Book Review - The Babylon Code

The BabylonCode – Solving the Bible’s Greatest End-Times Mystery by Paul McGuire and Troy Anderson.

Are we now living in the last days of planet Earth? If so, how will the apocalyptic events foreseen by the ancient prophets unfold? Are the powerful forces now at work to create a global government, economic system, and religion as predicted in the Bible? Unlocking a great biblical mystery that has puzzled scholars for nearly two thousand years, The Babylon Code unearths answers to these momentous questions.

With this breathless introduction, The Babylon Code begins to sprint down a rabbit hole of opinion polls, conspiracy theories, and fantastic quotations all predicting the imminent end of the world as we know it, and this is just the first few pages of the introduction of the book.

The Babylon Code has extended end notes sourcing the quotes used, unfortunately many quotes are from emails and telephone calls between the authors and the sources making any of these quotes impossible to verify at the local library. This book also lists the Bible versions that they use: the King James Version (KJV), the New King James Version (NKJV), the English Standard Version (ESV), the New Revised Standard Version (NSRV), the New Living Translation (NLT), the New English Translation (NET), the Common English Bible (CEB), and The Living Bible (TLB). That’s eight different versions all to say the same thing. Why would an author use so many different bibles? Because with enough different bible versions you can get the bible to say what you want it to say, something quite difficult to do with a single version. 

Personally I use the NASB which is considered to be one of the most accurate word for word English translation of the Bible (sorry KJVO folks, but it’s true) I tend to recoil when numerous bible verses are used as reference material in a single work, such as Rick Warren’s opus sententiam The Purpose Driven Life where he uses 15 different bible versions. In The Babylon Code uses multiple bible versions, in part, to prop up its primary thesis found on page 13:

When this massive deluge subsided, mankind sought to rebuild civilization and developed a secret occult plan the apostle John described in Revelation 17:5 (KJV) as “Mystery, Babylon.” It’s a prophetic riddle that has mystified Bible scholars ever since Jesus’ beloved disciple penned those enigmatic words nearly two millennia ago. “Mystery, Babylon” was a secret system of knowledge that an ancient ruler named Nimrod tapped into with he built the Tower of Babel and ancient Babylon… Babylon was ruled by a secret society known as “Mystery, Babylon.” 

To be honest, John didn’t write about any of this in the Revelation of Jesus Christ nor did he mention Nimrod or any secret societies, but here is where the need for multiple verses comes in. Revelation 17:5 looks like this in the King James Bible:

And upon her forehead was a name written, Mystery, Babylon The Great, The Mother Of Harlots And Abominations Of The Earth

And in the NASB it is written like this:

and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

In the KJV it looks like the name of the mother of Harlots was “Mystery, Babylon the Great…”, while in the NASB her name was a mystery and she was  being called “Babylon the Great…” In another example of biblical version roulette, the authors use the NRSV to relate Jeremiah 33:3

Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.

I suspect that the authors used the NRSV translation of this verse because it gave it an air of mystery, whereas I prefer the NASB which does not give Jeremiah mystery but majesty:

Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.

I call the act of searching the different bible versions for a favorable translation of the verse you want to use “Cherry Picking”. The only time you should have to switch versions is when you are comparing versions.

In the course of explaining their hypothesis the authors of The Babylon Code use Hal Lindsey’s opus The Late Great Planet Earth as source material. This is the book that promised that the rapture would occur “Sometime before the end of 1988.” Personally I’d not use that particular source as a reference for anything because of Hal’s false prophesy because you never know what else might be tainted. I’d especially steer clear of anything Hal said or did after Hal’s post rapture book Amazing Grace published in 1995 where he professes an “I’m saved, so I can sin all I want” lifestyle, shows the depths of his false teaching.

McGuire and Anderson also delve into ancient aliens theories and glowingly quote Graham Hancock, author of Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization. I’ve read this book in the past and I found it interesting, but far more telling comes Hancocks recent entries on facebook:

Let me, while saying this, make my position clear regarding that monstrous entity that Christians, Muslims and Jews all call "God"...This entity, whether he is in some sense real or whether he is merely a projection of the imaginations of those who worship "Him" has been responsible down the ages for unbelievable amounts of horror and bloodshed --

If humanity is to progress, if we are to find ourselves again, if we are to remember that we are all sisters and brothers, if we are to recognize the spark of true divinity within ourselves, then now more than ever before it is essential that we get "god" out of the equation and leave far behind us the demiurge and his archons -- those evil angels envisaged in the gnostic cosmology as disguising themselves as men and mingling with us, driving us to all manner of crimes hostile to the nature of the soul.

