Revelation 17

Revelation 17:1-18

THE FALL OF BABYLON Revelation 17:1 to Revelation 19:8ONCE more it devolves upon us to present an unattractive subject, namely, “Mystical Babylon.” Chapters 17 and 18 are also included in the inspired picture of the last days and ‘the judgments to come’. When Christ performed the miracle of changing water into wine, He illustrated a principle that will be found running through all Divine conduct, namely, that of keeping the best till the last.It would be a wearisome task indeed to listen to the sounding of these trumpets, to watch the unequal warfare of righteousness, to behold the dragon, the beast and the false prophet, to look upon the out-pouring of the seven vials, to study the character of “Mystical Babylon,” if with the preview of these things, one came to an end. But, as the traveler is repaid for crossing the valley, by the beauties of the mountain side, and the outlook from the mountain height, so the student of Revelation will quickly forget the darkness that envelopes the whole world, under the dragon’s reign, when lo, that dragon is cast down, his entire following overthrown once for all, and the Son of God is seated in the place of universal power.But, as one who studies these chapters will see, that day lies beyond the rise and fall of Babylon. I propose, therefore, four questions, touching the content of these chapters (Revelation 17:1 to Revelation 19:8).What is meant by Mystical Babylon? Will ancient Babylon be rebuilt? What will be the nature of Babylon’s fall? And what will be some of the effects of that fall?WHAT IS MEANT BY BABYLON? This question can best be answered by a study of the text and a comparison with other Scriptures.The first thing that impresses one is, the figure of the fallen woman.“And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto’ thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: “With whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. “So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns?” Every reader of the Book of Revelation must be impressed with the personnel of the great leaders in this coming conflict. On the one side, we have God—the Father, Christ—the Son, the Bride or True Church—incarnating the Spirit, angels Prophets, Apostles and saints; on the other hand we have the dragon, the antichrist, the false prophet, the fallen woman, and all evil spirits.It is a volume of contrasts because preparation for the final conflict is rapidly making. As the dragon stands over against God; as the antichrist opposes the true Christ; as the false prophet attempts to undo all the results of faithful Prophets, so this fallen woman is the antithesis of the Faithful Spouse.You will remember that, by comparing Scripture with Scripture, we found that bride to be nothing other than the true people—Church of God, who, in the process of time, is to be wedded to the Son. If that figure signified the Church, and illustrated all worship rendered in spirit and in truth, this fallen woman is an equally adequate expression of all false worship, wherever found and in whatever form. As long ago as Zachariah’s time, God’s Prophets were privileged a vision of this deceiver to come. She was not only pictured in the fifth chapter of that volume, seventh verse, following, as “a, woman that sitteth in the midst of the ephah”, but ere the Prophet concludes, he locates her in ((the land of Shinar”, or of Babylon.

If, years ago, one had asked me the meaning of this harlot figure, I should have answered, with a good degree of confidence, “the Papacy.” But, I am quite convinced that such an answer would have been incomplete, notwithstanding the eminence of certain scholars who have given it.False worship was born when Cain brought the fruits of the ground; but even he made an offering to the Lord. It remained for Nimrod, in the plains of Shinar, to erect a shrine that disregarded God altogether, and introduced a religion which sought to dethrone the Most High, and give His seat of authority to another.They called their endeavor, Babel or Babylon— confusion.

And there the woman of this text, or false worship, begins her history. From that point on, you will find God characterizing as harlotry, and whoring, inventions of men that rejected Him and worshipped at another shrine. See Psalms 106:39; Jeremiah 2:20; Jeremiah 3:2; Jeremiah 11:15; Jeremiah 13:27; Ezekiel 16:13-15; Ezekiel 20:29-30; Ezekiel 23:2-8; Hosea 4:18; Hosea 5:1-4. Every one of these passages is in perfect line with Revelation 17:1-5.If a fallen woman is Satan’s agent for the downfall and destruction of enticed men, so a false worship is the surest path to sorrow and even hell, for its patron souls. Every such a false worship, from Nimrod’s day, has consorted with the wicked world.Every such a worship has been pleased to receive support from the political state, or the scarlet colored beast, having seven heads and ten horns.Every such a worship has delighted to array itself in purple and scarlet, to bedeck its altars with gold, and adorn its subjects with precious stones and pearls.Every such a worship has feasted itself on the blood of the saints, and delighted to empty the veins of the martyrs of Jesus.In all of these things, Papacy has had her part! She has consorted with worldliness of every form.

