John has already been able in short, sharp strokes to paint the fall of Babylon, the judgment that is about to be meted out on the ‘whore’, ‘harlot’. She is the spiritual / religious forces of the ‘end time’, the apostate church, the end-time religion of unity.
This is a different angel—not one of the seven angels with the seven bowl judgments. No explanation is given of the fact that he has great authority, but he brings Another Angel from Revelation 10:1 very much to mind—that Angel which we identified as Christ Himself—the Angel of the Lord Who Himself is called Lord.
Babylon’, which appeared to have been built to last for centuries, is going to fall. The ‘beast’ in which it placed its confidence is inspired by the ‘father of all lies’ and ‘the murderer from the beginning’—Satan, John 8:44.
Babylon’s opulence, extravagance, wealth and its moral unrighteousness are crying out to Heaven, like the innocent blood of Abel cried out from the face of the earth, Genesis 4:10, Hebrews 10:4. It is at its core anti-social, devoid of any sympathy for fellow human beings and the fellow nations of this world.
The possibility that the ‘city of Babylon’ refers to a geographical location is looking less and less likely, though. Babylon’s spiritual principle, which indeed translates itself into actual cities, cultures and civilisations—but which is really a spiritual force—is coming increasingly to the fore.
Staying in Babylon means going down with Babylon. The reputation of the end-time ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ has now become so great, and its sins so heavy, that the Lord descends to convince Himself personally that everything being said about it by the martyrs of the ‘great tribulation’…
“Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”
Crocodile tears. Everyone has taken part and enjoyed the fun. Yet now the great settling of the accounts has come but no one reaches out to help the ‘woman’, the ‘whore’.
The Babylon market has collapsed all of a sudden. The economic prosperity for which Babylon stood as guarantor is over. There are no more outlets for the products the merchants have been selling very profitably for many years.
Whoever looks up Ezekiel 27 will discover an impressive enumeration of the products that were traded through the commercial city and seaport of Tyre. Merchandise was brought in from the whole world.
Here John describes a society where people have become merchandise. We do not need to look reproachfully at the ancient world in this respect, for there were still serfs in Russia in the nineteenth century, and more than a million African slaves in America.
The merchants wept at first because no one was buying their cargo anymore1. They are now weeping because they are afraid they will be dragged down in Babylon’s pains. As soon as something goes wrong somewhere, lots of people who were involved up to the hilt…
