Who is this woman we see in the 17th chapter of Revelation who is arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, and holding in her hand a golden cup?  Why is she such a mystery?  Because she is the personification of every religion that has ever walked this earth, including almost every manifestation of the Christian religion itself.  The only exception is that one which walks before God “pure and undefiled” as James says.  (And don’t think that just because you regularly visit widows and orphans that you automatically qualify as part of that religion!)

What?  The Christian Church is Mystery Babylon?  Shame on me for saying so!  Admit it.  This is what you think, or at least used to think.  So did I.  But,  consider the words of John the Revelator, 

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,  [2] 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.”  [3] 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.  [4] 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.  [5] And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.”  [6] And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.  When I saw her, I marveled greatly.  [7] But the angel said to me, “Why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her.  Rev. 17:1-7 (ESV) 

Why did John “marvel greatly?”  Because he saw the end condition of the Church that he himself helped to begin.  How could John not marvel when he saw this sexually perverse woman calling herself “Christian” who had personally slain God’s overcomers over the past two thousand years?  Didn’t the Catholic Church persecute and kill Christians who attempted to know God for themselves outside of the restrictions of their doctrines?  Didn’t Cromwell and other Protestants kill Catholics because they held different doctrines and worshipped God another way?  Don’t you and I criticize other Christians for the way they believe?  Haven’t you been part of that church that believes it has the best pastors and teachers and walks closer to God than any other?   This is exactly the sin of Cain against Abel.  So, John marveled because what began as the epitome of truth devolved into the falsehood and whoredom of Mystery Babylon that we see today at the end of the age.