The sale of indulgences has not been her exceptional behavior. She has ridden upon the back of every political power that she could bridle to her profit.

The scarlet-colored beasts of Italy, France, Spain, the South American Republics, many Isles of the sea, have had to carry her: even Europe, England and North America have contributed their millions toward her unholy support.She has arrayed herself in purple and scarlet, bedecked herself with gold and precious stones and pearls. And it is estimated that not less than fifty millions of martyrs have had to shed their blood to satiate her inhuman thirst.And yet, the woman of this text is not wholly accounted for by the Roman church. Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Mohammedanism, and every other false ism of the ages down to the Fetishism of the Dark Continent, and Modernism of civilized countries—all of them have contributed their share to the character of this mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And wherever you find a man, or a company of men;—an individual or an organization, that is attempting to dethrone God, to overturn His altars, and to end His worship, as in present-day university teaching, there you have a child of this strumpet of the centuries.I read once Count Tolstoi’s book entitled, “What is Art,” in which he quotes from an American volume, published in Chicago, by Ragner Red-beard. His subject is, “The Survival of the Fittest,” or “The Philosophy of Power.” And, Tolstoi says, “The substance of his volume is to the effect that to measure goodness by the false philosophy of the Hebrew Prophets and “weepful” Messiahs is madness. Right is not the offspring of doctrine, but of power.

All laws, commandments, or doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you, have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club, the gallows, and the sword. A man, truly free, is under no obligation to obey any injunction, human or Divine.

Obedience is the sign of the degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of a hero. Men should not be bound by the moral rules invented by their foes. The whole world is a slippery battlefield. Ideal justice demands that the defeated should be exploited, emasculated, and scorned. The free and brave may seize the world. And, therefore, there should be eternal war for life, for land, for love, for women, for power, and for gold. The earth and its treasures is “booty for the bold.”That was the boldest putting of this doctrine that we had seen in print to that time.

It far exceeds the late Senator Ingalls’ infamous declaration that political righteousness is an iridescent dream, and that the Ten Commandments have no place in politics. Such expressions are as common now as atheism and communism.That is the spirit that accounts for every false shrine ever erected in the world; for every rejection of God; for every repudiation of His authority; for all antagonism to His Holy Word. That is the spirit that has animated and increased the life and power of that false faith which is represented by the text of this night, under the figure of a fallen woman, whose fornications have corrupted the earth; whose drunkenness has been shared by all of her consorts; whose gay clothing has eloquently declared her evil purpose; and whose jeweled fingers have delighted and still delight to shed the blood of saints. Write upon her forehead, “Babylon.” Mark the meaning of the word, “confusion !” and remember where she was born, in the plains of Shinar, with Nimrod, the rebel, for her earthly father; and the dragon of the pit her spiritual ancestor, and I believe you have what is meant by the first verses of this 17th chapter of Revelation.WILL ANCIENT BABYLON BE REBUILT? To raise this question must strike many as strange, and may impress some as fanciful in the extreme. When, about thirty years ago, W. E. Blackstone, that great student of prophecy, suggested this to me, as the meaning of certain sentences in this seventeenth chapter, I confess it seemed then to savor of the fanciful, and I said to myself, “speculative!”But up to that time, I had given little thought to the subject, and so was not fitted to form a definite opinion. Even now, I prefer, rather, to set you studying the subject, than to assert, dogmatically, my own conclusions concerning it. There are three lines of argument that look toward a possible rebuilding of Babylon, so that the city to come will fill up the measure of what these chapters have to say concerning it.First, the argument from this Scripture.

