Money -> The Great Prostitute

Revelation 17:1-6 Lexham English Bible (LEB)

The Judgment of the Great Prostitute Babylon

17 And one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, ² with whom the kings of the earth committed sexual immorality, and those who live on the earth became drunk with the wine of her sexual immorality.” ³ And he carried me away into the wilderness in the Spirit,^[a] and I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. ⁴ And the woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, holding a golden cup in her hand full of detestable things and the unclean things of her sexual immorality. ⁵ And on her forehead a name was written, a mystery: “Babylon the great, the mother of prostitutes and of the detestable things of the earth.” ⁶ And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.

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Lately, I've thought a lot about how money changes people for the worst. Just look around and think about this for a moment. Think about yourself. Has money changed you? Isn't money like a prostitute?

Think about some of our world leaders like Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump. Money seems to be on their mind almost all the time. They think that the more money they can get, the more power they will have. I single out these two only because what they do affects the whole world.

The temptation to sin that money brings is rampant, even in our Christian leaders. Money brings us into bondage, makes us slaves but through the power of Jesus Christ, we can be delivered out of that bondage.

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I've been thinking about and studying in Revelation chapters 17 and 18. These chapters talk about Babylon and a powerful harlot / prostitute. I found out a few things in my studies.

In the Bible Encyclopedia, I found out that Babylon in Semitic means "the gate of god (little g)". The Hebrew name is 'Babhel' and comes from the root word 'balal' which means "to confound". 

I believe that Babylon here in Revelation is a symbol of Satan and his kingdom, and the harlot is a symbol for money that Satan uses to entice us with.

Are Christians being deceived?

I have heard from a number of Christians that god chose Trump. They support and defend Trump no mater what his character proves to be because "god chose him." I've wondered a lot about this. How do they know God, the creator of all things, the God of gods, the God of love, chose him? Did maybe the god of this world ( Satan) choose him instead?

Have Christians forgotten their first love? Jesus said that if you love Him then obey His commandments, love God (the One True God who exercises loving kindness, justice, and righteousness on earth, not the god of this world) and love your neighbor; do to him what you wished he would do to you.

Joel 2:13 Lexham English Bible (LEB)

¹³     Rend your hearts^[a] and not your garments,
and return to Yahweh your God,
    because he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger^[b] and great in loyal love,
    and relenting from harm.

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When you look at others, do you see people of color? I always remember a woman in our Sunday School class who told us a story about her granddaughter. Her granddaughter who is white has a best friend who is black. They are together all the time and have just the best time. I don't remember exactly how this grandmother came to this conclusion but she said that those two little girls don't see color. This conclusion was quite evident to her because of a conversation she had with her granddaughter.

I am 70 years old now and I still remember blacks having to ride at the back of the buss, they couldn't drink from public fountains where whites drank from, and they couldn't use public restrooms. I remember that seeing this bothered me but I accepted it because I was very young then. I am NOT saying that because whites treated blacks so badly that now it is time for blacks to do the same to whites. What I am saying is that these times should be remembered so that we do not repeat them. America is better than that.

I am sad to say this but my parents used the "N" word whenever they got mad at a black person. I don't remember them saying it directly to their face but still it was wrong. I never understood it but there seemed like there was something in their DNA that made them feel the way they felt towards blacks. It didn't matter how much my brother, my sister, and I would talk to them about this. They just could not see the wrong. What I am saying here not only pertains to blacks and whites. It has to do with how we treat any person who is not like us.

I can't say that I don't see color on first appearance. I think I still judge people by their looks when I first see them. I try not to. If I can find a way to converse with them then my judgement of them quickly changes and then I no longer see color so to speak. Wouldn't it be great if we all could be like those two little girls where we no longer see color?

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Trump certainly does not exude a Christ like character. Trump from time to time slips up to show his hatred of the blacks. You can tell he does not like Obama and has tried to dismantle, kill everything with Obama's name associated with it no matter if it's bad or good. In an immigration meeting, Trump referred to predominantly black countries, Africa and Haiti, as "shithole" countries. Since becoming president, many Nazis like white supremacy groups have come out of the woodwork and Trump says nothing about them to put them down.

Hitler was very successful in swaying the Germans to trust him and the Nazis by using propaganda and we know what happened when they came to power (upwards of 20 million people were killed without trial by a jury of their peers, just gathered up and killed by guns, gas, starvation, whatever method, NO TRIAL). He wrote a book called "Mein Kampf" that tells how to do it, use propaganda. The following is from Wikipedia's Propaganda in Nazis Germany.

"Mein Kampf contains the blueprint of later Nazi propaganda efforts. Assessing his audience, Hitler writes in chapter VI:

"Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however, is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood."^[5]

As to the methods to be employed, he explains:

"Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must of course be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula."

President Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again." has no single meaning. They are just words that have different meanings to different people. I've wondered about this statement. I ask, "When in the past was America great and what did that look like? If he wants to make America great AGAIN, then that is saying that some time in the past it was great. If I had to guess, what Trump means is "Make America White Again."

Troubled

I am troubled by many things that are happening here in the United States. Mostly because of the Russian meddling in our elections and in our very lives. We call it RUSSIAN but it stems back to Putin and Russian oligarchs. It is ongoing, believed that they will also work to affect our 2018 congressional elections. They are not only working to affect our elections but the elections' in many other countries of the world. I have to ask," What are they trying to do?" If I had to guess, it is to dominate the world.

Many of us believe that the meddling was for the purpose to get Trump elected. Trump has been asked if he has ever communicated with Putin before the elections and he repeatedly says he has not. I came across various interviews with Trump in 2013, the year he had the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow Russia and he said then that he had talked with Putin both "directly and indirectly" in the interviews. Trump has at least twice met up with and talked with Putin since becoming president. It seems to me that these meetings happen when it's starting to look bad for him.

Trump is a pathological liar. I do not trust anything he says. Before he was elected, he said he would release his tax records once the audit was finished. As president, he says he will not release his tax records. He said that Mexico would pay for the wall. Now, we the tax payers are going to have to pay for it. Walls are not only for keeping people out but they also keep people in.

There are many ties between the Trump organization and Russia that I believe Robert Mueller is finding out but I am wondering if he will ever get a chance to present the evidence. Trump fired James Comey, the first FBI investigator, and information just surfaced that he wanted Mueller fired too. Now there is a push to discredit Mueller, his investigating team, and the whole FBI.

In WW2 when Hitler and the Nazis were in power, there were an estimated 15 to 20 million people killed because of Nazis policies. We really don't know the exact number. It wasn't just the Jews in the holocaust, but many other undesirables and unwanted. Here is a link to a website with information about the holocaust: Holocaust Encyclopedia

Could a Nazis like regime happen again? Yes it can. A regime with enough powerful people can follow how Hitler and the Nazis came to power using pervasive propaganda.
Propaganda in Nazi Germany