Babylon The Great — The Central Banking Network
Babylon the Great is the economic and political control system that operates above governments, controls through debt, and is present in every nation simultaneously. The investigation identifies the central banking network as the best current expression of this system — not as a settled prophetic identification but as the closest match to what Revelation 17-18 describes.
The Woman Who Rides the Beast
> Revelation 17:3-4 — 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.
She rides the beast. She controls the beast. The beast is the political and military power. The woman is the financial system above it. She is arrayed in purple and scarlet — the colours of royalty and religion. She holds a golden cup full of abominations — the deceptive allure of wealth and pleasure that makes the system attractive. She is drunk with the blood of the saints — she has been present and complicit through every persecution of the people of God.
> Revelation 17:18 — And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.
Dominion over the kings of the earth. Not service. Not cooperation. Dominion. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her — they became dependent on her system, indebted to her, doing her bidding. The central banking network operates above governments. It controls the money supply of every nation. When a government needs money it borrows from this system. That debt is servitude. The borrower is slave to the lender. The kings of the earth are servants to the woman.
The Merchandise That Ends in Souls
> Revelation 18:11-13 — The merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore\… gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood\… and human slaves, and souls of men.
The merchandise list moves deliberately and without hurry from gold and precious materials through luxury goods and finally to human slaves and souls of men. This is the logical endpoint of a debt system. When the debt is great enough and the collateral is everything, the final collateral is the person. The soul of man becomes merchandise. The Babylon system reaches its fullest expression when persons are inventory.
The Fall of Babylon
> Revelation 18:10 — They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, ‘Alas! Alas! You great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come. ‘
One hour. The system that seemed unassailable, that controlled the money supply of every nation, that sat on all peoples and tongues — falls in one hour. The earthquake of the seventh vial destroys the infrastructure. The merchants weep from a distance. The kings watch the smoke rising. No one buys their merchandise anymore. The cup is full. The system falls. The instrument that served as the woman ‘s mechanism of control is destroyed with her.