In the Bible, truth and error are associated with two symbolic women representing two churches—the true church and the apostate church. The true church, which upholds the truth, is symbolized by a chaste woman:

“I have likened the daughter of Zion to a comely and delicate woman” (Jeremiah 6:2).

“For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:2).

The fallen church, which teaches and practices error, and which has exercised a strong influence on the nations of the world, is symbolized by a corrupt woman:

“For their mother hath played the harlot: she that conceived them hath done shamefully: for she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink” (Hosea 2:5).

“I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns” (Revelation 17:3).

The fallen church does not stand alone. She is called “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots” (Revelation 17:5). It is actually a family of churches—the mother church and “seven” daughter churches who share her doctrines and principles. In biblical language, “seven” stands for a full number, meaning here all the apostate churches.

The prophet Isaiah describes this ecclesiastical family under the symbol of seven women who would be interested in only one thing—the name of Jesus:

“In that day seven women shall take hold of one man, saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach” (Isaiah 4:1).

1. She stands on the true foundation—Jesus Christ and the Word of God—the Bible.

Matthew 7:24, 25; Luke 11:28; 16:31; 1 Corinthians 3:9–11; Ephesians 2:20, 21; 1 Timothy 3:15; and so on.

2. She puts all religious questions to the test of “the law and testimony.” (Isaiah 8:20; Exodus 31:18). She does not ignore that the law of God, His testimony, which was the basis of the covenant, came forth from the right hand of Christ. Exodus 24:7, 8, 12; Deuteronomy 33:2; Malachi 3:1; Acts 7:38; 1 Corinthians 10:4. (Isaiah 8:14–20 refers to the Christian Dispensation.)

3. She understands that Christ established, taught, and urged His followers to honor the law that He had given at Sinai. Matthew 5:17–20; 15:3; 19:17; 22:36–40; Luke 16:17; Romans 2:12, 13, 18–23; 3:31; 7:7–23; 8:1–4, 7; and so on.

4. She may be persecuted. Revelation 12:13, 17.

5. She identifies herself with the threefold message of Revelation 14:6–12, which is to prepare a special group of believers for the coming of Christ.

6. She is prepared to meet Christ at His coming. 2 Thessalonians 1:7.

1. She is described as being “a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (Revelation 18:2).

2. The mother harlot is “arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls” (Revelation 17:4). She must keep a beautiful outward appearance.

3. She is “drunken with the blood of the saints” (verse 6). The role that she played during the centuries of the Inquisition is not to be forgotten.

4. She sits or rides on “a scarlet coloured beast” (verse 3). History says that, during the centuries of her supremacy, she held the reins of political power in her hands.

5. “The inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk” with the “wine” of her teachings (verse 2).

“The human family have been made drunk with the wine of Babylon, and drunken men will not reason. They have taken large drafts of Satan’s sophistry, and they are determined that they will not see the foolishness of accepting another standard, while casting aside the law of the Lord of hosts.”1

“The fallen denominational churches are Babylon. Babylon has been fostering poisonous doctrines, the wine of error. This wine of error is made up of false doctrines, such as the natural immortality of the soul, the eternal torment of the wicked, the denial of the pre-existence of Christ prior to His birth in Bethlehem, and advocating and exalting the first day of the week above God’s holy, sanctified day. These and kindred errors are presented to the world by the various churches.”2

“Prominent among these false doctrines is that of the temporal millennium—a thousand years of spiritual peace and prosperity, in which the world is to be converted, before the coming of Christ. This siren song has lulled thousands of souls to sleep over the abyss of eternal ruin.

“The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul has opened the way for the artful working of Satan through modern Spiritualism; and besides the Romish errors, purgatory, prayers for the dead, invocation of saints, etc., which have sprung from this source, it has led many Protestants to deny the resurrection and the Judgment, and has given rise to the revolting heresy of eternal torment, and the dangerous delusion of Universalism.