This is militant atheism at its best, and Hancock could be held up as an example of how far out in the weeds you can go with this kind of thinking, But McGuire and Anderson use his research as proof of the Nephilim. Their writing on the Ancient Alien phenomenon would be so much more powerful if they held Hancock up as the example he is saying "Look how his hate for God and Christians has led to his writings that make people to believe in imaginary aliens"

Somehow the term Mystery Babylon evolves from a term taken out of context to the name of a secret system of knowledge, an occult based religious system, a secret code hidden in the bible, eventually to a multiethnic multicultural superpower. So no, this is not a work of eschatology by any means, as far as serious eschatology goes it’s very weak. Sometimes the weak jumps right off the page:

While Revelation 17 refers to “Mystery, Babylon,” Revelation 18 is focused on “Babylon the Great” (The Babylon Code, pg 223) 

Let’s look at the references the authors were hinting about without cherry picking. Both are from the NASB:

5 and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” (Revelation 17:5)

2 And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird. (Revelation 18:2)

Both chapters talk about “Babylon the Great”, why does the inclusion of the word mystery change the focus of the two chapters? It doesn’t. Chapter 17 gives clues to what city John’s vision was referring to when he said Babylon, and Chapter 18 talks about the fall and destruction of Babylon. Maybe it’s me, maybe I just don’t like the use of the term “Mystery Babylon” to be used for anything but the biblical mystery that is presented: which city is Babylon the Great?

A large part of this book deals with America. I didn’t know that the width of the Washington Monument is 666 inches, then again, does it matter? The prophesies in the bible are not about America, nor are they about Europe. The bible is about Israel, from Genesis 22:2 where Abraham takes his son to the future site of Jerusalem, to Revelation 21 where a new Jerusalem comes down from Heaven, it’s all about Israel.

There’s a discussion in The Babylon Code about where the Antichrist comes from, and the consensus is that he comes from the Roman Empire. But here’s one jaw dropping ‘gee-whiz’ bit of information that a lot of these end times authors seem to miss: Every empire described in Daniel, every single one of them, even if you’re an oddball like me that lumps Greece and Rome together and adds the Ottoman Empire as the fifth empire, they all contain Israel. There's no escaping the fact that the Bible is all about Israel and any mention of another country is peripheral and simply adds more proof to the global nature of God's Plan.

This book isn’t badly written, in fact it’s very readable and I enjoyed much of the writing style. If I have any complaint about the writing style it’s that this book comes at you like a Michael Bay movie; rapidly hitting you slam-bang-boom with quotes and suppositions and conspiracy theories sprayed at you like each page is a machine gun nest of youtube videos. 

Taken for what it is, The Babylon Code is an interesting read, however citations of phone calls and emails make many of the references impossible to research, I wish rather than putting in an end note when referring to a private email or conversation, the authors would simply have put that fact in the text. And quotes from proven false teachers take a lot of the power out of the message. 

Someone looking for a discussion of eschatology will find The Babylon Code is hype delivered at hyperspeed. Someone looking for good solid biblical hermeneutics and exegesis will starve on milk rather than digging into meat. However someone looking for a blistering recap of how this sin sick world is falling at an ever increasing rate will find this the book of their dreams. 

When I first heard about the book I was afraid that the authors were going to put words into the bible, and I'm pleasantly relieved that they didn't. I'm not going to reveal any spoilers by saying what the Babylon Code  they refer to actually is, but I will say that the authors should have no issue with Proverbs 30:5-6. 

I have no doubts that Paul McGuire loves Jesus and the world of God, I've seen his website and read the prayers he's published. And there's no doubt in my mind that we are in the end times and McGuire and Anderson do a very good job of pointing that out. However being in the end times we should be rejoicing, not panicking. We should be showing the courage that the Christians in Umpqua Community College showed and profess our love and faith in Christ Jesus and save some people, before it's too late.