A City on Seven Hills
by Dave Hunt
...I saw a woman sit upon a
scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads . . . .
And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold
and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of
abominations and filthiness of her fornication . . . . And the woman which
thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.
And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains
[or hills], on which the woman sitteth. (Revelation 17:3, 4, 18, 9)
A woman rides the beast
that represents Antichrist and the revived Roman Empire he will rule. She is a
city built on seven hills that reigns over the kings of the earth! John
equates the readers’ acceptance of this revelation with "wisdom." That insight
demands our careful and prayerful attention.
Many prophecy teachers insist
that the woman is the United States. No, the US is a country. It might
justifiably be referred to as Sodom, considering the honor now given to
homosexuals, but it is not "Mystery Babylon." She is declared to be a city.
Nor is the woman ancient
Babylon now being rebuilt in Iraq, for it is not built on seven hills. Some
other cities are, but only Rome meets all the criteria, including being
known as Babylon. Even Catholic apologist Karl Keating confirms that Rome
was known as Babylon and cites I Peter 5:13.1 The
Catholic Encyclopedia states, "It is within the city of Rome, called the
city of seven hills, that the entire area of Vatican State proper is now
confined."2
The woman is called a "whore"
(verse 1), with whom earthly kings "have committed fornication" (vs. 2).
Against only two cities could such a charge be made: Jerusalem and Rome.
Jerusalem was indicted for spiritual fornication by numerous prophets (Isaiah
1:21, etc.), but does not meet the other criteria. Vatican City claims to have
been the worldwide headquarters of Christianity since its beginning. Her pope
claims to be the Vicar of Christ and his Church the true Church and bride of
Christ.
Christ said His kingdom was not
of this world, otherwise His servants would fight. The popes have fought with
armies and navies in the name of Christ to build a worldwide empire. Vatican
II states that even today the Roman Catholic Church ceaselessly seeks to bring
under its control all mankind and all their goods.3
And in furtherance of these goals it has engaged, exactly as John foresaw, in
fornication (unholy alliances) with the kings of the earth.
She is clothed in "purple
and scarlet" (vs. 4), the colors of the Catholic clergy. The
Catholic Encyclopedia states:
Cappa Magna -
A cloak with a long train and a hooded shoulder cape . . . [it] was
purple wool for bishops; for cardinals, it was scarlet watered
silk . . . .
Cassock -
The close-fitting, ankle-length robe worn by the
Catholic clergy as their official garb . . . . The color for bishops and
other prelates is purple, for cardinals scarlet . . . .
(Emphasis added.)4
Her incredible wealth next caught
John’s eye. She was "decked with gold and precious stones and pearls . . . ."
Even Christ’s blood-stained cross has been turned to gold, reflecting her
riches. The Catholic Encyclopedia says, "The pectoral cross [suspended
by a chain around the neck of abbots, bishops, archbishops, cardinals and the
Pope] should be made of gold and . . . decorated with gems . . . ."
5
She had "a golden cup [chalice]
in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication." The
Catholic Encyclopedia calls the gold chalice "the most important of the
sacred vessels . . . ."6 That Church is known for its many
thousands of gold chalices around the world. A recent newspaper article
reported:
The fabulous treasure of
Lourdes [France], whose existence was kept secret by the Catholic Church for
120 years, has been unveiled . . . . Rumors have been circulating for
decades about a priceless collection of gold chalices,
diamond-studded crucifixes, silver and precious stones . . . .
After an indiscreet remark by
their press spokesman this week, church authorities agreed to reveal part
of the collection . . . [some] floor-to-ceiling cases were opened to reveal
59 solid gold chalices alongside rings, crucifixes, statues and heavy
gold brooches, many encrusted with precious stones.
Almost hidden by the other
treasures is the "Crown" of Notre Dame de Lourdes, made by a Paris goldsmith
in 1876 and studded with diamonds.
Church authorities say they
cannot put a value on the collection. "I have no idea," says Father
Pierre-Marie Charriez . . . . "It is of inestimable value."
Across the road is a building
housing hundreds of [antique] ecclesiastical garments, robes, mitres and
sashes–many in heavy gold thread . . . .
