Day Sixty-Four: Revelation 15-19

“Babylon is fallen—that great city is fallen!
      She has become a home for demons.
   She is a hideout for every foul spirit,
      a hideout for every foul vulture
      and every foul and dreadful animal.” (18.2)

In Revelation 17 we are introduced to a prostitute sitting on a beast.  Her name is written on her forehead: “Babylon the Great, Mother of All Prostitutes and Obscenities in the World.”  She is drunk on the blood of the martyrs, and holds a cup in her hand full of obscenities.  Then in chapter 19, Babylon is called a city.

Incidentally, after the September 11 attacks, a visiting pastor preached a sermon at my home church in KS suggesting that the destruction of the Twin Towers fulfilled Revelation 19, because the angel says “is fallen” twice, once for each of the towers.

So what is Babylon, a woman or a city?  Neither.  Both the woman and the city are symbols of the same thing: empire.  The world’s corrupt system that is characterized by greed, violence, oppression and obscenity.  It is what happens when human creativity is turned only in the direction of evil.  

Babylon is not New York City, Washington DC, Las Vegas, Amsterdam, or any other earthly city, though all cities have some of Babylon’s characteristics.  John earlier has identified this city as “Sodom” and “Egypt”, as well as Jerusalem, the city where Jesus was crucified (11.8).  Babylon is anywhere where human selfishness reigns.  It is a place of captivity.  It is a place where the righteous and innocent are oppressed and killed.  It represents the worst of human civilization.

This “city” is destroyed in a moment. This could picture every empire that has dominated the world and then collapsed.  Early readers would have remembered the demise of the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greek Empire.  Later Christians would watch Rome, the greatest superpower the world had ever seen fall apart in the fifth century.  

America is a superpower now, the only one to rival Rome.  But Revelation teaches us not to be impressed by empires.  America is a young empire, and like all the kingdoms of this world, America’s empire will come to an end.  

All kingdoms come to an end, all kingdoms will eventually be shaken, except for the kingdom of God.  

This means that we must not give in to the lure of Babylon.  It is easy to become a part of the world’s corrupt system.  We must come out of Babylon and live for the kingdom that cannot be shaken.

Lord, help me to live for your kingdom today, instead of building my life on sand. Amen.