.

Nimrod was a great-grandson of Noah, being the son of Cush, son of Noah's son Ham (Genesis 10:8). Nimrod was a great and skilful hunter. The Bible describes him as "...a mighty hunter before the LORD." (Genesis 10:8). Nimrod greatly reduced the wild animal menace, and so, naturally, the people came to look upon him as some sort of saviour and benefactor. In fact, they crowned him king. He is the one that brought up the idea of walled cities (probably to guard against further wild animal predations) and built up such cities as Babylon, Akkad, Calneh, Rehoboth-Ir, Resen, Nineveh and Calah (Genesis 10:10-12). These he organized into the world's first kingdom, with Babylon as its capital.

But Nimrod was an ungodly man and a tyrant. He turned the hearts of the people from the worship of the God of heaven, instead introducing sun worship as the state religion. In this apostate system, the adoration of the sun was conducted at sunrise as the sun rose from the East. The first Day of the week (Sunday), was set aside as the day of rest and worship. Subsequently, other celestial bodies such as the moon and stars were incorporated into the developing religion. Nimrod became a priest-king, the high priest of the apostate religious system. An elaborate sacerdotal caste also developed. Upon his death, Nimrod was deified by his wife Semiramis, who claimed that Nimrod was not really dead, but had gone to the sun - from whence he could better dispense benevolence unto his beloved subjects!

Later, his wife, the promiscuous Semiramis,  illicitly got herself pregnant. To save face before the populace, she claimed to have been impregnated by her dead husband,  Nimrod, via the powerful rays of the sun! The ignorant and superstitious ancients lapped it all up! Semiramis subsequently gave birth to a bastard baby boy, whom she named Tammuz. This "divine" child was foisted upon the citizens of Babylon as their dead hero, Nimrod, reborn! The ancients were probably aware of the story of a promised saviour who was to come from a woman (cf Genesis 3:15). This false saviour, Tammuz, grew into manhood and later actually married his own mother! One day, so the story goes, at the age of forty, while hunting, he was attacked and killed by a wild boar.

Semiramis proclaimed a 40 day period of mourning for Tammuz,  which later morphed into an annual sacred ritual that is even mentioned in the Bible (cf Ezekiel 8:14). Today, the same ritual still exists albeit in a camouflaged mystery form as "Lent". Eventually, Semiramis too died, and was also deified. This was how the Babylonian trinity was born. Today's Christian concepts of a trinity and a "Holy Family" owe their origins to this original Babylonian triad - Nimrod (the sun god), his wife Semiramis ("mother of god"/Queen of Heaven), and Tammuz ("god the son"/Son of the sungod)! In time, this trinity came to be represented in mystery ways with Nimrod depicted as a sun, an evergreen tree, or bull, a fire, a standing stone pillar (or obelisk), lingam, a serpent etc. Semiramis came to be represented using such symbols as a dove, fish, an egg etc. Tammuz was similarly represented using the cross, calf (eg the Golden Calf of Israel's apostasy during the Exodus from Egypt), falcon, etc.

When God tired of the above  Babylonian excesses, He confused human language and dispersed the human population from the area (cf Genesis 11:1-9). However, as the people spread, the false Babylonian pantheon and the apostate mystery religion surrounding it also spread with them. In Egypt, for example, Nimrod, Semiramis and Tammuz became known as Osiris, Isis and Horus respectively. In India, they became known as Vishnu, Devaki and Krishna. In ancient Canaan, Nimrod was worshipped as Baal (the sun-god), while Semiramis was worshipped as the goddess Asherah or Ashtaroth. In Assyria she was known as Astarte or Innana. In Scandinavia, they were worshipped as Wodin, Freya and Thor, etc. Being a fertility cult based around agriculture and animal reproduction, the religion had very blatant sexual rituals. That is why the prophets of ancient Israel had such a hard time trying to eradicate this sexually seductive religion among God's people. Remember how, Moab tricked Israel into the worship of the Baal of Peor (Numbers 26:1-3)? It was this entrenched false religion that the apostolic church came face to face with in the first century AD (cf Acts 19 etc). The book of Acts shows how much resistance the apostles faced as they preached against idolatry and a return to the Maker of heaven and earth. This was the period of the first angel's message (cf Revelation 14:6-7).

