When God made His covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15, He told the patriarch that his descendants would spend about four hundred years in a land that wasn’t theirs, “for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.” Ezekiel gave us the clues. He pointed to Mount Hermon, Bashan, and the neighbors of ancient Israel who worshiped the gods who called that region home.
Who, what, or where is Babylon the Great of Revelation 17 and 18? The connection between Mystery Babylon and the Amorites is key. Spiritual wickedness, symbolized by the Amorite kingdom of Babylon, connected to an unparalleled maritime trading empire are the two main features of Mystery Babylon.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.…
This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while.
Revelation 17:1–6, 9–10 (ESV)
As you see, there are other characteristics. “Sexual immorality” is a euphemism for spiritual rebellion, like Israel’s “whorings” with the gods of the pagan nations against which the prophets of the Old Testament thundered.
Geography is another, but a location on seven mountains or hills is one of the easiest for potential candidates to meet. While Rome is the first name most people think of, it appears to be a status symbol for a city to claim that it, too, was built on seven hills. Other cities ostensibly sitting on seven hills include Mecca, Jerusalem, Brussels, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow, and dozens of others.
Joel Richardson made a strong case for Mecca in his 2017 book, Mystery Babylon. He argues that no other city on the earth has influenced world leaders over the last century like Mecca, home of Islam’s holiest site. The vast wealth accumulated by the House of Saud over the last century has enabled it to bend bankers, academics, and politicians to their will, using petrodollars to draw the West into Mecca’s orbit. Until very recently, OPEC nations, led by Saudi Arabia, dominated world oil markets, with about forty percent of that black gold delivered to end users by ocean-going tankers.[1]
Some argue that OPEC’s declining influence with the recent surge in American oil production means the Mecca-as-Mystery Babylon theory is flawed. On the contrary, it suggests that even as Islam grows, the Saudis themselves are not indispensable to the global economy. And since the Antichrist and his minions turn on Mystery Babylon, we know that the spirits behind Allah, Inc., consider the “great prostitute” expendable. While the scarlet woman of Revelation 17 has “dominion over the kings of the earth,”[2] she’s resented by the ten principal kings represented by the ten horns on the beast. They and the beast “hate” her, and so they “devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.”[3]
The faithful followers of Muhammad won’t know what hit them.
It’s tragic irony. The ultimate end of Mystery Babylon is to be slaughtered and served up as a sacrifice for the Beast from the Abyss—just like the thousands upon thousands of children who were passed through the fire and buried in the tophets of the ancient world.
Mystery Babylon—Mecca—will be destroyed in the war that brings the Antichrist to power; a war that sacrifices an entire religion in a diabolical double-cross to lure Jews (and Christians, if the church is still on the earth) into worshiping the Man of Sin.
We’re about to propose a concept that won’t be popular with Jews or Christians—but that’s precisely why it will be effective.
We can forget about a standard-issue villain from Central Casting as the Antichrist. The principalities and powers are much too devious for that. He’ll be charming, intelligent, handsome, and a very effective leader. And the deception that’s most likely to fool Jews and Christians, assuming the Church is still on earth, is for the Fallen to put forward an Israeli Antichrist who presents himself to the world as a Jew.
Please understand that we’re not suggesting the Antichrist will be Jewish, only that he will claim to be. This interpretation won’t win many fans among conservative Christians (or Jews, obviously), but it’s the scenario that makes the most sense.
First, it points to the most logical national origin of a political figure who will build the Third Temple and reinstitute the sacrifices and offerings. While Christian doctrine doesn’t require a temple, Daniel 9:27 prophesies that the Antichrist will “put an end to sacrifice and offering,” so the Third Temple will be built.
It’s unlikely an Islamic Antichrist allows this to happen. Yes, the Third Temple could be built before the Antichrist arrives on the scene, but if he’s a Muslim, what are the odds he “makes a strong covenant with many for one week”[4] (seven years) and then waits three and a half years to stop the daily offerings? Possible, but far less likely than the Israeli Antichrist scenario.
