The great ‘Babylon’ as it is called in Greek—‘Babel’—is brought to remembrance before God.1 The Lord is reminded of it, just as the Lord remembered Cornelius’ almsgiving.2 Just as He remembered His holy Covenants with Israel when Mary became pregnant with the Son of God,3 and just as the murderer on the cross asked Jesus to remember him when He came to His Kingdom.4 He is reminded of ‘Babylon’ by the souls under the altar’,5 the martyrs, and the ‘prayers of all the saints’ of all the ages on the ‘golden altar of incense.6 He has executed His final verdict, His judgments. One of the seven angels that had one of the seven ‘bowls’ is now going to give more details to John about ‘Babylon’. Who or what is ‘Babylon’? Of what is it a model? Where does it lie? What is the reason for this awesome judgment? It did indeed look as if God had forgotten His children, as if ‘Babylon’ had become all-powerful. Now John is given insight into the great principles that rule the history of the world. It is either ‘Babylon’ or ‘Jerusalem’. (Whereas Jerusalem-the-city-on-earth in Israel could ‘act’ like ‘Babylon’ as well, as we noted before.7) The judgment is now going to be shown in detail and it takes up chapters 17 and 18. John has shown us the ’great tribulation’ and the ‘wrath of God’ over the terrible persecutions of the saints by the ‘anti-Christ’—the leadership of the anti-God and anti-Christian end-time culture and civilisation; ‘wrath’ that expressed itself in the ‘trumpet’ and ‘bowl’ judgments.
The seventh ‘bowl’ announced: “It is done.”8 And when the seventh ‘bowl’ was poured out, ‘Babylon’ fell.9 All that now has to happen is to tell how the civilisation of rebellious mankind comes to an end and what the triumphal Coming of Christ and His Kingdom will be like. With His judgments and the establishment of a completely New World, with a new order of things under the leadership of the resurrected Christ and His resurrected righteous ones, and finally the ‘New Heavens’ and the ‘New Earth’ in chapters 19–22.
What is ‘Babylon’? It is both a political and a spiritual force. The angel will speak about the political force in verses 7–14. The spiritual force will be dealt with in verses 1–7 and 15–18. First of all, Babylon is a whore, the ‘mother of prostitutes’ and of ‘the abominations of the earth’.10 It is distinguished from the ‘beast’, but it nevertheless is also part of it, for it sits upon it and rides upon it.11 ‘Babylon’ sits on many waters, and those waters are ‘nations and multitudes’ and ‘peoples and languages’.12 It is also ‘the great city’, which has the kingship over the kings of the earth.13 Political power and spiritual power join hands. ‘Babylon the whore’ marries and mixes spiritual power with political power. Its most important characteristic is that it is a great whore, and that means that she is the antitype of the bride of the Lamb.14 John begins with the spiritual side of Babylon, and then he deals with her political side. Human actions and deeds are ‘driven’ by thought and feelings, by minds and hearts. The motor is our intelligence, which transforms thoughts into actions. The spiritual ‘source of inspiration’ comes first. The ‘idea’ is first; putting it into practice comes afterwards. A hymn says of the Lord: ‘Who devised the worlds.’ Indeed they were ‘devised’, thought of, beforehand, in eternity. After that ‘Heaven and earth’ were brought into being by ‘six days of Creation’. Someone once said: through six ‘dimension-hatches’ God realized them, ‘lowered them, let them down’, from His ‘Heavenly dimensions’ into our four earthly dimensions, our space-time continuum. Thus He created and formed and shaped his pre-conceived ideas into our categories of space and time, Genesis 1:1–31. Creation!
• Historical Babylon lay on the banks of the Euphrates River and it had an extensive system of canals.15 It considered itself invincible.
• The city was the ‘lover of pleasure’, lounging in its security. “Now, then, hear this, you sensual one, who dwells securely, who says in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me. I will not sit as a widow, nor know loss of children.’
• “But these two things will come on you suddenly in one day: loss of children and widowhood. They will come on you in full measure in spite of your many sorceries, in spite of the great power of your spells. “You felt secure in your wickedness and said, ‘No one sees me.’ Your wisdom and your knowledge, they have deluded you; for you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’ “But evil will come on you which you will not know how to charm away; and disaster will fall on you for which you cannot atone; and destruction about which you do not know will come on you suddenly.”16
• Whereas the ‘victors’ are seen at the ‘sea of glass like crystal’ before God’s throne,17 the ‘great whore’ is sitting ‘enthroned on many waters, nations, kings and peoples’.
Bible References:
1.Revelation 16:19 2.Acts 10:31 3.Luke 1:32, 54–55, 72 4.Luke 23:42 5.Revelation 6:9–11 6.Revelation 8:4 7.Revelation 11:8; 16:19b–20 8.Revelation 16:17 9.Revelation 16:19 10.Revelation 17:5 11.Revelation 17:3 12.Revelation 17:15 13.Revelation 17:18 14.Revelation 19:7–9 15.Psalm 137:1 16.Isaiah 47:8-11 17.Revelation 4:6; 15:2
