Welcome to a Revelation of Jesus. In the previous video we looked at the first of three powerful end-time messages which are proclaimed by faithful believers, symbolized by three angels “to every nation, tribe, tongue, and people” (Revelation 14:6). All of the messages are based on the foundation of “the everlasting gospel” (Revelation 14:6), but each has a specific purpose. The second angel’s message says, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen that great city, because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication” (Revelation 14:8).
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At first glance, this strange and cryptic message seems to have no obvious relevance to our modern society. After all, the ancient city of Babylon has been an uninhabited pile of rubble for thousands of years.
Although I have mentioned Babylon many times as we studied our way through the first half of Revelation, this reference in Revelation 14:8 is actually the first time that the name Babylon is found in the Book of Revelation. And besides the six references in the second half of Revelation, Babylon is barely mentioned in the New Testament.
In the Old Testament, Babylon is mentioned about 250 times, and the vast majority have to do with Babylon attacking God’s chosen people and taking them captive. Israel and Judah had many enemies in the Old Testament times, including the Philistines, the Assyrians, the Midianites, and the Amalekites. But the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon is a Biblical symbol for the ultimate enemy of God’s chosen people.
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Babylon was founded in the third generation after the great flood by Nimrod (Genesis 10:8-10). After the flood, God had told Noah and his family, “Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth… be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 9:11,1). But Nimrod and his followers did not trust God’s promise that He would never send another flood, and they did not want to be scattered over the earth. “They found a plain in the land of Shinar and said to one another, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4). Thus, the very foundation of Babylon was distrust of God, disobedience to His will, and a desire for self-exaltation.
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Babylon weaves in and out of Old Testament history. I will include a link to an article in the description that tells how Abraham had to leave Babylon in order to be God’s chosen representative. Later, he had to rescue his family from Babylonian attackers. When the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel they took the Israelites captive and brought in Babylonians, among others, to take their place. These people became known as the Samaritans, and combined the worship of the Lord with their own heathen religion, creating a toxic mixture of truth and error: “They feared the Lord, yet served their own gods” (see 2 Kings 17:22-41).
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The Neo-Babylonian Empire under King Nebuchadnezzar was a key player in one of the greatest tragedies of the Old Testament. God’s chosen people, the nation of Judah, had forfeited His protection by worshiping other gods. So God allowed the Babylonians to attack Judah, taking plunder and captives such as Daniel and Ezekiel. But God’s chosen people continued to reject Him. Finally, in 587 BC, Nebuchadnezzar’s army “burned the house of God, broke down the wall of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces… He killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion on the aged or the weak… And those who escaped from the sword were carried away to Babylon, where they became slaves” (2 Chronicles 36:17-20).
Babylonian captivity was the epitome of misery and disgrace for God’s people. But even worse was the destruction of the temple. First of all, God’s temple was a visible symbol of His presence with His people. King Jehoshaphat prayed, “If disaster comes upon us– sword, judgment, pestilence, or famine– we will stand before this temple and in Your presence (for Your name is in this temple), and cry out to You in our affliction, and You will hear and save” (2 Chronicles 20:9). The temple and its furnishings were also symbolic of all that God through Jesus would do to save and sanctify everyone who comes to Him. Finally, the temple was a statement to the nations all around them that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the living God, the only true God, the creator of the heavens, the earth, and all that is in them. And now the temple was gone, and its destruction was attributed to the gods of Babylon.
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Even though God’s chosen people had rejected Him, He had not rejected them. God promised through the prophet Jeremiah that their captivity in Babylon would last for 70 years. When the 70 years were over, the Babylonians had no intention of letting their Hebrew slaves go back home, but God intervened. Through Isaiah the prophet, God even named the king of Persia, who would liberate His people. “Thus says the Lord to Cyrus, whose right hand I have held—to subdue nations before him, to open the double doors… he shall perform all My pleasure, saying to Jerusalem, ‘You shall be built,’ And to the temple, ‘Your foundation shall be laid”‘ (Isaiah 45:1,44:28).
And that’s what happened. While King Belshazzar was feasting to celebrate the kingdom and gods of Babylon, the armies of Cyrus diverted the Euphrates River that flowed through Babylon. The Persian soldiers marched in through the dry riverbed and took the city (Daniel 5:30).