Second, it’s difficult to imagine that an Antichrist from anywhere except Israel would conduct the prophesied war of Daniel 11:40–45. Think about this for a moment: Imagine a dynamic Israeli political and/or military leader. He’s faced with a crisis, a sudden attack by a coalition of enemies. But against all odds, he not only wins a smashing victory but expands Israel’s borders, maybe even taking enough territory that it appears God has finally fulfilled his land promise to Abraham.[5]
Why would the Antichrist do this? Deception. Muslims ready to fight for the Mahdi will undoubtedly see this Israeli leader as the Dajjal, the Islamic equivalent of the Antichrist, and they would throw themselves into the fight with the same shocking ferocity that overwhelmed the Persian and Roman empires in the seventh century.
And they will lose. Badly.
How will Jews waiting for the mashiach react to this stunning and overwhelming victory? They’ll celebrate the arrival of Mashiach ben David, hero of the Gog-Magog war. If there is no fire from heaven or burying of the dead for seven months, it won’t matter; the fact that prominent rabbis are already calling the Syrian civil war the coming of Gog shows how far they’re ready to bend their interpretations of Ezekiel to fit events on the ground.
When the Psalm 83/Daniel 11 wars take place, the victorious Antichrist will be welcomed in “the beautiful land” with open arms.
An Antichrist from Israel isn’t a new idea. It’s actually a very old interpretation. Some early church fathers, including Hippolytus of Rome (AD 170–235) and Irenaeus (c. AD 130–202), believed the Antichrist would be a Jew.
Jeremiah does not merely point out his sudden coming, but he even indicates the tribe from which he shall come, where he says, “We shall hear the voice of his swift horses from Dan; the whole earth shall be moved by the voice of the neighing of his galloping horses: he shall also come and devour the earth, and the fulness thereof, the city also, and they that dwell therein.” This, too, is the reason that this tribe is not reckoned in the Apocalypse along with those which are saved.[6]
Dan was one of Israel’s twelve tribes. Irenaeus noted the strange omission of Dan from the 144,000 Jews who are sealed in Revelation 7. After failing to push the Canaanites out of its allotted territory on the coast, the tribe of Dan migrated north and captured the city of Laish (see Judges 18) to become the northernmost tribe of Israel. The city of Dan is on the southwestern foothills of Mount Hermon, and it became the site of one of Jeroboam’s golden calves, an idol to the creator-god of the Canaanites, El,[7] whose mount of assembly was Hermon.[8] This is consistent with the “threat from the north” theme that’s woven through Israel’s history and central to the prophecy of Ezekiel 38 and 39.
Hippolytus was a disciple of Irenaeus, who was a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of the apostle John. So, the belief in a Jewish Antichrist held by Hippolytus and Irenaeus may have come from the man who received the Revelation from Jesus Christ Himself.
You may question how someone with the attitude described by Daniel—haughty, arrogant, serving a foreign “god of fortresses”—could possibly win over Orthodox and Haredi rabbis and be declared the mashiach. Good question. Here’s another: How often do politicians tell people what they really think instead of what they want people to hear?
You may also wonder why the Antichrist would lead a war to destroy what you’d assume would be his most loyal and enthusiastic followers—Muslims ready to fight for the Mahdi. The answer is simple: Muslims, in the eyes of the Enemy, are already lost. Those who embrace the false teachings of Muhammad are destined for destruction. The goal of the Fallen is to destroy the followers of Jesus Christ and the people Yahweh chose for Himself, the Jews. The best use the Enemy has for Muslims is to throw them into a losing battle as cannon fodder, a bloody sacrifice to lure Jews and Christians into worshiping the Antichrist as the Messiah.
[1] “Oil Tanker Firms Scrap Most Ships In Three Decades.” OilPrice.com, January 1, 2019 (https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Oil-Tanker-Firms-Scrap-Most-Ships-In-Three-Decades.html), retrieved 2/27/19.
[2] Revelation 17:18.
[3] Revelation 17:16.
[4] Daniel 9:27.
[5] Genesis 15:18–21. This would push Israel’s borders to include the Sinai Peninsula and eastward to the Euphrates River, which would take all or parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Iraq.
[6] Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 30.2.
[7] See the section titled “A Lot of Bull” in my book Last Clash of the Titans, pages 97–100.
[8] Lipiński, op. cit.