Soon, however, some Church leaders began to make compromises with, and concessions to paganism. This was as early as the first century AD, for the Apostle Paul does talk about a "...secret power of lawlessness" being already at work by the time he was writing to the Thessalonians (2Thessalonians 2: 7). It was an easier route to get converts and grow congregation numbers, as many heathen were reluctant to completely relinquish their pagan ways. These compromises and mixtures eventually gave birth to that complex syncretic religious institution known today as the Roman Catholic Church. The "wine" in her golden cup is a symbolic reference to her corrupt teachings. This "wine" is served to "bewitched", serenaded, hypnotized, unsuspecting worshippers in beautiful, ritualised worship, with much overt pomp and colour (cf Revelation 18:23). This is all aimed at dazzling and overwhelming the human senses and emotion.

It is not possible to exhaustively cover all aspects of that "wine" in this brief article. The best we can do is examine just a few of Babylon's teachings and their corrupting influence on earth today.

In Daniel 7:25, the Bible reports an attempt by a political power to "...change the set times and the laws..." The power in question here is Papal Rome which rose to prominence about 538AD, with the defeat (by Papal forces) of the Ostrogoths.
So then, how exactly has Rome attempted to change the set times?! In the Middle Ages, Pope Gregory the Great modified the older Julian Calendar and came up with the current Gregorian Calendar that is of universal usage today.

It is Pope Gregory who re-named the days of the Week after heathen deities as follows: the First Day of the Week, was dedicated to the Babylonian Sun-god and was therefore called "Sun-day"; Second Day was named after the Moon-god, and thus called "Monday"; the Third after the Teutonic deity Teu, thus the name "Tuesday"; the Fourth after the Scandinavian god Wodin, thus the name "Wednesday"; the Fifth after the Scandinavian god of thunder Thor, hence the name "Thursday"; the Sixth after the Scandinavian fertility goddess Freya, hence the name "Friday"; and lastly, the Seventh Day, the Sabbath, was renamed for the planetary god Saturn who was worshipped as god of agriculture by the ancient Romans. In a nutshell, the Great Harlot dedicated the entire Week to diverse foreign spiritual lovers!

But the rot runs deeper! Rome went on to re-name almost all the Months of the Year after pagan deities! The month of January, for example, is named for Janus the Roman god of doors, inceptions, and beginnings. February is dedicated to the god Februa, a Roman god of purification. March is named after Mars, the Roman god of war. April is named after the Roman goddess Aprilis, May for the goddess Maia, June for Juno-Regina, the queen of the Roman pantheon. July is named for Julius Caesar, August for the Emperor Octavian, also called Augustus Caesar. It may be noted here that, just like the Babylonians, the Romans regarded their kings as gods. In fact, many true believers lost their lives just because they refused to burn incense to some Caesars!

Furthermore, Papal Rome slowly repackaged pagan holidays and foisted them on the nascent Christian church. Such holidays as Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, All-Saints Day, Palm Sunday etc, had their origins in heathenism. Most importantly, Rome has changed the observance of the divinely ordained Sabbath, from Saturday (the seventh day of the week) to Sunday. Untold multitudes of Sabbatarians have had to cruelly lose their lives during the Dark Ages, for failing to bow down to Rome's dictates on this vital subject. Historians estimate that between 68 to 100 million believers lost their lives for rejecting Rome's edicts on Sunday keeping amongst other unscriptural teachings. In the words of the apostle John, "...the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints..." (Revelation 17:6).

