01.49. The Angel Announcing the Fall of Babylon

The Angel announcing the Fall of Babylon.

"And another angel, a second, followed, saying, She is fallen! Babylon the great is fallen! She made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication!"-- Revelation 14:8. This angel, like the former, must symbolize a body of religious teachers. The former resulted in the spread of Christianity. This announces the fall of a corrupt hierarchy.

Babylon being regarded as a symbol of the Roman church, her fall must be understood to be her loss of power, as mistress of the kings of the earth; and synchronizes with her displacement from her position on the beast, as symbolized in Revelation 17:1-18. The epoch of her fall, and consequently of the flight of this angel, is that of the Reformation, when the corruptions of the Papal See were first exposed, and it was denounced as the Apocalyptic harlot. The argument for this application is given in the exposition of Revelation 18:1, which is a repetition of the symbol here given, p. 300.