The Spirit of Babylon and the Last Days Jer. 51, Part 1

Jeremiah’s warning to ancient Babylon echoes across time. The same spirit of pride and rebellion that brought down empires now infiltrates hearts and nations in the last days. God still calls His people to discern, repent, and cling to Him amid a collapsing world system.

I want to go back to Jeremiah 51 and I want to look at some things about Babylon. And then I also want us to go through Revelation chapter 17 and 18 and look at what’s going to happen in the last days to Babylon.

Babylon—More Than a Nation: A Spirit of Rebellion

Jeremiah 51:1-5; Revelation 17:1-10

Jeremiah chapter 51, beginning at verse 1, Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will rise up against Babylon, and against them that dwell in the midst of them that rise up against me, a destroying wind. And will send unto Babylon banners that shall fan her, and shall empty her land. And in the day of trouble there shall be against her roundabout.

Against him that bendeth with the archers, bend a bow. And against him that lifted up himself up in his brigadine, and spare ye not her young men, destroy ye utterly all her host. Thus the slain shall fall in the land of the Chaldeans, and they that are thrust through in her streets.

For Israel hath not been forsaken, nor Judah of his God, of the Lord of hosts, though their land was filled with sin against the Holy One of Israel.

Let’s just bow and pray. Father, as we come before you this evening Lord, help us to understand the spiritual things that were going on during the time of Jeremiah that are once again expressed in the words of Daniel and Ezekiel that occurred at the same time. And the prophecies given therein that speak of the last days, that speak of the spirit, the spirit of Babylon, that shall seek to destroy the nation of Israel and come against all that you love and cherish. Lord, I pray that you would just help us to understand the significance of the hour in which we live. And even as Jeremiah saw the significance of the day that lay ahead for Israel and gave hope to the nation of Israel, even though it seemed like there was no hope left, but that hope lay in you. Lord, let us have our hope in you and may it rest in you. May we realize that you have the answers and the power and the authority to deliver upon your word and to come against the spirit of Babylon. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Babylon during the time of Jeremiah was more than just a physical nation. It was a whole spiritual ideology and belief system that had begun its roots back at the Tower of Babel under Nimrod that manifested itself in a city of the Assyrians that Nimrod had established.

And if you go back and look at scripture and then also look at historical accounts of the nations of the world and cities of the world at this time in the Middle East, you’ll see that Nimrod started many of these cities. Babylon remained a nation and a city that was in the area where Nimrod had built the Tower of Babel. But it wasn’t just a city. It was a spirit that Nimrod had created there, a rebellious spirit of God which had risen up against the Lord in all that God had commanded. I want you to understand that what Nimrod did at the Tower of Babel, everything that God had told man to do, Nimrod encouraged them to do the exact opposite. The Lord had said, go forth and multiply and take the union of the earth.

He didn’t say gather together in fortified cities and make giant idolatrous structures where you can have a center of worship to worship the angelic host that had fallen and rebelled against God and create a false worship system that glorifies man and exalts the angelic fallen host. And that’s exactly what Nimrod did. I want you to see that what Nebuchadnezzar did when we began this study way back in the beginning of Jeremiah and for those of you who have been here during our study in Daniel, you see that Nebuchadnezzar established a kingdom and the kingdom was all about Nebuchadnezzar.

He exalted himself as God and he really desired that the people not worship the God of the Bible, but they worship the false gods that really were manifested to exalt the deities that had been created during the time of Nimrod which really were Nimrod, Semiramis, and their son Temuz. And they were the unholy trinity, Satan being the one who was inspiring Nimrod and Temuz being the one who would take the place of the coming Messiah, Jesus and Semiramis really being the exalted woman. If you go back and look at the things that were going on during the time of Nimrod and his worship, you’ll see that one of the things that you’ll often see is Semiramis and her son Temuz and there will be a deification of them and they’ll be here together.

One of the things that you see in the Catholic Church today is supposedly the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus and they are exalted with Mary being the greater one and Jesus being held in their arms. And if you go to the Catholic Church, you’ll see that you are to pray to Mary because someone within the Catholic faith says well, you always know that if you’ve got a son that’s angry with you go to the mother because she can influence the son and that’s exactly why we go to Mary because she can influence Jesus on our behalf to forgive us our sins and to help us to walk with him. Totally unbiblical, but totally Babylonian.

Not only that, we see that this carried over to the time that Jeremiah lived and it influenced the nation of Israel and we’ve studied in portions of the scripture that we’ve already looked at in Jeremiah how that women were offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven within the nation of Israel we saw that they established false worship centers within the nation of Israel and Israel had abandoned the worship of the true and living God and replaced it with the Babylonian religion. But God did not forget Israel. Even in all of that wickedness and sin, he judged them and he chastised them, but he did not forget them.