Rome has also introduced many other "...doctrines of devils" (1Timothy 4:1-3), which have absolutely no foundation in Scripture. The veneration of images, the worship of Mary, the carrying of monstrances and idols in procession...all violate the Second Commandment:

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:..." (Exodus 20:4-6, KJV). 
In fact, this express commandment has been expunged and is nowhere to be seen on Roman Catholic Catechisms! To maintain a semblance of the Ten Commandments, Rome split the Tenth Commandment (on covetousness) into two. 
The usage of "holy water", candles (votive or otherwise), crosses, rosaries, crucifixes, bells etc, in worship is also unscriptural. Praying for the dead and praying to dead "saints" is also pagan (Isaiah 8:19, Mark 12:27). Repetitious prayers such as is the case when using prayer beads, is borrowed from the chanting of pagan mantras (cf 1Kings 18:26 - 29; Acts 19:34). Yahshua expressly warned against such prayers in Matthew 6:7. Such architectural elements as church buildings with towers, steeples, spires etc, are of pagan origin. And so are cross-shaped church buildings, the erection of shrines, grottoes, columns and obelisks. The burying of skeletons and relics of "saints" on foundations of churches and cathedrals and thereafter dedicating the said buildings to "patron saints", is also a pagan concept. The introduction of a celibate clergy, the use and abuse of the confessional, the use of heathen sacerdotal garments (eg Dagon's fish-head mitre) are pagan ideas. These pagan priests are even mentioned in Zephaniah 1:4 where they are referred to as "Chemarims" (black-attired priests of Baal). The setting up of orders of monks and building of monasteries and convents are similarly heathen ideas. The idolatrous mass, with its elaborate ceremony and ritual, is a patently pagan idea borrowed from the Egyptian pagan ceremony of "eating the god". The baptism by sprinkling (instead of immersion), was borrowed from the worship of Mithras, the Persian god of light. The idea of nuns was borrowed from the cult of the ancient Roman goddess Vesta, whose devotees remained virgin and tended continuously burning sacred fires in her temples.

We are simply not able to exhaust the full gamut of Rome's aberrations in her wholesale plunge into unmitigated apostasy here. Such an attempt will have to call for a book or several books! We will therefore not try that gargantuan task here. However, I believe that for the honest seeker after truth the point has been made. As is surely now evident, the present Church of Rome (and her affiliate "daughters")  bears little resemblance to the simple Church founded by Yahshua in the first century AD.

It is not our intention here, to trivialize or hold in jest anyone's deeply rooted religious convictions. No, far from it. We are fully apprised of the fact that there are indeed many hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of devout, innocent, sincere Catholics out there. I too was once one! Our fervent prayer is that as these truths are revealed to them, they objectively consider the evidence and thoroughly prosecute it in light of the sacred provisions of God's word. And, having done so, take appropriate measures to evade the soon-coming wrath of God (cf Revelation 14:9-10, 18:4, Romans 1:18-25).

Solemnly, the Bible declares: "...Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great...she has become a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird..." (Revelation 18:1-3). This inspired passage proves beyond any shadow of doubt that the God of heaven has totally severed relations with that flagrantly apostate system. The best decision that a child of God can make is to flee from her, for, as the prophet Jeremiah says: "... Babylon was a gold cup in the LORD's hand; she made the whole earth drunk. The nation's drank her wine; therefore they have now GONE MAD.... would have healed Babylon...but SHE CANNOT BE HEALED..." (Jeremiah 51:7-9,NIV, full caps mine). Remaining in her is only a guarantee that one becomes a recipient of God's wrath. This divine wrath will surely be visited upon Babylon Modern very soon (cf Revelation 18:4). Dearly beloved reader, it need not come to that. Peace. Blessings.

Pst JK Chang'andu
 

REFERENCES
1. Frazer, James George. The Golden Bough. New York: Mac-Millan Co., 1935.

2. Hislop, Alexander. The Two Babylons. New York: Loizeaux Brothers. 1959 (first published 1853). Available online.

3. Woodrow, Ralph. Babylon Mystery Religion. Ralph Woodrow Evangelistic Association, Inc. 1966.