Author believes he's identified city of Antichrist

It's a question which has pitted Christians against each other for centuries. Members of different denominations of believers have traded accusations of fellow Christians being members of a "secret" occult religion based on pagan rites which ultimately serves the rise of the Antichrist. Even as forces opposed to Christ and his church gain power, believers continue to battle against each other.

But what if this division in the Christian world is based on a lie? What’s more, what if the real religion and city of the Antichrist are in plain sight?

Joel Richardson, New York Times bestselling author and biblical teacher, explained the identity of importance of "Mystery Babylon," in a recent interview on Carl Gallups's "Freedom Friday."

Richardson believes he has solved the enigma surrounding the city of evil which will arise in the last days and host an empire which will persecute believers. However, to solve this mystery, Richardson needed to debunk some of the most widespread fallacies which exist among Christians.

Chief among them is "The Nimrod Myth," one of the most dangerous concepts Richardson debunks in his new book "Mystery Babylon." Supposedly, this myth holds Nimrod founded the mystery religion which will serve the Antichrist in the End Times. But according to Richardson, it’s all a lie.

"These traditions concerning Nimrod – if you read any number of books that deal with this topic, they have all these stories concerning Nimrod," he explained. "About how Nimrod married Semiramis, this woman from the Middle East, and they started this religion, and then she killed him and he was reincarnated as Tammuz – just this incredible detailed story. … But all of these stories – none of them are found the Bible.

"All of them come from a series of different traditions which cannot be traced any older than about the first century. Most of them all Talmudic stories. And the problem with that is that if you go to the different stories about Nimrod in the Talmud, they are incredible contradictory. In some of the stories, Nimrod is a good guy, in some of them he's a bad guy. When you go to the actual history, then you find out that Semiramis, this woman he was supposedly married to, she lived well over 1,200 years after he was alive. They didn't even live in the same millennium!

"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]."

As a result, Richardson contends the theories about "Mystery Babylon" being rooted in a secret religion or the "Illuminati" are demonstrably untrue. Theories about the Vatican being behind the Antichrist are similarly rooted in deception, or even, as Richardson argues, madness.

"The same thing with the Roman Catholic Church, if you read the work of Alexander Hislop, a Scottish minister who wrote in the late 1800s," said Richardson. "He wrote 'The Two Babylons.' The entire foundation for his book, again, is The Nimrod Myth. But then he takes it about 10 steps further and he claims the Roman Catholic Church today, and not just the Roman Catholic Church but Eastern Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, really any number of any liturgically base or traditional denominations; he says their whole foundation is in Babylon, is in Nimrod's ancient religion.

"Many, many Protestants have latched onto this, but there's no historical basis for it whatsoever. But to make matters worse, Alexander Hislop, I'd actually go so far as to say that a careful analysis of his work probably shows he was suffering from some type of mental psychosis, that he probably had a mental illness."

One of the greatest mysteries in Scripture – solved at last! Discover the terrifying truth behind the shadowy identity of one of the greatest horrors of the end times. New York Times bestselling author Joel Richardson reveals the secret of , "Mystery Babylon" Available now in the WND Superstore.

Richardson compared Hislop to John Nash, the mathematician whose life was dramatized in the film "A Beautiful Mind" and whose mental problems led him to find nonexistent secret codes and messages in magazine and newspaper articles.

"He actually says that the very cross itself is thoroughly pagan, that no Christian should have any association with the symbol of the cross," Richardson says of Hislop. "He says that every single symbol or liturgy that you can find or imagine in the Catholic Church is all thoroughly pagan. And when you start looking at how did he come to these conclusions, this crazy stuff, he says polka dots are completely pagan, circles are completely pagan, crosses are pagan, on and on it goes. And it's all based on these 'connections' he finds in these ancient pictorial sourcebooks from the 1700s or whatever or a similarity in some name, and it ends up being craziness. This is material that needs to be rejected by careful students of the Scriptures and history, and we need to get back to the Bible and what the Scriptures say."

Richardson says the Bible presents a clear image of "Mystery Babylon."

"My position is that Mystery Babylon is an end-time reality, it's an end-time entity, it's an end-time city," he explained. "And biblically speaking, Babylon represents, if you will, the spiritual stronghold of Satan in the Earth at any given time. So all the way back to Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon – that is the prototype, that is the basis for the end times Babylon.

"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?... 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."

Richardson claims Mecca is at the center of a worldwide system of idolatry and blasphemy, something unholy in its own right.

"The city of Mecca, quite simply, is the greatest city of idolatry that mankind has yet to produce," he said. "Every day, 1.62 billion people, the world's second largest religion after Christianity as a whole, bow five times towards that city and pray towards that great pagan idol called the Kaaba. … There's much historical evidence that this was essentially a Middle Eastern Hindu shrine. And it was dedicated originally to Shiva, the God of Destruction."

Richardson also notes Saudi money serves as a corrupting force in Washington among both parties.

"This is the greatest single financially corrupting force in Washington," he said. "There is not a single lobby, there is nothing that compares to the corrupting power of the Saudis in Washington. Every one of them had received hundreds of millions of dollars directly from the Saudi royal family."

And with this vast network of spiritual and financial power, it is Saudi Arabia that is behind the spread of radical, violent and dangerous Islamic extremism all over the world.

"You name it, it's all funded and paid for by the Saudis," said Richardson. "Saudi Arabia is the financial source and the spiritual source of the greatest Antichrist religion that mankind has ever produced."

One of the greatest mysteries in Scripture – solved at last! Discover the terrifying truth behind the shadowy identity of one of the greatest horrors of the end times. New York Times bestselling author Joel Richardson reveals the secret of "Mystery Babylon." Available now in the WND Superstore.