"The Church itself is poor,"
insists Father Charriez. "The Vatican itself is poor."7 (Emphasis
added.) [And the treasure described here is only part of that which
is kept in one location, the small town of Lourdes, France!]
She has practiced evil to gather
her wealth, for the "golden cup" is filled with "abominations and filthiness."
Much of the wealth of the Roman Catholic Church was acquired by confiscating
property of the Inquisitions’ pitiful victims. Even the dead were exhumed to
face trial and property was taken from their heirs by the Church. That
practice, one historian writes, offered "unlimited opportunities for loot."8
Most of Rome’s wealth has been
acquired through the sale of salvation. Untold billions of dollars have been
paid to her by those who thought they were purchasing heaven on the
installment plan for themselves or loved ones. The practice continues to this
day–blatantly where Catholicism is in control, less obviously here in the
United States where (for example) one pays the Church to have a Mass Card
placed on the altar in the name of the deceased during Mass to reduce time in
purgatory. The wealthy often leave a fortune for masses to be said for
their salvation after their death.
In addition to such perversions
of the gospel, there are the further abominations (fully documented in police
and court records) of corrupt banking practices, laundering of drug money,
trading in counterfeit securities and dealings with the Mafia, which the
Vatican and her representatives around the world have long employed. Former
Business Week correspondent in Rome, Nino Lo Bello, who because of its
incredible wealth calls Rome "the tycoon on the Tiber," says the Vatican is so
closely allied with the Mafia in Italy that "many people . . . believe that
Sicily . . . is nothing more than a Vatican holding."9
John’s attention is next drawn to
the inscription on the woman’s forehead: "THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND
ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH" (vs. 5). Sadly enough, the Roman Catholic Church
fits that description as precisely as she fits the others. Much of the cause
is due to the unbiblical doctrine of priestly celibacy.
The great Apostle Paul was a
celibate and recommended that life to others who wanted to devote themselves
fully to serving Christ. He did not, however, make it a condition for church
leadership as the Catholic Church has done, thereby imposing an unnatural
burden upon her clergy that very few could bear. On the contrary, he wrote
that a bishop should be "the husband of one wife" (I Timothy 3:2) and set the
same requirement for elders (Titus 1:5-6).
The doctrine of celibacy has been
broken repeatedly by millions of priests and nuns, bishops, archbishops,
cardinals and many popes such as Sergius III, John X, John XII, Benedict V,
Innocent VIII, Urban VIII, Innocent X, et al. Celibacy has made sinners of the
clergy and harlots out of those with whom they secretly cohabit. The Catholic
Church has paid about 1 billion in out-of-court settlements in the last few
years for sexual sins of its clergy in the USA alone. Rome is indeed "the
mother of harlots"!
History is replete with sayings
that mocked Romanism’s false claim to celibacy: "The holiest hermit has his
whore" and "Rome has more prostitutes than any other city because she has the
most celibates" are examples. Pope Pius II called Rome "the only city run by
bastards," the sons and grandsons of popes and cardinals.
Even Catholic historians admit
that among the popes were some of the most degenerate and unconscionable ogres
in all history. More than one pope was slain by a husband who found him in bed
with his wife. To call such a man "His Holiness, Vicar of Christ" makes a
mockery of holiness and of Christ. Yet the name of each of these mass
murderers, fornicators, robbers, warmongers — some guilty of the massacre of
thousands — is emblazoned in honor on the Church’s official list of Peter’s
alleged successors, the popes.
John next notices that the woman
is drunk — and not with alcohol but with "the blood of the saints, and with
the blood of the martyrs of Jesus . . . "(vs. 6). One thinks immediately of
the Inquisitions (Roman, Medieval and Spanish) which for centuries held Europe
in their terrible grip. Canon Llorente, who was the Secretary to the
Inquisition in Madrid from 1790-92 and had access to the archives of all the
tribunals, estimated that in Spain alone the number of condemned exceeded 3
million, with about 300,000 burned at the stake.10 A Catholic
historian writes:
When Napoleon conquered Spain
in 1808, a Polish officer in his army, Colonel Lemanouski, reported that the
Dominicans blockaded themselves in their monastery in Madrid. When
Lemanouski’s troops forced an entry, the inquisitors denied the existence of
any torture chambers.