Now, initially, those that possessed the Babylonian spirit felt in Babylon that Israel was going to be a non-entity and that their God was helpless. I want you to understand today that that spirit is still in the world and it’s still evident with us. It’s the main spirit that is motivating much of the culture that we see that we call woke and also much of the culture that we see as anti-Christian and much of the culture that we see today is in total rebellion against God in all that he stands for.

I was listening to Jack Hebbs give a little podcast while we were gone and one of the things he said in his podcast was we know what Kamala Harris would have done had she been elected and one of the things she would have done was gotten rid of churches, Christians, pastors preaching the gospel. We already saw things going down that track with the whole COVID thing where the first thing they said was non-essential was churches and the first thing they said was non-essential was gathering together of God’s people. The next thing was non-essential was you don’t need to be preaching really all spirits of Babylon to silence the truth.

Modern Babylon Spirit

Well that spirit is still alive in the world today and we know from the scriptures and I’m thinking about bringing the message on Sunday morning because I want to bring this to everybody about what’s happening in the world. It’s important that you all understand. We have a spirit in the world today that’s the Babylonian spirit.

The Bible tells us it’s going to be there and it’s going to grow greater and greater in the last days. It’s going to grow so great that at the end of the great tribulation every nation in the world will abandon Israel. Every nation in the world will become anti-Semitic in their thinking and every nation in the world will come against Israel.

That includes the United States. And you already see some of that where you have men whose intent is not the well-being of Israel but their intent is to promote their own financial well-being and financial growth and to promote an ideology that’s anti-God and anti-Israel. And this current peace deal is at the center of it.

It’s at the center of the Babylonian spirit. What I want you to see is God told Jeremiah Babylon’s not going to stand during the time that Jeremiah lived. The people needed hope.

The people had been taken away into captivity. The people, even those that had been left in the land, you remember as we studied through this, had cried out to God, show us what you want us to do. God shows them what they wanted to do.

He wants them to stay in the land that remnant and allow his power to be evident in their lives in the land. And instead they said, no, we’re going to Egypt. And the Lord said, well, you go to Egypt, everything that I said is going to happen to you that you feared from Nebuchadnezzar in Jerusalem and in the land will happen to you in Egypt.
But they said, we’re going anyway. I told you in the idol of God in a capitulation to the Babylonian spirit. Because the Babylonian spirit was at the heart of the Egyptian gods and the heart of the Egyptian.

If you look at that, all of the various cultures that existed, they had one thing in common. They had the same anti-god spirit. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medo-Prusians, even though they were much more open and helpful to Israel and God turned the hearts of the kings, yet they still possessed that spirit and it was evident in their land which was allowing during the time of Esther, Haman to rise up and desire to kill all the Jews and the king of the Medo-Prusians to actually go along with it.

We see that that spirit was passed on to the Greeks during the time of Alexander and it was himself and his generals that lived after him and that took over his kingdom and we have Antiochus Epiphanes that came to power over the area of Israel was under his control and what did he do? He did everything to blasphemy God and he sacrificed a pig in the temple and created the ultimate sacrilege against what God loved because basically he was saying you don’t have a sacrifice, I do. And we can go on and after that the Romans and then I just have you turn with me as we come to the Romans and I have you turn with me just quickly and I want you to see what God says is going to come in the last days. Turn to the Romans chapter and Revelation chapter 17 and 18 The spirit of Babylon is not dead.

Not only that, but we seem to carry this same spirit over to the time when Jeremiah lived. It influenced the nation of Israel deeply. We’ve already seen in earlier portions of Jeremiah how women were offering cakes to the Queen of Heaven within Israel. They established false worship centers throughout the nation and abandoned the worship of the true and living God, replacing it with a Babylonian religion.

Yet, even in all their wickedness and sin, God did not forget Israel. He judged and chastised them, but He never forgot them.

Those who possessed a Babylonian spirit in Jeremiah’s day believed Israel would become a non-entity—that their God was helpless. But I want you to understand today, that same spirit is still alive in the world. It is still evident among us. It is the same spirit motivating much of the culture we see—what the world now calls “woke.” Much of what we see today is anti-Christian, anti-God, and entirely opposed to all that He stands for.

I was listening to Pastor Jack Hibbs in a podcast recently. One of the things he mentioned was how certain political powers, had they gained greater authority, would have silenced the Gospel completely. We already saw glimpses of that during the COVID shutdowns. The very first things labeled “non-essential” were the churches—the gatherings of God’s people. Soon preaching itself was treated as non-essential.
These are all marks of the Babylonian spirit—a spirit that wants to silence truth. And that’s the world we’re living in today.

From Scripture, we know that this Babylonian spirit will continue to grow stronger in the last days. It will grow so great that, at the end of the Great Tribulation, every nation on earth will turn against Israel. Every nation—including the United States—will adopt an anti-Semitic mindset and come against God’s chosen people.

