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Mystery Babylon: Difference between revisions
→The Identity of the Woman
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Jerusalem itself had been pictured as a harlot by both Isaiah<ref>Isaiah 1:21</ref> and Ezekiel<ref> Ezekiel 1:15</ref>. Likewise Nahum describes Ninevah’s barbarities in terms of “the wanton lust of a harlot, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft”<ref>Nahum 3:4</ref>. Similarly Isaiah’s litany over Tyre<ref>Isaiah 23:15–18</ref> calls for her to “take up a harp, walk through the city, you forgotten prostitute; play the harp well, sing many a song, so that you will be remembered.”<ref>Gordon D. Fee, Revelation, New Covenant Commentary Series (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 242.</ref> Lamentations, a lament over the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, portrays the fallen city as a woman “who has become like a widow” (Lam 1:1).<ref>Philip D. Stern, “Ruth, Book Of, Critical Issues,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).</ref>The typing of the city of Rome to a woman and particularly a harlot is, therefore, imagery taken from the Old Testament, something that is common throughout the Book of Revelation. | Jerusalem itself had been pictured as a harlot by both Isaiah<ref>Isaiah 1:21</ref> and Ezekiel<ref> Ezekiel 1:15</ref>. Likewise Nahum describes Ninevah’s barbarities in terms of “the wanton lust of a harlot, alluring, the mistress of sorceries, who enslaved nations by her prostitution and peoples by her witchcraft”<ref>Nahum 3:4</ref>. Similarly Isaiah’s litany over Tyre<ref>Isaiah 23:15–18</ref> calls for her to “take up a harp, walk through the city, you forgotten prostitute; play the harp well, sing many a song, so that you will be remembered.”<ref>Gordon D. Fee, Revelation, New Covenant Commentary Series (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011), 242.</ref> Lamentations, a lament over the fall of Jerusalem in 587 BC, portrays the fallen city as a woman “who has become like a widow” (Lam 1:1).<ref>Philip D. Stern, “Ruth, Book Of, Critical Issues,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).</ref>The typing of the city of Rome to a woman and particularly a harlot is, therefore, imagery taken from the Old Testament, something that is common throughout the Book of Revelation. | ||
So William Branham was wrong. A woman in the Bible does not always represent a church - it often represents a city. | So William Branham was wrong. A woman in the Bible does not always represent a church - it often represents a city. | ||