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Grace & Peace: Revelation 104
Douglas Wilson on July 19, 2018
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Grace & Peace: Revelation 103

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, 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: The merchandise of gold, and silver, And precious stones, and of pearls, And fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, And all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, And all manner vessels of most precious wood, And of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odours, And ointments, and frankincense, And wine, and oil, And fine flour, and wheat, And beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, And slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, And all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, And thou shalt find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, Shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, Weeping and wailing, 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 When they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, And cried, weeping and wailing, saying, 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. Rejoice over her, thou heaven, And ye holy apostles and prophets; For God hath avenged you on her. And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; And no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; And the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee; And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; And the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: For thy merchants were the great men of the earth; For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, And of all that were slain upon the earth” (Rev. 18:9–24).

This passage from Revelation 18 consists largely of lists or inventories of luxury items, and so we will take a larger section of text all at once. The form of this lament or dirge is taken from Ezekiel 27-28, where the prophet is offering up a lamentation for the great merchant city of Tyre. Jerusalem, labeled here as Babylon, has become essentially pagan in her outlook and is therefore going to receive a fitting response from God.

Jesus, prophesying the destruction of Jerusalem and the surrounding nation, compares what was going to happen to them in the day of judgment to what will happen to Tyre, and Tyre comes out ahead. “But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you” (Matt. 11:22).

The list of items in vv. 12-13 reads like a luxury catalog—cinnamon and slaves, marble and scarlet. The fact that the “souls of men” brings up the tail end shows the dehumanizing effect of all such ostentatious living.

The great image here is that this Babylon will be thrown into the ocean like a millstone, and will disappear suddenly and rapidly. A similar image can be found in Jeremiah.

“And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates: And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah” (Jer. 51:63–64).

And here we should once again remember the prophetic words of Christ about what would happen to Jerusalem within one generation. The withered fig tree, remember, was a type of fruitless Israel, and a sign of pending judgment.

“And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots. And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursedst is withered away. And Jesus answering saith unto them, Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith” (Mark 11:20–23).

The mountain He was talking about was the mountain He was standing on, and that was yet another image of the looming judgment.

Jerusalem was not the greatest trading center in the world, but it was a rich city. What is necessary is for the fall of the city to be a great blow to the merchants and promoters, and that certainly happened.

Two other points can be made that help cement the identification of Jerusalem as Babylon headed for the depths.

“Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; For God hath avenged you on her . .  . “And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth” (Rev. 18:20, 24).

This was a city that was guilty of the blood of saints, and prophets and apostles. Sounds like Jerusalem. Jesus had mentioned the blood of Abel and the blood of Zacharias, but it now included the blood of Jesus Himself, and the blood of Stephen and James and numerous others.

“That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar” (Matthew 23:35).

And the second thing is that it says in v. 20 that God is rising up to take vengeance for all of it, and this again sounds like Jerusalem.

“For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled” (Luke 21:22).

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 102

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, That ye be not partakers of her sins, And that ye receive not of her plagues. For her sins have reached unto heaven, And God hath remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as she rewarded you, And double unto her double according to her works: In the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, So much torment and sorrow give her: For she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: For strong is the Lord God who judgeth her” (Rev. 18:4–8).

Another voice speaks from Heaven, and summons all of God’s people to “come out from her.” This is yet another indication that the great harlot is the old and fading Judaic system. As the Judaic system it had served its purpose, and because of the great unfaithfulness and corruption that had grown up among the leadership of the Jews, God was about to visit a great judgment upon her. And, as follows God’s pattern, He calls his faithful ones away from the catastrophe. He did this with Noah, He did it with Lot, and Jesus told His followers when they were supposed to head for the tall grass. “And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh” (Luke 21:20). Then it will be time to flee to the mountains (v. 21). Jesus even goes so far as to say that the demolition of Jerusalem will be the culmination of all things. “For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled” (v. 22).

To remain is to partake of her sins, which means that such ones would also partake of the judgment.

The cry to come out of Babylon was common in the Old Testament, and they are worth quoting in a cluster.

“Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, With a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, Utter it even to the end of the earth; Say ye, The Lordhath redeemed his servant Jacob” (Is. 48:20). “Remove out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans, And be as the he goats before the flocks” (Jer. 50:8). “Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul: Be not cut off in her iniquity; For this is the time of the Lord’s vengeance; He will render unto her a recompence” (Jer. 51:60). “Deliver thyself, O Zion, that dwellest with the daughter of Babylon” (Zech. 2:7). “Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; Go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.” (Isaiah 52:11).

In short, when the visitation of God finally falls upon apostate Israel, that “Babylon” will not be a good place to be. We want to go out of that city, just as Jesus was taken out of it, and the reproach we will bear will be only temporary. “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb. 13:13–14).

This terrible shakedown of Jerusalem is an indication to us that we are receiving an unshakeable kingdom, and so we should be encouraged.

“See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire.” (Heb. 12:25–29).

The sins of Jerusalem had mounted up to Heaven, just as the bricks of Babel had sought to rise to Heaven. This ties Jerusalem in with the doomed city of Sodom, another image of judgment from the Old Testament. Jerusalem has already been identified as Sodom (Rev. 11:8), and the fact that her sins have now been noticed is another indication. “I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know” (Gen. 18:21).

The fact that the voice from Heaven says that the great harlot will be paid back double is another identifier. In the prophet Jeremiah, it is Israel that will be paid back double for her sins.

“And first I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double; because they have defiled my land, they have filled mine inheritance with the carcases of their detestable and abominable things” (Jer. 16:18). “Let them be confounded that persecute me, but let not me be confounded: let them be dismayed, but let not me be dismayed: bring upon them the day of evil, and destroy them with double destruction” (Jer. 17:18).

As Jerusalem as Babylon plays that role completely. Just as Israel was delivered from the Old Babylon, so also the new Israel will be delivered from the New Babylon.

“And thou saidst, I shall be a lady for ever: So that thou didst not lay these things to thy heart, Neither didst remember the latter end of it. Therefore hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures, that dwellest carelessly, That sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children: But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, The loss of children, and widowhood: They shall come upon thee in their perfection For the multitude of thy sorceries, and for the great abundance of thine enchantments” (Is. 47:7–9).

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 101

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. 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. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, And the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, And the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies” (Rev. 18:1–3).

Commentators differ over whether this angel is intended to represent the Lord Jesus, or whether he is simply one of the greater created beings. As there is no explicit reason for identifying him with Christ, it is perhaps best to simply take the description at face value. This is an angel with “great power,” and with the kind of vivid luminosity that lit up the earth. We should perhaps think of the kind of light that He has “great power,” and he cries out “mightily” with a “strong voice.”  The message he declares is one of the great themes of this book—the collapse of the old Babylon, and her replacement by a virgin bride, the new Jerusalem.

The first thing the angel says is that Babylon “the great” has fallen utterly. The first set of descriptions show the greatness of her calamity—and also helps to identify her as the city under judgment, the city of Jerusalem. First, she has become the “habitation of devils” and a stronghold of “every foul spirit.” This is precisely what happened to the military defenders of that desolate city, and exactly what Jesus had predicted.

“When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation” (Matt. 12:43–45).

Jesus was using a cleansed demoniac as an illustration—but what he was actually talking about is what would happen to that unrepentant nation after His ministry of casting out demons. He spent three years casting them out, and yet the rulers of Israel rejected their Messiah. The end result was a revolt against Rome that was literally a pandemonium, a frenzy, a warp spasm of iniquity.

The Lord had said this about Jerusalem—it was going to be flattened.

“And Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:2).

When this kind of complete destruction comes upon a city, the next residents will be the foul and unclean birds. This had been expressly declared as the future of Babylon.

“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: And her time is near to come, And her days shall not be prolonged” (Is. 13:21–22).

Some question the identification of Babylon here with Jerusalem—was Jerusalem really that great a merchant power, such that the merchants of the earth would weep and lament her fall? I believe that this is the point that John is making—while perhaps he is keying more off the descriptions of an unfaithful and luxury-loving Jerusalem in the Old Testament than he is saying something about the GDP of Jerusalem in the first century. But even here we should be careful—there is no reason for assuming that it was not an economic power.

“Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians, because thou wast unsatiable; yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldest not be satisfied. Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea; and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith. How weak is thine heart, saith the Lord God, seeing thou doest all these things, the work of an imperious whorish woman;” (Ezekiel 16:28–30, cf. 14-15, 26; 23:12-21)

After all, when we read these words with the assumption that the Old Testament is our primary context, the identification seems sure.

“Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord’s hand, That made all the earth drunken: The nations have drunken of her wine; Therefore the nations are mad” (Jer. 51:7).

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Grace & Peace: Revelation 98

Douglas Wilson on

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16:11).

“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 have 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. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration” (Rev. 17:1–6).

After the last bowl had been poured out, one of the angels who had had one of the bowls came to John and talked to him. He said that he would show him the judgment of the great whore, the woman who sat upon many waters.

To help us keep things straight, I will begin with how I identify the figures in this passage. I take the harlot as the apostate city of Jerusalem, the one under judgment. This has been the great theme of the book of Revelation, and it would be odd to change the subject at this late point. I take the beast that she is sitting on as the beast from the sea, introduced to us in chapter 13. So I believe we are talking about both Rome and Jerusalem, but Jerusalem as riding upon, dependent upon, the imperial city.

Some reasons for identifying this harlot as Jerusalem can be quickly summarized. The central point of Revelation deals with things that will “shortly” take place (Rev. 1:1). The fall of Jerusalem fits this description, while the fall of Rome occurs centuries later. In terms of literary structure, we are being introduced to the contrast between the harlot and the bride. Because the bride, descending out of Heaven, is the New Jerusalem, it stands to reason that the harlot is the Old Jerusalem. Jerusalem is called that “great city” earlier (Rev. 11:8), which is how “Babylon” is described in this section. The use of the word harlot fits with the Old Testament usage by the prophets. Harlotry presupposes a covenant relationship with God that was violated by spiritual adulteries (see Is. 1:21; 57:8; Jer. 2:2, 20). And the central charge made against her was that she was guilty of the blood of the prophets, saints, and apostles ((Rev. 17:6; 18:20, 24). This was not yet true of Rome, but it had been true of Jerusalem for generations (Matt. 23:35-36).

This said, what are we told in this passage? Instead of being a light to the Gentiles, Jerusalem had led the kings of the earth astray, not to mention the inhabitants of the earth. They all had been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. The angel then led John into the wilderness, a fitting place for a revelation of this nature. It was not a heavenly vision, but rather a vision given in a place of owls and jackals. The woman was sitting on a scarlet colored beast. The color given is new, but in every other respect, the beast is same as before (seven heads, ten horns). The woman riding on the beast is distinct from it, and she was arrayed in scarlet and purple. She was decked out with gold, gems, and pearls, clearly given over to ostentatious and luxurious living. She had a golden cup in her hand, exquisite on the outside, and full of filth on the inside (Matt. 23:25).

She was a wanton, and her name was emblazoned on her forehead. The first thing about her name is that she was a mystery. How was it that the people of Israel, delivered by Jehovah so many times, had now come to this? This is the vision that Ezekiel had seen. When God had first seen Israel, she was nothing, polluted in her own blood (Eze. 16:6). But it was not long before she was seduced by her own beauty (Eze. 16:14), which was what led to her becoming seductive to everyone else. She was also identified as Babylon the Great. We have already considered how that epithet readily applied to Jerusalem, in much the same way that the names of other older pagan entities did—e.g. Sodom and Egypt (Rev. 11:8). She is the Mother of Harlots, as well as the Mother of Abominations on the Earth.

When John saw her, he was amazed. The woman was regal, clothed in royal splendor, covered in jewelry, but her behavior was that of a slattern. She was drunk. Not only was she drunk, but what had made her drunk? She was drunk on the blood of the saints, and on the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. A moment before we had been told that her golden cup was filled with abomination and filthiness of her fornication (v. 4), and earlier it had referred to the wine of her fornication (v. 2). Putting all this together, her abominable lusts appeared to focus on the deaths of the saints—which are precious in the sight of the Lord (Ps. 116:15), and prized by this harlot for a completely different reason.

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