If false worship be here referred to, it began its course at Babylon. The Nimrodism of that ancient city is in a very real sense the mother of all endeavors to dethrone God, defeat His Church, snatch the world away from His Son, and turn it over to Satan! And this Scripture declares that the beast, on which this woman is to sit, which is nothing else than the political power that shall be associated with this false worship, is to be located in “that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth”.The angel who talks with John, explains the seven heads on this wise, “The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth. “And, there are seven kings: five are fallen, and ‘one is, and the other is not yet come; * * “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition. “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast. “These have one mind, and shall give their power and strength unto the beast”, etc. At the time John wrote, there had been five great world empires, Babylon, Persia, Assyria, Greece, and Egypt. The sixth existed then, in the Roman Empire, and when it fell, it left no successor, since the sovereignty of the single man was at an end. But according to this prophecy, the seventh is yet to come, and when he comes, the antichrist will hold that office, and enjoy that distinction for a short period, with headquarters at Babylon, which shall then be worthy of the distinction, “that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth”.The next argument is from prophecies yet to be fulfilled. If you have Hitchcock’s “Analysis of the Bible,” look up the word Babylon, and see what is prophesied as to the greatness of this city. It will raise a question as to whether it has ever attained, as yet, to the fullness of Divine purpose; and, when you study the prophecies of its destruction, you will be impressed with the fact that they have never been perfectly fulfilled, and a day of judgment must yet await it. Read the 137th Psalm: in Isaiah 13:19-21 it is said, “Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. “It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation: neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there. “But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. “And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces”. Jeremiah also says, “Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, WITHOUT AN ”These prophecies have never been fulfilled as yet. Babylon has had her great adversities, her earnests of judgment to come; but she has never been totally depopulated. Today there are more than ten thousand inhabitants there. The assurance that she is to have another and complete fall is found in Isaiah 13:6, where her final judgment is set at the “day of the Lord”, or at the time of the Second Coming.But to me, the most effective argument, touching Babylon’s being rebuilt, has to do with the city’s location and the spirit of our times. These are times when a great city is solely a question of commercial advantages. Seventy-five years ago the southwest shore of Lake Michigan was a mud hole; today, in many respects, it is the most mighty metropolis of America.

The explanation is easy. Chicago’s location accommodates commercial interests.It has been urged, recently, that no city in the world could compete with Babylon in this respect.

The earth does not know a more fertile soil than that which sweeps away from this center. The Euphrates is one of the great waterways of the earth, leading out to oceans that lave every shore.W. P. Andrew, many years ago, wrote a volume on “The Euphrates Valley Route to India,” in which he declared that commercially, historically, and politically, “the Euphrates valley route” must yet affect the commerce and even the destinies of our race, and become the “high-way of the commercial world.” Other authors have urged the same. Sir Charles Napier declared that civilization would yet return and find its headquarters “at Babylon, a revived Empire.”Seiss says, touching its becoming the first city of the world, “There is no spot on earth so suited to the purpose. * * There all the great mercantile organizations could unite in one common center.” And there is a disposition on the part of capital to organize, more and more, and to centralize and incorporate. Recent events make it seem possible that competitor may yet be an obsolete term, and a single corporation may control the markets and determine the prices of every material product.

A few more Rothchilds, Rockefellers, and Morgans and we will be ready for the beast to appear; and take his place, and begin his reign over the marts of the earth—a reign in which all those who will not receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads, be they small or great, rich or poor, free or bond, will not be privileged to buy or sell.There are those who, studying these conditions from a purely socialistic standpoint, reach the conclusion just announced, and write it out. “Caesar’s Column” is such a prophecy fifty years old.The meaning of these modern movements is more suggestive still, because the Scriptures have anticipated them and told us what would be the end. Somewhere on the earth, there will necessarily be a chief commercial center which will have outstripped all other contestants, as Chicago has outrun the meanest Illinois village.

Sometime, in the not distant future, corporate wealth with its centralizing tendency will have resolved itself into a single organization. That commercial organization and that city will dwell together. Should we be surprised to find the city located in the Euphrates valley, in Babylon, rebuilt; with the antichrist on the throne; with commerce for its animating spirit; and modernism for its religion?Whatever may be the meaning of this Babylon, the prophecy touching her fall is full and clear, and I invite your attention to two other questions.WHAT WILL BE THE NATURE OF HER FALL? First of all, it will be sudden and unlooked for.The description of her greatness is scarcely finished, when lo, John “saw another angel come down from Heaven, * * And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird”.When God gets ready, it doesn’t take Him long to whelm the mightiest city. One day in 1871, Chicago was a prosperous metropolis, with every promise of permanence; the next morning it was in ashes, and her people in sackcloth. So with San Pierre and San Francisco—Sodom repeated!It will be complete and irremediable.“Her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord Gad who judgeth her”. The prosperity of a city is no sign of its security. If its commerce countenances sin, and its mortar is laid in innocent blood, no matter how deep they dig to place its foundations, it cannot stand.Henry Ward Beecher, some sixty years ago, speaking of the communistic movement in Paris, said, “There are hundreds that sit before me who have made their pilgrimage thither, who have dwelt in its palaces, who have strolled through its galleries with delight, who have admired its cleanliness, and who have marveled at the abundance of its resources for satisfying the rarest appetites and the most exquisite taste. Here was gayety that beat with dancing foot the hours almost around the year. Was there ever any place on earth so fashioned to make men gay, and genial, and happy, as Paris? Its government, its order, art, its science, its beauty—the imagination teems with these elements which belonged to it; and now it is soaked with blood. Many of its fairest structures are smouldering in ashes.