The soldiers searched the
monastery and discovered them under the floors. The chambers were full of
prisoners, all naked, many insane. The French troops, used to cruelty and
blood, could not stomach the sight. They emptied the torture-chambers, laid
gunpowder to the monastery and blew the place up.11
The remnants of some of the
chambers of horror remain in Europe and may be visited today. They stand as
memorials to the zealous outworking of Roman Catholic dogmas which remain
in force, and to a Church which claims to be infallible and to this day
justifies such barbarism. They are also memorials to the astonishing accuracy
of John’s vision in Revelation 17. Do not forget, that Church has never
officially admitted that these practices were evil, nor apologized to the
world or to any of the victims or their descendants. Nor could John Paul II
apologize today because "the doctrines responsible for those terrible things
still underpin his position."12
"Christian" Rome has slaughtered
many times the number of both Christians and Jews that pagan Rome did. Beside
those victims of the Inquisitions, there were Huguenots, Albigenses, Waldenses
and other Christians, massacred, tortured and burned at the stake by the
hundreds of thousands simply because they refused to align themselves with the
Roman Catholic Church. Listen to the leading nineteenth-century Catholic
professor of church history:
The view of the Church had
been . . . [that] every departure from the teaching of the Church . . . must
be punished with death, and the most cruel of deaths, by fire . . . .
Both the initiation and
carrying out of this . . . must be ascribed to the Popes alone . . . who
compelled bishops and priests to condemn heretics to torture,
confiscation of their goods, imprisonment, and death, and to
enforce the execution of this sentence on the civil authorities, under pain
of excommunication. (Emphasis added.)13
Pope Martin V commanded the King
of Poland in 1429 to exterminate the Hussites (sympathizers with the
martyred Jan Hus). This excerpt from the Pope’s letter to the King explains
why popes hated independent Christians and wanted them destroyed:
Know that the interests of the
Holy See, and those of your crown, make it a duty to exterminate the
Hussites. Remember that these impious persons dare proclaim principles
of equality; they maintain that all Christians are brethren,
and that God has not given to privileged men the right of ruling the
nations; they hold that Christ came on earth to abolish slavery; they
call the people to liberty, that is to the annihilation of kings and
priests . . . .
[T]urn your forces against
Bohemia; burn, massacre, make deserts everywhere, for nothing could be
more agreeable to God, or more useful to the cause of kings, than the
extermination of the Hussites.14 (Emphasis added.)
Note this excerpt from Pope
Nicholas I’s (858-867) instructions to the King of Bulgaria, a new convert to
what he thought was "Christianity," to force Rome’s religion upon his
subjects:
I glorify you for having
maintained your authority by putting to death those wandering sheep who
refuse to enter the fold; and . . . congratulate you upon having opened the
kingdom of heaven to the people submitted to your rule.
A king need not fear to command
massacres, when these will retain his subjects in obedience, or cause them
to submit to the faith of Christ; and God will reward him in this world, and
in eternal life, for these murders.15
Why should Rome apologize for or
even admit this holocaust? No one calls her to account today. Protestants have
forgotten and evangelical leaders join Rome to evangelize together. They don’t
want to hear any "negative" reminders of the millions tortured and slain by
the Church to which they now pay homage, or the fact that Rome has a false
gospel of sacramental works.
The Nazi holocaust was thoroughly
known to Pius XII in spite of his complete silence throughout the war on the
slaughter of Jews.16 Had the Pope protested, as representatives of
Jewish organizations and the Allied Powers begged him to do, he would have
condemned his own Church. The facts are inescapable:
In 1936, Bishop Berning of
Osnabruch had talked with the Fuhrer for over an hour. Hitler assured his
lordship there was no fundamental difference between National Socialism and
the Catholic Church. Had not the church, he argued, looked on Jews as
parasites . . . ?
"I am only doing," he boasted,
"what the Church has done for fifteen hundred years, only more effectively."