“And even more dangerous and more widely held than these are the assumptions that the law of God was abolished at the cross, and that the first day of the week is now a holy day, instead of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment.”3

“The effort of seducers has been to undermine confidence in the truth of God and to make it impossible to distinguish truth from error. Wonderfully pleasing, fanciful, scientific problems [like the theory of evolution] are introduced and urged upon the attention of the unwary; and unless believers are on their guard, the enemy, disguised as an angel of light, will lead them into false paths.”4

Most of the Protestant churches have inherited from the Roman Catholic Church the belief that man is immortal and that “after death he lives on in the form of an immortal soul.” It is believed that, when a human dies, his or her soul has only two possibilities—to go to enjoy the blessedness of heaven or to suffer the eternal torments of hell.

Baptism, according to the Catholic Church, has two main purposes: “Every child is . . . defiled at its birth with the taint of Adam’s disobedience. . . . Hence baptism, which washes away original sin, is as essential for the infant as for the full grown man in order to obtain the kingdom of heaven.”5 Many Protestant churches have inherited the practice of infant baptism from the Catholic Church.

Another practice received from the Catholic Church is the complete disregard of the dietary laws establishing the difference between clean and unclean flesh. For most Protestants it is all right to eat pork. They excuse themselves by quoting Matthew 15:18, 20 and other misunderstood New Testament verses. Some seem to believe that Christ died to purify not only human beings but also animals, even those that are declared unclean (toxic) and unfit for human consumption. See Leviticus 11. Christians should bear in mind the following verses that refer to the soon coming of Christ:

“Behold, the Lord will come with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury, and his rebuke with flames of fire. For by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh: and the slain of the Lord shall be many. They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens behind one tree in the midst, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together, saith the Lord” (Isaiah 66:15–17).

“When the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–9).

Hereunder are some more ingredients coming especially from the “kitchen” of the mother church that have been added to the “mixed wine” offered to intoxicate the inhabitants of the world:

1. “Jesus, our Lord, founded but one church, which He was pleased to build on Peter.”6

When Christ said, “Upon this rock I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18), He meant the Rock pointed out in prophecy (Isaiah 8:14; 1 Peter 2:6–8). He could not have meant Peter, whom He had to rebuke saying, “Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me” (Matthew 16:23).

2. “The primacy of St. Peter and the perpetuity of that primacy in the Roman see are dogmatically defined in the canons. . . . Peter and his successors have power to impose laws both preceptive and prohibitive, power likewise to grant dispensation from these laws and, when needful to annul them. It is theirs to judge offenses against the laws, to impose and to remit penalties. This judicial authority will even include the power to pardon sin.”7

3. “The mass is the most important ceremony in the Catholic worship. It consists in the sacrifice of the body and the blood of Jesus Christ on the altar through the ministry of the priest.”8 “ The Eucharist is ‘the source and summit of the Christian life.’ ‘The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.’”9

4. Purgatory. “The souls who go to purgatory are saved. . . . In purgatory the souls can themselves wipe out their debt only by suffering.”10

5. The invocation of saints is a very important aspect in the life of devout Catholics.

6. “Pius IX, in 1854, proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception.”11 This dogma teaches that Mary “was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”

7. Auricular Confession. “Seek where you will, through heaven and earth and you will find but one created being who can forgive the sinner, who can free him from the chains of hell, that extraordinary being is the priest, the Catholic priest. . . . The priest not only declares that the sinner is forgiven, but he really forgives him. . . . So great is the power of the priest that the judgments of heaven itself are subject to his decision.”12

“If men would consent to follow the Lord fully, if they were not confused with the wine of Babylon, they would see that to tamper with the Lord’s standard, to depart from His commandments, is the worst species of rebellion. This is well represented as the wine of the wrath of the abomination of Babylon, the cup which she has presented to all nations to drink. Were it not for this, thousands, yes, millions, would be found in the path cast up for the ransomed of the Lord to walk in.”13

It is not enough for us to be able to define the “wine of Babylon” and to specify its ingredients. God wants to rescue honest believers who are in the fallen churches that compose Babylon. And He wants to use us as instruments to help. Therefore, He sends a mighty angel, which represents a movement since 1844, to give the following message to the world:

“Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication” (Revelation 14:8).