Donna,

I went to each of those sites, you linked to, to read what they said.

When I first got saved, I was still in the catholic church.

I had been teaching 5th grade CCD, which in our parish, was the 7 sacraments and how to pray the rosary.

I went to the priest, who was the pastor, and told him that I had gotten saved.

I told him that I could no longer teach about the sacraments & rosary, because I believed that it did not agree with the Bible.

He asked me if I was willing to teach the 7th grade CCD, which was the 4 gospels, so I said yes.

Over time, I began to find out just how unscriptural the catholic church really was.

At that time, I was working in a lab in the day, out by the airport, and drove into Chicago, to go to grad school evening classes.

I used to give a lift to a coworker, who lived close to downtown, and he was a jehovah witness.

He had long stopped trying to convert me, even before I had gotten saved.

And he didn't want to talk about things after I was saved, either, but he did ask me for one favor.

He asked me to read a book, The Two Babylons, by Alexander Hislop.

That book made a phenomenal case for identifying the catholic church as Mystery, Babylon, the great whore.

So, after reading the book, I also studied it for myself, and came to the same conclusion.

I had to leave the whore church, so I did.

A number of years later, when studying the subject again, I began to wonder about the term, mother of harlots.

That is what the scriptures call her:

Revelation 17:5 And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.

And I wondered about the generational aspect of the term, mother of harlots.

It would seem that this harlot mother has harlot daughters.

I thought about what was written to the church of Thyatira:

Revelation 2:20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols.

  21 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not.

  22 Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds.

  23 And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

There is a good case made, that one of the ways to also look at this, is the strong possibility, that in addition to an actual church in John's day,

that this part of Revelation chapters 2 & 3 looked prophetically to the catholic dominated period of church history.

And the description of the woman only further confirms the identification of the woman in Revelation 17 & 18, yet it mentions her children.

I considered that her children, and specifically her daughters, were possibly the protestant state churches of Europe.

So, I again considered the generational aspect of all this

 Ezekiel 16:44 Behold, every one that useth proverbs shall use this proverb against thee, saying, As is the mother, so is her daughter.

So, I wondered, is there a multi-generational aspect of Mystery, Babylon?

If so, then there must have been the harlot in John's day, when he was given the Revelation to write down.

In his day, it seems to me, that Mystery, Babylon was imperial Rome, with all their power and idolatry.

The church in Rome, at that time, was not a whore yet, as seen in the epistle to the Romans, only 40 years earlier.

Or things that Paul mentioned while he was imprisoned there, a mere 30 years earlier.

However, there was some transfer going on, over time, of the whoredoms of idolatry, from imperial Rome, to the Roman catholic church.

In that case, the mother harlot was imperial Rome, and the daughter harlot was the catholic church.

The power of imperial Rome, waned, until it was considered fallen.

But the daughter had grown to be a full blown harlot of her own.

The power and influence of imperial Rome had been transferred to the pope & the hierarchy of the catholic church.

The kings that had been under the power of the emperor, were then under the power of the pope.

The wealth and idolatry was passed on from mother to daughter.

Yet, the old mother harlot, didn't go away, she was still somehow there, along with her daughter whore, the catholic church.

With the catholic church's 2 disasters, the spread of islam, and the split of the orthodox church, the harlot lost half of the old Roman empire.

She struck back, with the crusades, but she still ended up losing the eastern & north African parts of the old Roman empire.

Yet she continued as a power force, as Mystery, Babylon.

Then came the Reformation, where people began getting saved in large numbers, and they began to split away from her dominion.

The reformers, themselves, realized that she was the whore of Babylon, and wrote about it, and preached it.

European wars didn't seem to be able to put her dominion back together, so what was she going to do?

She ended up doing what her mother slowly had done to her, corrupting her to where she went from a church to a whore.

She began to corrupt the protestant state churches of Europe, until they became her harlot daughters.

Then there was 3 generations of harlots, imperial Rome, the catholic church, and the protestant state churches of Europe.

And the daughter harlots ended up like their mother and grandmother.

However, something else began to happen at about the time of the reformation, and that was large numbers of people moving to the Americas.

The catholic countries were no threat, as they were still under the catholic church.

But something began to happen in North America, it began to be a real Christian part of the world.

Well, perhaps it initially seemed not a total disaster, as the protestant state churches of Europe, seemed to be in control.

But, there were preachers of the great awakening, and then John Wesley and George Whitefield.

Many people began to get saved, and many would have nothing to do with the catholic church or the protestant state churches of Europe.

The state church in Virginia began to arrest preachers who were not part of the state church.

But by the time of the US war of independence, the break was total.

The power of the catholic church and the state churches of Europe no longer ruled.

The US was setup with a separation of church and state built into the 1st amendment.

What could be done?

Well, what the youngest harlots could not do, nor even their harlot mother, the catholic church, could not do, the old harlot still had her wiles.

The US began to be seduced & corrupted by the old harlot, and the US began to emulate imperial Rome.

A brief trip to Washington DC, and it is apparent, it looks like imperial Rome, with the structures and the graven images.

The American empire began to look, act, and sound like imperial Rome.

But then, that was not enough, she needed to be a spiritual, religious whore as well.

So, many of the American churches, and universities began to be corrupted.

That by our day, the other harlots had managed to spawn yet another harlot daughter, the fourth generation.

Again, "As is the mother, so is her daughter", she outshined them all in power and fornication (both spiritual and physical).

But she excelled them in her economics, so by the combination of all these, she, to great measure, reigns over the kings of the earth.

But all four generations of harlots somehow, now, work as one single harlot, affecting the entire world.

So that in our day, Mystery, Babylon, is the combined and concerted effort of all four generations simultaneously.

And if these are the last days, then this powerful, perverted, monster is seen spiritually as the woman in Revelation 17 & 18.

She is the woman who will ride the beast, going into the tribulation, but will be destroyed by the ten kings.

Anyway that's how I see it, but of course, I could still be wrong about all this.

.