Our Guest Joel Richardson
Sid: As I was saying earlier in this week, many people read the book of Revelation and they say, well, it’s too symbolic it’s too hard for me to figure out, I’m just going to live my life and not understand the end times, because I’m not sure we can understand it. But I have an individual that God has handpicked, groomed and taught; he’s lived in the Middle East, he has a passion for studying end times and he’s come up with answers to questions some of you have never even complicated. And why is this so important? You must understand the times that were living in. And I believe that God does not want you ignorant in these areas. So he’s put together four teaching sessions on two DVDs so that you can understand the times, in fact that’s the name of these four teaching sessions “Understanding the Times,” and when you finish this you will have a clear perspective of what is going on at this moment in history. Now Joe Richardson there’s some terms that we read about Mystery Babylon, Great Harlot, and you’ve connected the dots in a way I have not seen before. Tell me who mystery Babylon is? Is it Rome, New York City?
Joel: Well, Mystery Babylon is probably one of the identifying this mysterious woman in Revelation 17 and 18; is really one of the greatest mysteries of Bible prophecy and as you said, Rome, New York City, the United States these are all suggestions that have been put forward as theories. Some people have said that it’s the summation of all false religious systems down through history. But really the key to unlocking the identity of mystery Babylon is found in a really strange place it’s in the last chapter of the first epistle of Peter. And the clue that we find there is that Peter, who is actually in Rome at the time that early church history is thoroughly consistent universal with the idea that Peter was in Rome and writing from Rome he said, the church that is in Babylon; and he used the word Babylon and applied it to the city of Rome. And what we learn from that is that when we see really, and I call this the big picture, it’s a very simple picture. And when we understand the simple story that’s laid out in Revelation 12, 13 and then 17 and 18 it’s a story of seven world biblical historical empires that have literally been empires that have all carried a satanic anti-semantic later and a anti-Christ spirit. And each one of these empires have been the primary empires; and again down through a biblical and world history that have sought to destroy the Jewish people. And that story is told where this beast is sitting before the woman in the book of Revelation and the woman is Israel; She’s about to give birth to a male child that’s the Messiah and then this beast again, which is satan wants to devour Israel, it wants to devour the Messiah to thwart God’s plan for the ages through the Messiah. And satan’s primary tool down through the ages has been this series of world pagan empires these anti-Semitic empires and so of course Babylon was the city that was the, it was the spiritual and financial capital of ancient Babylonia; that was one of these beasts, these satanic empires of history. But in the first century when the Epistle of Peter was written, of course the Roman Empire was the beast empire of that time. And in Revelation 17 we see that Rome was the empire that was, it was the sixth in this list of empires and the city of Rome was the spiritual financial capital of the Roman Empire. So we have this pattern which is simply to say that mystery Babylon is the reigning spiritual and economic capital of which ever beast empire is dominate in the earth at this time. And as I just discuss in the DVD series, the empire, the beast empire of our day that follows after the pattern of all of these previous pagan empires is the empire of the Islam, the Islamic empire as it has existed down through the past fourteen hundred years in various Islamic dynasties. The Umayyad, the Abbasids, the Ottoman Empire, this is the primary anti-Semitic, anti-Christ; in fact it is the most significant anti-Semitic anti Christ empire that the world has ever seen.
Sid: Now now, in your teaching you explain why it can’t be a lot of the other places that people have said from scripture; but now the question is, where is the capital of that empire?
Joel: Exactly, exactly. And this is really, you know this is a…it comes across as novel to most people when they first hear it, but I think that you’ll agree after its expounded and this is how I felt, it made more sense than anything that I have ever heard. And the reason is Sid is in Revelation 17 & 18 it gives us numerous criteria to identify mystery Babylon. And of the different suggestions that you mention that have been popular in the church and in recent years down through history, all of them have some or they meet some of the criteria, but none of them meet all of the criteria; and all of these theories have a few significant problems. However, the identification that I’m going to mention, it doesn’t have any of the problems; it matches all of the criteria to a tee. So if we agree that the primary anti-Semitic-anti Christ Empire of the earth today is the Islamic empire. Then we ask, what is the spiritual and financial capital of that empire? And the question that I like to ask people is “Where do 1.7 billion people throughout the earth pray five times a day toward a particular city in the earth and that city is Mecca.”
Sid: One point seven billion?
Joel: On point seven billion, it is actually 1.69 billion but that growing rapidly with the birth rates. That is, Mecca is the greatest city of idolatry.
Sid: That’s in Saudi Arabia.
Joel: That the world has ever seen. Beyond that, of course that, that’s the spiritual capital beyond that; Saudi Arabia, unequivocally is the greatest financial source of terrorism and radical Islam throughout the earth beyond any other nation, Saudi Arabia is the nation that has funded this spread of Osama Ben Laden and Elcata and all of these various groups. They pay for the Islamic centers and the mosques and the mid drosses. They raise up the radical hate preachers, they send them out as missionaries. They fill the mosques and the libraries with the radical Islamic anti-Semitic literature, pro Jihadee literature that has the Saudi Arabian government seal of approval in the books. The city of Mecca is historical is the womb from which Islam burst forth into the earth; and today Saudi Arabia is still the spiritual and financial womb of all of the radical Islam throughout the earth.
Sid: Now out of curiosity who would you say these one and half billion people praying to, who are they praying to five times a day in Mecca, facing Mecca?
Joel: Well, there’s two ways to answer that, first of all I would say that if you are worshiping any other God other than the God of the Bible, then you are committing idolatry, you’re worshipping…
Sid: Yes, but they say Allah is god, it is just the Arabic name for god.
Joel: Well, the fact of the matter is Sid, is that nowhere in the Bible is God ever referred to by the name Allah. However the Bible does tell a name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and that is Yahweh, it is very clear when he appeared to Moses in the desert, he said, Yahweh is the name that you shall tell them. I am the one that sent you, the fact of the matter is that that Allah, the god of Islam is just one more manifestation of ancient near eastern astral and ward deities and there are numerous. There is Zen, Mar duke, these are all the gods that were worshipped by the pagan peoples of the desert the day the god of Islam known as Allah is just one more manifestation. And if I can be so bold as to say manifestation of satan, this time around who is trying to masquerade as the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The god of Islam is not the god of the Bible.
Sid: Joel, I’ve often pondered why did someone like President Bush, who I believe is a born again Christian constantly feed us a lie that Islam is a peace loving religion. As I study its history, I don’t see anything peace loving about it. I see it as the opposite of peace loving, but then as I started watching you’re four session two DVD’s on understanding the times and I saw how the long family relationship of both Bushes with the Saudi royals and I began to understand how the great harlot, the whore of the whole earth. You list scripture by scripture by scripture and you prove that it is the great harlot is Saudi Arabia. And then how you point out masterfully in your… teaching about people like President Obama and the amount of money he got from the Saudi’s and Jimmy Carter and the amount of money that he got from the Saudi’s and it’s outrageous about the cleans…oops our time is up.
