W.A.S.P.s 2009 video "Babylon's Burning"

The imagery in this recent music video from the heavy metal rock band W.A.S.P. -- "Babylon's Burning" -- includes scenes of Saddam Hussein and the Iraq War, interposed with scenes of vicious dictators of recent history, including Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Chairman Mao and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, suggesting (correctly) that the beast of John's book of the Revelation is satanic power embodied in a super-evil, blood-thirsty tyrant bent on world domination through the power of a totalitarian-militaristic secular government.

"Babylon's Burning" here then is a specific reference to the Mystery Babylon of Revelation chapters 17 and 18, which "in one day (is) burned up with fire" (Rev. 18:8) by the beast with seven heads and ten horns, a visual metaphor for "seven kings, five who have fallen, one who is (at the time of John's writing), and another who has not yet come", (Rev. 17:10), a clear reference to the caesars of ancient Rome.

As John writes, "the beast is himself also an eighth (caesar), like the seven (before him), and the ten horns are ten kings who have not yet attained a kingdom, but will receive authority as kings with the beast (for a little while), and they give their power and authority to the beast", (Rev 17:10-12). This all, of course, happens in the "end times", and the "Babylon" that burns is "the great city that reigns over the kings of the earth" (Rev. 17:18). And she dominates the rest of the world through her vast and insatiable consumeristic wealth, making "all who had ships at sea rich by her wealth" (18:19) by buying their cargoes of every kind of commodity.

But before John ever wrote of Mystery Babylon -- an unknown dominant and wealthy city/nation of the future -- burning in torment, Jeremiah had written of literal Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans, whose cities would burn, and calamity strike until she became "a perpetual desolation" (Jer. 51:62).

And so the video, while specifically addressing a future Babylon, becomes a harbinger of the first Babylon and its destruction by fire, as a judgment upon the evil it has done, for "Babylon is to fall for the slain of Israel" (Jer. 51:49).



NOTE: My embed of W.A.S.P.s video is in no way an endorsement of their music or stage act. My personal opinion is that they got the prophetic figurative interpretations right because they are themselves the contemporary musical prophets of the very beast they sing about.

Allawi Warns of New Civil War on Iraq’s Deadliest Day

154 Killed, 620 Wounded in Attacks Across Nation
FROM ANTIWAR.com, by Jason Ditz, May 10, 2010

In what has come to be by far the deadliest single day of attacks so far in 2010, at least 154 Iraqis were killed and 620 wounded. Many of the attacks centered around the city of Hillah.
At a Hillah textile factory, a pair of suicide car bombers attacked the entrance during a shift change, killing 35 and wounding 136. As medics and relatives rushed to the scene, another suicide bomber hit, adding to the toll. Other attacks hit across the nation, including coordinated attacks against checkpoints in Baghdad.

The attacks were the latest and largest in a growing string of high level attacks across Iraq since the March 7 election, which led to a narrow plurality for Ayad Allawi’s Iraqiya, and then to a series of arrests and disqualifications of Iraqiya members.

The election squabble is still far from over, but Allawi seems destined to return to the opposition as the second and third place finishers, both Shi’ite religious blocs, have merged into a dominant power.

Allawi today warned that sectarian tensions are on the rise, and that Iraq could soon face a new civil war. Iraqiya was a secular bloc, but relied mostly on Sunni voters for its narrow victory, setting the stage for yet another battle between Sunnis and Shi’ites.

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr revives Mahdi Army militia

An Associated Press article published today at the Washington Post online site reports the regrouping of a once-feared Shiite militia, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, to ensure U.S. forces stick to a Dec. 31, 2011 deadline to withdraw from Iraq -- threatening attacks on American troops if they stay past the date.

Al-Sadr disbanded the militia in 2008, after it had been crippled by defections and a U.S.-Iraqi crackdown. Sunnis fear the revived force will turn its firepower against their community in vengeance for recent bombings which targeted Shiites, a move that could revive the fierce sectarian bloodshed that nearly tore the nation apart in 2006 and 2007.

The prophet Jeremiah saw violence in the Iraqi cities, which forces the occupiers to abandon the nation --

"I shall set fire to his cities, and it will devour all his environs... The
broad wall of Babylon will be completely razed, and her high gates will be set
on fire; so the peoples will toil for nothing, and the nations become exhausted
(because of the) fire... 'We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed;
forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached
to heaven and towers up to the very skies," (Jer. 50:32; 51:58; 51:9).

Kurdish president Massoud Barzani: a strongly unified Iraq is "bird dreams and wishes"

An article by Sam Dagher published May 2, 2010 in the New York Times online site relates that, emboldened by his party's electoral success, Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan region, is intensifying his demands for greater sovereignty and control of oil.

His demands for a federalist approach to governing Iraq -- a weakened national government and stronger regional control -- have revived fears that his Iraqi Kurdistan region may eventually try to secede.

The March 7 elections solidified Mr. Barzani's position as the dominant voice in Kurdish politics, with his Kurdistan Democratic Party winning 29 of the Kurds' 57 seats in parliament.

Evidence of Kurdish assertiveness came last week when the Kurdistan Regional Parliament quietly created a new committee tasked with reclaiming "historic Kurdish land" -- meaning contested areas like Kirkuk and hot spots in Nineveh Province -- under the regional government's de facto control but nominally still attached to the central government.

During a recent interview, Mr. Barzani stressed that he believed that the only hope left for stability in Iraq was in dividing it into federations, preferably three: Kurds in the north, Sunni Arabs in the middle and west and Shiites in the south. He likened talk of a strongly unified Iraq to "bird dreams and wishes."

With no clear winner emerging in the Iraq national elections of March 7th, the Sunnis and Shiites will need to look to the Kurds to form a majority government. But Mr. Barzani said he was determined to extract upfront commitments for any prospective coalition partners in Baghdad on potentially explosive issues like the settlement of disputed internal borders, including those of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk, and the sharing of oil revenues.

One of the crucial Kurdish demands will be a pledge from the next prime minister to carry out Article 140 of the Constitution, a hotly contested passage that outlines the steps toward a referendum on the fate of the disputed northern territories, including Kirkuk.

"If Article 140 is not implemented, then this will mean the demise of the Constitution and Iraq itself," Mr. Barzani warned. But a senior American diplomat in Baghdad, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was hesitant to support such a vote: "The Balkans, when they tried an up or down referendum, it led to bloodshed."

And so Jeremiah's prophecy of the clash between the Medes and the Chaldeans, the Kurds and the Iraqis, seems to be imminent.