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Although the Persians made Babylon one of their provincial capitals, it was never again the ruling city of a great empire. Through the centuries, it slowly crumbled, becoming a source of building materials for surrounding villages, and was eventually covered by the desert sands, fulfilling the words of Isaiah, “Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, will be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. It will never be inhabited… But wild beasts of the desert will lie there, and hyenas will howl in their citadels. (Isaiah 13:19-22)
But the spirit of Babylon lived on. The apostle Peter wrote, “Your sister church in Babylon, sends you greetings” (1 Pet. 5:13). Christian tradition teaches that Peter wrote this from Rome, where he helped to establish the Christian church during the reign of emperor Nero. Rome under Nero was a fitting comparison to ancient Babylon. Nero blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome and brutally slaughtered them. Tradition tells us that the great apostles Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome during this time. And Nero sent the armies of Rome to Jerusalem to enforce law and order, and they ended up destroying the city and the temple in AD 70.
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This brief sketch of historical Babylon, and Rome as symbolic Babylon, gives a foundation to understand the message of the second angel: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city” (Revelation 14:8). The fact that Peter called 1st century Rome “Babylon” tells us that we should not expect end-time Babylon to arise in its former geographical location, which is now Iraq. What we can expect are the core elements of ancient Babylon, and that means more than just powerful military might. Both ancient Babylon and pagan Rome were powerful, and conquered great swaths of geography, but there were other imperialistic empires that were more brutal and conquered even more area. What made ancient Babylon and pagan Rome unique is that they both invaded and destroyed the temple of God.
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To see what this means, let’s look again at how the term Babylon is used in the Book of Revelation. Surprisingly, the first half of Revelation does not even mention Babylon. The messages to the seven churches outline the corruption and apostasy that came into the Christian church, but even at its darkest point, the apostate church was called Jezebel, not Babylon. Chapter 13, which we studied in videos 44-47, opens by presenting a beast arising from the sea, symbolizing the corrupt union of church and state of the Dark Ages. The beast from the sea “blasphemed God, His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven” and “made war with the saints to overcome them.” (Revelation 13:6,7) But as corrupt and destructive as the sea beast was, it was not called Babylon. Chapter 13 then presents the beast arising from the earth, the persecuting union of church and state of the last days, led by the United States of America, which will set up the image, mark, and number of the beast. But even the beast from the earth was not called Babylon.
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But this doesn’t mean that Babylon disappeared for good with the defeat of ancient Babylon and Rome. The second angel’s message, given in the context of the final events, says Babylon IS fallen,” not Babylon has fallen. This shows us that before Jesus returns Babylon will reappear. The form of the Greek word for fallen has the meaning of moving, descending, or falling from a higher place to a lower place, not of being defeated by an outside force. Compare Jesus’ counsel to the church of Ephesus, who “left [their] first love” (Revelation 2:4). They are exhorted to “remember from where you have fallen… or else [Jesus] will come quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent” (Revelation 2:5).
This indicates that the Christians who become Babylon have fallen from grace, fallen from faith and obedience, fallen out of love with Jesus, fallen out of the place of honor that Jesus prepared for them.
This reminds us of fallen Lucifer. He was created to be the “anointed cherub who covers” (Ezekiel 28:14), the closest angel to the throne of God, but he fell from his position of glory. “How you have fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! For you said in your heart… I will exalt my throne… I will be like the Most High” (Isaiah 14:12-14). And it is Satan, the fallen angel, who is the key to the identity of fallen Babylon that the second angel warns us against.
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In video 4, which examines the chiastic literary structure of the Book of Revelation, we saw that the theme of the first half of Revelation has to do with Satan’s attacks and his often-successful attempts to corrupt the church. Particularly in the messages to the seven churches, we saw that Satan has been very successful in bringing corruption and apostasy into the Christian church through the centuries. But it is not until the second half of Revelation that Satan himself enters the temple of God, that is, the church, to such an extent that the Christian church becomes Babylon.
We have already looked at this several times in 2 Thessalonians 2, which predicts the appearance of the final antichrist. “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders… he opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God“ (2Thessalonians 2:9,4). Many Christian preachers and writers teach that another temple will be built in Jerusalem to pave the way for the antichrist to “sit as God in the temple of God.” But the apostle Paul makes it clear that the Christian church is the New Testament temple. “You are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people.’” (2 Corinthians 6:16).
Putting this passage together with 2 Thessalonians 2, we can conclude that last-day Babylon will emerge when the enemy takes over the temple, that is, the church. And we can be sure that Satan will not present himself as the prince of darkness; He will appear as an angel of light.
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Both Jesus and the apostle Paul warn us that we will not only see false prophets, but also false Christs, the most dangerous being Satan himself. “False apostles [and] deceitful workers transform themselves into apostles of Christ. And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-14).