Thousands and tens of thousands of festering corpses lie along its streets. Multitudes of its people are in exile.

More of them are dead; and many others wish they were dead. The scenes of the hideous French Revolution are enacted again.”But Paris recovered its equinimity. When Babylon goes down in “death, and mourning, and famine”, and “fire”, she will go, never to rise again, never to know “another inhabitant”.That fall will mark the beginning of the end. In time, it corresponds with the opening of the sixth vial—the visitation of the sixth plague. You remember that when the sixth angel poured out his vial, the very waters in the great Euphrates dried up. A commentator says, “Terrible mortality and famine would be the natural and inevitable result of the failure of that river to a city built upon it, and so dependent on its waters.

All her shipping would thus be disabled. All the fertility of her gardens and surrounding country would be turned to dust and barrenness.

The exposed and stagnant filth of so great a river, together with the decaying vegetation for the space of nearly 2,000 miles, would be a source of deadly pestilence, which no skill or power of man could abate or stay. With such a plague over all the place, all helpers would fear to approach; their markets would be unsupplied, their communication with the rest of the world (already so largely emptied and desolated by the march of the kings with their armies to the scene of battle against the Lamb) would be without avail. And thus black death and helpless want would stalk through every street, and highway, and lane, and alley of the whole city, and fill all the region round about with unexampled suffering, mourning, and horror.”WHAT WILL BE THE EFFECT OF HER FALL? Three things. It will result in consternation to many. That day the antichrist will meet his defeat, or at least see the beginning of his end. We are told also that“the kings of the earth * * shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, “Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come. “And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more: “And saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! “For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, “And cried * *, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate”. The refrain of her consorts shall be “in one hour”! The very suddenness of it will smite them all with a consternation equal, at least, to the sorrows for which they alike are set.It will illustrate God’s faithfulness in judgment.There are men who call evil good, and good evil, and expect to escape the confusion that God has promised to such philosophers. This day will undo their teaching, and visit upon them the penalty of their conduct.But last, and best of all, will be the effect of starting the hallelujahs of the holy. For it was “after these things”, John says, “I heard a great voice of much people in Heaven, saying, Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: “For true and righteous are His judgments: for He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand. “And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. “And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down and worshipped God that sat on the throne, saying, Amen; Alleluia. “And a voice came out of the throne, saying, Praise our God, all ye His servants, and ye that fear Him, both small and great. “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth. “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to Him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and His Wife hath made herself ready” (Revelation 19:1-7). Frederick W. Faber spake the truth when he said, “True worship is something more than either the fear of God, or the love of Him; it is delight in Him.” And I tell you that when Christ His Son, shall again appear on earth and shall take into His own hands the reins of power, and overthrowing iniquity, shall establish His sovereignty “from sea even to sea, and from the river even unto the ends of the earth”, then, those who love Him will prove their delight by praises that will wake the whole earth, and resound through the remotest Heavens.I think I know what Thomas Kelly meant when he wrote, “Hark! ten thousand harps and voices Sound the note of praise above; Jesus reigns, and Heaven rejoices; Jesus reigns, the God of love; See, He sits on yonder throne; Jesus rules the world alone. “Jesus, hail! whose glory brightens All above, and gives it worth: Lord of life, Thy smile enlightens, Cheers, and charms Thy saints on earth: When we think of love like Thine, Lord, we own it love Divine. “King of glory, reign forever; Thine an everlasting crown; Nothing from Thy love shall sever Those whom Thou hast made Thine own; Happy objects of Thy grace, Destined to behold Thy face. “Saviour hasten Thine Appearing; Bring, O bring the glorious day, When the awful summons hearing, Heaven and earth shall pass away: Then, with golden harps we’ll sing, ‘Glory, glory to our King.’”