Being a Catholic himself, he told Berning, he "admired and wanted to promote
Christianity [Catholicism]."17
Finally, the angel reveals to
John that the woman "is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of
the earth" (vs. 18). Is there such a city? Yes, and again only one:
Vatican City. One eighteenth-century historian counted 95 popes who claimed to
have divine power to depose kings and emperors. Historian Walter James wrote
that Pope Innocent III (1198-1216) "held all Europe in his net."18
Gregory IX (1227-1241) thundered that the Pope was Lord and Master of everyone
and everything. Popes crowned and deposed kings and emperors, exacting
obedience by threatening excommunication. Pope Nicholas I boasted: "Fear,
then, our wrath and the thunders of our vengeance; for Jesus Christ has
appointed us [the popes] . . . absolute judges of all men; and kings . . . are
submitted to our authority."19 In commanding one king to destroy
another, Nicholas wrote,
We order you, in the name of
religion, to invade his states, burn his cities, and massacre his
people . . . .20
Eminent Catholic historian Ignaz
von Dollinger writes, "Pope Clement IV, in 1265, after selling millions of
South Italians to Charles of Anjou for a yearly tribute of eight hundred
ounces of gold, declared that he would be excommunicated if the first payment
was deferred . . . ."21 Catholic Professor Carrerio boasted that
the popes had "put down from their thrones great kings and yet mightier
emperors, and set others in their place, to whom the greatest kingdoms have
long paid tribute, as they do to no other, and who dispense such
riches . . . that no king or emperor has ever had . . . ."22
The qualifying data which John
gives us under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit for identifying this woman/city,
is specific, conclusive and irrefutable. There is no city upon earth,
past or present, which meets all of these criteria except Catholic Rome and
Vatican City. Pray for the 980 million Catholics who are deceived into
trusting their Church instead of Christ for salvation. May Christ’s love move
you to bring the gospel to them!
— written by Dave Hunt
Condensed from a chapter of Dave
Hunt’s new book, A Woman Rides the Beast, available from The Berean
Call, PO Box 7019, Bend, Oregon 97708, for $13.00 postage paid.
NOTES
1
Karl
Keating, Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible
Christians" (Ignatius Press, 1988), p. 200.
2
The
Catholic Encyclopedia (Thomas Nelson, 1976), under the heading "Rome."
3
Austin
Flannery, ed., Vatical Council II (Costello Publishing, 1988 rev. ed.),
Vol 1, pp. 364-5.
4
Peter
M.J. Stavinskas, ed., Catholic Encyclopedia (Our Sunday Visitor
Publishing, 1991), pp. 175, 178.
5
Robert
Broderick, ed., Catholic Encyclopedia (Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1976), p.
466.
6
Brokerick,
op. cit., pp. 103-4.
7
The
European, April 9-12, 1992, p. 1.
8
William
Shaw Kerr, A Handbook of the Papacy (Marshall, Morgan & Scott, London),
p. 241.
9
Nino
LoBello, The Vatican Empire (Trident Press, 1968), pp. 167,186. See
also David A. Yallop, In God’s Name (Bantam Books, 1984); Richard
Hammers, The Vatican Connection (Penguin Books, 1983), etc.
10
R.W.
Thompson, The Papacy and the Civil Power (Harper & Brothers, New York,
1876), p. 82.
11
Peter
de Rosa, Vicars of Christ: The Dark Side of the Papacy (Crown
Publishers, 1988), p. 172.
12
Peter
de Rosa, op. cit., pp. 20-21.
13
J.H.
Ignaz von Dollinger, The Pope and the Council (London, 1869), pp.
190-3.
14
Cormenin,
pp. 116-7; in Thompson, op. cit., p. 553.
15
Cormenin,
op. cit., p. 244.
16
Guenter
Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp.
300-4, etc. The same facts have been documented by many other authors and
historians as well.
17
de
Rosa, op. cit., p. 5; Lewy, op. cit., p. 111.
18
Walter
James, The Christian in Politics (Oxford University Press, 1962), p.
47.
19
Cormenin,
History of the Popes, in Thompson, op. cit., p. 369.
20
Cormenin,
op. cit., p. 243, in Thompson, op. cit., p. 368.
21
Dollinger,
op. cit., pp. 10-12.
22
Dollinger,
op. cit., p. 35. W
Bible Prophecy
