Pedigree Papers
“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 the Land’s abominations.” (from Revelation 17)
The woman’s riches and robe are described after her “bestial relations.” She made her priestly office into a counterfeit kingdom. She thought she was rich, but was in fact poor, blind and naked.
This woman was not the racial Jews, because many believed. She was not even merely the unbelieving Jews, because they did not pollute the churches with false teaching. Like Jezebel, she was an idolatrous marriage between Judaism and the world, and between Judaism and Christianity, a dog with all the pedigree papers and the strength and cunning of a wild mongrel. James Jordan writes:
“While Babylon is centrally Jerusalem, the symbol embraces more than just the city. As the centre of the priestly people of the Old Creation, Babylon-Jerusalem extends to the whole holy land and to the Circumcision wherever they were. Harlot Babylon sits on many waters, perched on the watery sea of the nations (17:1,15). Simultaneously she sits on the Beast, the symbol of the God-established but Satan-perverted guardian. These two symbols counterfeit the throne of God, for just as the Beast seeks to be God, and the False Prophet seeks to be God, so also Babylon seeks to be God. (Indeed, this is the reason these powers eventually turn against each other.) God is enthroned on the flood above the waters (Genesis 1:2; Psalm 29:2,10). God sits enthroned above the heavenly guardians, the cherubim (above the Ark of the Covenant, and in Ezekiel 1).
The Harlot is also in a wilderness. When we last saw the godly woman of the Church, she was in the wilderness (12:14), under assault by the evil Judaising doctrines. The fact that the Whore is pictured in the wilderness tells me that she is not only the unbelieving Jews, but also the Judaisers, the counterfeit Church. She is the Circumcision as a whole. The Harlot displays the Israelites who died in the wilderness after leaving Egypt. They were delivered, but rejected the deliverance. Meanwhile, the faithful entered the Promised Land, as does the Bride in Revelation.
On the forehead of the High Priest was written on a golden flower, “Holy to Yahweh.” The Harlot as counterfeit High Priest has on her forehead, “Babylon the Great, Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Land”—not Yahweh but His apostate Bride claiming to be God; not holy but abominable.”1
Her generations were cut off when the old priesthood’s genealogies were destroyed by fire. Unlike Paul, when the priesthood was reorganised, she was unwilling to count her Adamic pedigree as unclean (Romans 11:1; Philippians 3).
1 James B. Jordan, The Vindication of Jesus Christ, p. 73-74 www.canonpress.org
