What did Les identify as the modern-day residue of ancient Babylon?
Today, banking is the residue of the ancient kingdom of Babylon that remains part of everyday existence. The practice of interest and usury was established on a large scale in Babylon, and that financial system continues to shape modern life.
Les teaches that the residue of the ancient kingdom of Babylon that is part and parcel of our everyday existence in this very year is banking. He explains that the whole idea of interest and usury really began on that kind of scale in Babylon. He then notes that the Jew embraced that and took it back. The transcript contrasts this with the relatively few Jews who took up Cyrus's offer to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple—42,360—around 535 or 536 B.C., after Nebuchadnezzar came in 606 B.C. and seventy years later they were permitted to return.