THE BELIEF that Babylon the Great of Revelation 17 is Rome, either as a revived Roman Empire or as the Roman Catholic Church, is popular among prophecy students.

There are some good arguments for this identification, and others that point in other directions. The identity of Mystery Babylon hasn’t been settled for 2,000 years and we don’t try to do it here.

However, we do look at some interesting spiritual parallels between Rome’s origin story and the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk, the kingdom responsible for the Tower of Babel. The connection is the deity known as Inanna, Ishtar, Astarte, Aphrodite, Venus, and Queen of Heaven, who we believe is the woman who rides the Beast—and that’s why we believe the ten kings of Revelation 17 are supernatural, not human political rulers.