Mystery, Babylon the Great:
The Church of Rome and the European Union exposed to the light of truth
By Dr. Ian A. Sadler
Privately published 1999
6 Aston Close, Pangbourne, Reading, RG8 7LG
All Evangelicals are against the Church of Rome, some with more intensity than others, but opinions are divided about the European Union, with Sir Fred Catherwood, for example, being very conscious of what terrible wars came from European disunity in the last century. As Protestantism has crumbled in Britain, and both the Roman Catholics and the Europeans grow in power, so feelings run ever higher. This book uses 'reliable and well-researched sources of information' (p.2) claims the author, a Strict Baptist, and traces false religion from Babylon to the present. But there are serious problems in his picture.
In 1941, the young Brethren classical scholar F.F. Bruce contributed to Evangelical Quarterly a paper 'Babylon and Rome' in which he re-examined whether Romanism could be traced to Babylonian religion, the thesis of a popular book in his youth The Two Babylons (1853) by A. Hislop. Since then the subject has been largely forgotten, except among intense Protestants. Ralph Woodrow's Babylon Mystery Religion (1966) used by Dr Sadler, is attractively written, but not based on any original research and it is surely desirable to cite recent treatments of ancient religion in such controversies. Dubious etymology, for example, has been the basis of many false beliefs.
Babylon is an important theological theme, and however explicit or not the historical Babylon link, there is no doubt that paganism gradually corrupted the Church of Rome. We hear also much in this book, as to be expected, of the misdeeds of the Jesuits, though I sometimes wish in such works for a detailed assessment of the Jesuit order today. Here Dr. Sadler has been taken in by a very serious hoax. Through the 'converted Jesuit', Alberto Rivera, he believes that occult rites and human sacrifice have secretly continued in the Church of Rome (p.190) He believes that they seduce, frame or murder Protestant ministers (p.234), and kill anyone else on instructions from the Pope (p.236). Rivera also claimed that the Pentecostal healer Kathryn Kuhlman, among others, was a secret agent of Rome (p.247).
Now Rivera was a real person, who died in 1997, but he was never a Jesuit, and his many claims are malicious fantasies. For nearly ten years another British Christian conspiracy writer, Roy Livesey, editor of New Age Bulletin has been warning of the hoax. Meanwhile Rivera tracts are enormously influential in Third World countries where they poison the real work of evangelising RCs. One day, like medieval tracts claiming that Jews killed Christian babies, they could have genocidal consequences. It is this material to which Dr. Sadler has given UK publicity.
Another focus of American extremism and fantasy is the campaign to preserve the King James Bible, which has involved the vilification of those involved in modern translations, notably British Victorian scholars B.F. Westcott and F.J. A. Hort. Dr. Sadler uses Ms. Gail Riplinger's New Age Bible Versions which is typical of many in claiming they were Anglo-Catholics or Romanists (they were not) and that they were involved in satanic activities (they were not.) Dr. Sadler even attributes to Bishop B.F. Westcott the activities of W.W. Westcott a well-known Victorian occultist who was no relation (p.206). The more informed UK defenders of the 1611 version are aware of the falsity of all such claims, but I regret to say that they often find it expedient not to defend the scholars and hold their peace.
This, I am sure, is horribly wrong. Not only were Westcott and Hort Christians, but they were more Scriptural in their beliefs than most evangelicals today, which is why their books were often used by older evangelical writers. Scripture indeed warns that we will be judged by the word we utter, and those who help spread accusations against other believers of their being agents of the devil on spurious biographical grounds will have to answer.
For the Evil One, the opportunity to confuse evangelists worldwide by hoax accusations is welcome. So too is the chance to get Christians defaming each other on the basis of which Greek manuscripts or English translations we use. While some Christians damn the 1881 Revised Version, other keen Bible students among the Brethren such as G.H. Lang made a point of using it!
It is because I share Dr Sadler's fears about Rome and the European Union that I have an unpalatable request about his book. He should withdraw it, pending further research into more reliable sources.
Leslie Price
Note:
In his autobiography In Retrospect (1980) Professor Bruce recalls (p.32) that as a boy of about 14 studying classics at school, he read his father's copy of The Two Babylons by Hislop. 'I quickly realised', he recalled 'that I was as liable to acquire misinformation as real information from Hislop.' In common with his contemporaries, Hislop wrongly supposed that the Babylonians spoke Chaldee (or Aramaic) and professed to derive religious words in many languages therefrom. 'But', admitted Bruce, 'I learned a great deal from Hislop, even if his main conclusion is as untenable as the arguments by which he sought to establish it.'
