New York Times bestselling author Joel Richardson identified the location of what the book of Revelation in the Bible refers to as “Mystery Babylon,” the place where the Anti-Christ would come from—and it’s not what most people believe it to be.
Richardson, an internationally recognized teacher who travels to different places to tell people about the gospel, living with biblical hope, Jesus’ return and preparing the church for the coming challenges, debunked certain long-standing beliefs about the biblical city of the Anti-Christ.
Speaking in an interview with Carl Gallups on Freedom Friday, Richardson said one of the most popular theories about the city of the Anti-Christ—that Nimrod established the mystery religion that the Anti-Christ would espouse—is false.
Calling it “The Nimrod Myth,” Richardson gave several explanations as to why the theory cannot be true. He said the stories stem from “different traditions which cannot be traced any older than about the first century.” They were all based on the Talmud, and some of them are contradictory, he explained.
Additionally, Semiramis, whom Nimrod supposedly married, historically existed about 1,200 years after Nimrod.
“And so this whole story that Christians have just latched onto believing that it’s essentially Bible truth, there’s no historical or biblical basis for it. And this is a problem because this whole story, this Nimrod myth, really forms the very foundation [of a lot of beliefs about the identity of Mystery Babylon],” he said, according to WND.
Richardson also contradicted stories saying the Anti-Christ would emerge out of the Vatican or the secret religion “illuminati.” These theories were “madness” and based on deception. He said such stories, while widely believed by Protestants, “have no historical basis.”
Scottish minister Alexander Hislop, who wrote ‘The Two Babylons’ in the 1800s, popularized the idea that the Anti-Christ would come from the Roman Catholic Church. However, Richardson believed Hislop could have been suffering from a form of mental illness, much like that of John Nash, that made him see secret codes from almost everything.
“My position is that Mystery Babylon is an end-time reality, it’s an end-time entity, it’s an end-time city,” he said. “And biblically speaking, Babylon represents, if you will, the spiritual stronghold of Satan in the Earth at any given time.”
So what is the present-day location of what the Bible calls “Mystery Babylon”?
Richardson believes it’s the city of Mecca in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
“Well in the last days, the question is, what is the reigning beast empire? We’ve got seven historical, Satanic empires? What is the empire of our day, where Satan’s stronghold is over the Earth?” he said. “The answer is that it’s the Islamic empire. Islam is the last beast empire.”
“The system of the Antichrist, the religion of the Antichrist is Islam. And so if we look to the spiritual and financial capital of the Islamic world, it’s the city of Mecca and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he explained.
He also claimed Saudi is behind the spread of radical Islam extremism in the world. Additionally, he said money from the Saudi royal family is “the greatest single financially corrupting force in Washington,” making it the spiritual and financial source of the Anti-Christ religion.
Richardson discusses the topic in detail in his latest book, ‘Mystery Babylon.’
Richardson is a recognized expert in biblical prophecy and affairs concerning Islam and the Middle East. Many years before an Islamic caliphate was reestablished in Syria and Iraq, he had warned that it would happen. A few years ago, he predicted that the Anti-Christ would be a Muslim.
“As radical Muslims continue to murder, kidnap, rape, behead, crucify and slaughter their way across the Middle East, now it the time for the Church to wake up and diligently study the Scriptures to discern if all of these events indeed provide us with a genuine harbinger of the coming Antichrist and the soon coming return of Jesus,” he said.