We will have to wait until we get to chapter 17 for the details and scriptural support of how this will happen, but for now, I want to just touch on a few key points to help us identify end-time Babylon. The end of Revelation chapter 16 presents the seventh of the seven last plagues, in which “great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath” (Revelation 16:19). Revelation 17 continues with a complicated explanation of who Babylon is and what her fate will be. It begins with an angel saying, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters” (Revelation 17:1). The angel took John to the wilderness, where he saw “a woman sitting on a scarlet beast… And on her forehead a name was written: MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.” [John] could see that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:3-6).
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John said, “When I saw her, I was greatly astonished” (Revelation 17:6). And no wonder. In videos 42 and 43 we saw that the Bible uses women as a symbol of those who are, or at least should be, God’s chosen representatives, in other words, the church. But this woman, with the name Babylon on her forehead, is presented as a corrupt harlot who takes drunken pleasure in slaughtering God’s true followers.
The angel linked the understanding of the woman to the beast that she sat on: “I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and ten horns. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition” (Revelation 17:7,8). This beast looks a lot like the beast from the sea of chapter 13, with its seven heads and ten horns. As we saw in video 44, that beast was the Roman Catholic church of the Dark Ages in union with the medieval European nation-states.
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But in chapter 17, there seems to be a separation of the church and state, with the woman, symbolizing the corrupt church, riding on the political and military beast. When we study this passage carefully, we will see that the separation is because the beast will end up turning on the woman and destroying her.
We also see here some evidence of when the beast will appear—“The beast was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition” (Revelation 17:8). Again, there is a lot to study here, but we will see that the beast “was” during the dark ages as the beast from the sea that we studied in chapter 13. The beast “is not” after she received the deadly wound that we studied in videos 34 and 44. But the deadly wound would be healed. “The beast will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition” (Revelation 17:8). We saw this same language in the fifth trumpet that we studied in video 32, with the opening of the bottomless pit and the emergence of a locust army, led by the angel of the bottomless pit whose name, Apollyon, means perdition. This is Satan impersonating Christ, the final antichrist.
This brings us back to 2Thessalonians 2. “The man of sin,” Satan himself, appears as an angel of light, “exalting himself above all that is called God, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3,4).
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Where does this all fit with Babylon? Going back to Revelation 17 we see “the great harlot,” with the name Babylon on her forehead, drunk with the blood of the saints. Verse 18 tells us that “The woman is that great city which reigns over the kings of the earth” (Revelation 17:18). The woman symbolizes a church, a church which is also a great city, suggesting the Roman Catholic church. This is supported by the appearance of the beast she sits on. Except for the absence of the deadly wound, the scarlet beast looks just like the beast from the sea, in other words, the Roman Catholic Church of the Dark Ages that we studied in chapter 13. And there is one more clue from chapter 17: “The seven heads are seven mountains (or hills) on which the woman sits” (Revelation 17:9). From ancient times, Rome has been known as the city on seven hills. To summarize, Revelation 17 identifies Babylon as a woman, that is a church, which is also a city. She is riding a beast that looks just like the beast from the sea. She is sitting on seven hills. The evidence all points to the woman as being the Roman Catholic church after it has fully recovered from the deadly wound.
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This isn’t to say that the Roman Catholic church, its leaders, and its worshipers are worse than other churches. As we will see in the third angel’s message, when Satan appears as the final antichrist, all the churches will fall in line, except those believers from every church “who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” and “come out of Babylon” (Revelation 14:12, 18:4). Remember, the name on the forehead of the harlot was “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots” (Revelation 17:5). The daughters will be right there with the mother. We already saw in chapter 13 that the beast from the earth, symbolizing the American union of church and state, will create the image, mark, and number of the beast. The whole world will “be amazed and follow after the beast” (Revelation 13:3). But what seems to be unique in the Roman Catholic Church is a leadership system that Satan will be able to exploit to create Babylon.
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There is a lot more that we will have to study in chapter 17 that will enable us to recognize the landmarks in the stream of final events. This section of Revelation is so challenging that John said, “This calls for a mind that has wisdom” (Revelation 17:9). We are dealing with Satan’s final masterpiece of deception. And that is what the second angel’s message is all about. God wants us to understand what is coming so that we can help people recognize Babylon, know that she is fallen, and say NO! to “the wine of the wrath of her fornication” that she is offering.
But even more important than saying NO! to Babylon is for us to say YES! to Jesus, YES! to His righteousness, YES! to His sovereignty over our lives, and YES! to the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and guide our steps.
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