We already see signs of this. Many world leaders today are motivated not by the welfare of Israel, but by financial gain, power, and ideologies that are anti-God and anti-Israel. This current peace deal in the Middle East is at the very center of that Babylonian spirit.
God told Jeremiah that Babylon would fall. During Jeremiah’s time, there were people who desperately needed hope—those who had been taken captive, and those who remained in the land. They cried out to God for direction. God told them plainly what to do: to stay in the land and trust Him to show His power among them. But instead, they said, “We’re going to Egypt.”

The Lord warned them that if they fled to Egypt, everything they feared from Nebuchadnezzar in Jerusalem would follow them there. Yet they went anyway. That decision showed their capitulation to the Babylonian spirit—a spirit at the very heart of Egypt’s false gods.

Across cultures and empires, that same anti-God spirit has continued. The Babylonians were more open and even helpful to Israel at times, yet they still possessed that same spirit. We saw it rise again in the time of Esther, when Haman sought to destroy the Jews. The Persian king allowed it, showing that the spirit was still at work.

Later, that same spirit passed to the Greeks under Alexander the Great and his successors. One of them, Antiochus Epiphanes, defiled the temple, sacrificed a pig on the altar, and committed one of the greatest blasphemies against God. After that came the Romans, who carried that same spiritual thread forward.

Now, turn with me to Revelation chapters 17 and 18.
The spirit of Babylon is not dead. It moves on—just as it passed from culture to culture throughout history. It is still alive in our world today. It is the spirit of the “prince of the power of the air,” Satan himself, working behind the scenes.

Revelation shows us two forms of Babylon that manifest in the last days: one religious and one commercial.

In Revelation 17, John writes:
“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.’”

This passage describes religious Babylon. The fornication here is spiritual—it represents idolatry, false worship, and unfaithfulness to the true God. This “woman” symbolizes a global religious system that claims devotion to God but embraces false gods and doctrines. All the nations of the world, Scripture says, will be drawn into her deception.

John continues:
“So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication.”

Now, I’m just going to tell you plainly—there is one prominent religious institution whose leaders are clothed in these very colors: scarlet and purple. This is the color of the Roman Catholic Church, which also possesses immense wealth and global influence.
I remember listening to Dave Hunt speak about a trip he made to a small village in Spain. The people there were extremely poor—barely able to survive. Yet, in the center of their village stood a magnificent cathedral. Inside was a small statue of the Virgin Mary. Each day, the priests would place a different jeweled robe and gold crown on her. Thousands upon thousands of dollars were invested in decorating this statue, while the people starved. That is not biblical worship—that is idolatry.

And this is what we see in the description of Babylon: great wealth, religious ritual, and spiritual corruption—all while the truth of God’s Word is pushed aside.

No other religious system in the world today has that level of global reach and political power. Even heads of state—whether from communist nations or democratic ones—go to meet with the Pope. Every major world leader bows before him, kisses his ring, and acknowledges his authority. The Vatican is the only religious institution on earth that has ambassadors from virtually every nation. This fulfills the picture of the “woman” who sits upon many waters—her influence stretches across the nations of the world.
But God says her power will not last. Her judgment is certain.

“And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”
This is the religious Babylon—the same idolatrous spirit that stood against God in Daniel’s time, now clothed in new garments. In Daniel’s day, God revealed His power to Nebuchadnezzar, humbling him until he acknowledged the true God. But in the last days, God will not bring Babylon to repentance. He will bring her to judgment.
Even though He showed mercy to Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s spiritual descendants have continued in rebellion. Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar, experienced the full weight of God’s judgment when the Babylonian Empire fell. Likewise, the religious Babylon of Revelation will one day fall under God’s wrath.

The Catholic Church—and the false religious system it represents—will lose its power and authority. What concerns me even more is how many evangelical Christians are beginning to open the door to Roman Catholicism, treating it as a partner in faith. Many do not realize that most Catholics themselves don’t understand the doctrines of their own religion, or how far they are from the teachings of Scripture.

Revelation 17:6 says:
“I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”
Throughout history, one of the greatest persecutors of true Bible-believing Christians has been the Roman Church. When it held political power, it oppressed, imprisoned, and executed those who held to the Word of God alone.

There was a man who once spoke at my wife’s church when she was a young girl. He said, “I’ve lived under both communism and Roman Catholicism, and I would much rather live under communism.” That’s how severe the persecution was when Catholicism held absolute control.

When John Paul II was Pope, many thought he was evangelical because he spoke warmly when visiting America, using the right words that sounded biblical. But when he visited southern Mexico—where Catholicism controls everything—he urged the people to persecute evangelical Christians, to deny them work, and to pressure them to return to “the mother church.” That’s the Babylonian spirit: deception cloaked in religious language.

It tells people what they want to hear, like a fisherman baiting a hook—enticing them until they’re caught and controlled.
That’s the same deception spreading through the world today. We talk about revival—but we must ask, what spirit is behind it? Is it truly the Spirit of God, or is it the spirit of Babylon?