• Why Must Christians Keep Separate from the World?
    The Watchtower—1980 | June 15

    • OF WHAT THE WORLD CONSISTS

      Satan has organized this world into various parts or divisions. One of the foremost of these is Babylon the Great, the world empire of false religion, described at Revelation 17:3-6 as “the mother of the harlots and of the disgusting things of the earth.” She is said to be drunk with the blood of the holy ones, the witnesses of Jesus.

      Also a very prominent part of Satan’s world are the political kingdoms of the earth, described by the apostle John as a beast that came up out of the sea, having seven heads and 10 horns. (Rev. 13:1) That these kingdoms are part of Satan’s world is seen by the fact that he was able to offer them to Jesus Christ if Jesus would do an act of worship to Satan.​—Matt. 4:8, 9.

      Satan also controls, as part of his world, a ruthlessly greedy and oppressive commercial system, referred to, at Revelation 18:11, as “traveling merchants.” This exploits the common people and endeavors to keep them in slavery, in an economic bondage, even as Babylon the Great tries to keep people in religious bondage and the governments of this world endeavor to keep people in political bondage.

      Satan’s world is also corrupted by all manner of immoral practices, even as the apostle John indicates at 1 John 2:15, 16: “Do not be loving either the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him; because everything in the world​—the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the showy display of one’s means of life—​does not originate with the Father, but originates with the world.”