Originally Posted by Church44
Originally Posted by SovereignGrace
So, again, is God a blasphemer for calling Israel a harlot?

Absolutely Not! But deceiving people into believing that God's Holy City, although flawed as she may be, is the Great Whore of Babylon is most definitely blasphemy!

There is a big difference between a woman who has sex with other men, and a woman who purposefully deceives and tricks other women into having sex with other men. Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16 was taken in and raised by God, but eventually gave into temptation and fornicated with other men (false gods, etc.). She did not do this on her own, but was tricked by that great whore, the whore of Babylon!

Just as Jerusalem is the Holy City of God, Babylon is the unholy city of Satan! As with everything else, the devil, in his fruitless attempt to become God, mimics God in every way. Spiritually Satan, that great serpent, has taken to himself a woman (Babylon), just as God took Jerusalem in Ezekiel 16:8 and thou becamest mine!

But Jerusalem grew up and when she became of age, and thy renown went forth among the heathen, the heathen nations came in unto her. That great whore of Babylon wanted only to pollute God's Holy City and so in her ignorance and youth, Jerusalem gave into the temptation and sinned.

Obviously God was mad at Jerusalem for her fornication and punished her because of it, but He still loved her and remembered His covenant with her. He forgave her! Jerusalem is still and will always be the City of God, and Babylon is still and always will be that great whore who rides the unholy beast and fornicates with the kings of the Earth!

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me, saying, “Come here, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.” And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness; and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, full of blasphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was clothed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality, and on her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. When I saw her, I wondered greatly. And the angel said to me, “Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns.[Revelation 17:1-7]

Compare that to this:

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, and say, ‘If we had been living in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partners with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves, that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the guilt of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how will you escape the sentence of hell? “Therefore, behold, I am sending you prophets and wise men and scribes; some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city, so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.[Matthew 23:29-36]

They murdered Christ, as they were directly involved in His crucifixion. He foretold they would kill and crucify some of the prophets and wise men He would send them. They were blood thirsty ppl. The holy city Jerusalem, Jesus called them in it a brood of vipers.

Here is why Jerusalem is the harlot in Revelation 17. The temple was there, and that was the place ppl were to come to worship Him. Yet, they were doing anything but that. They had even turned the office of the high priest into a political office. They were committing spiritual fornication by not worshipping God, and God, in many places, called them harlots for doing so. When Pilate said, “Behold, you King!”, they said, “Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him! We have no king but Caesar.” Their rejection of Christ as their Messiah was the final nail in their coffin.

They Lord’s bride came down from God out of heaven, not the Jerusalem on terra firma. You are conflating the two. The Lord’s bride is the Jerusalem from above, not the Jerusalem in Israel. I was wrong!

Last edited by SovereignGrace; Tue Jul 22, 2025 2:45 PM.
“The foundation of knowledge is God’s revelation.” Dr. Greg Bahnsen

“In the New Testament the Lord Jesus Christ appears in order to fulfill the Old Testament hope of the Messiah. He presents himself as the king who has come to establish his kingdom in anticipation of his universal rule.” Dr. Kenneth Gentry

“Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.” William Penn