The characters of Babylon are first portrayed. Like the beast, she is only
one thing in the judgment but morally she is more important than all the
rest. The general character is the great active idolatress that has gained
influence over the mass of the nations; next, that the kings of the earth
have lived in guilty intimacy with her, seeking her favors, while those
that dwell on the earth have lost their senses through her pernicious and
inebriating influence. This is the general idea first given, a character
plain enough to mark the Roman or Papal system.
But more details follow. There was a woman, a religious system, sitting on
an imperial beast full of names of blasphemy, having the form which marked
it Roman. The woman was gorgeously and imperially arrayed, had every human
glory and ornament on her, and a rich cup of prostituting yet gross
idolatries in her hand. "Abominations are simply idols; " filthiness of
her fornication," all the horrible corruption that accompanies it. Her cup
was full of them. She was in the desert; no springs of God were there. It
was not, so to speak, God's land, no heavenly country. To spiritual
understanding she bore on her forehead her character (yet one known only
when spiritually known), of the great city of corruption, source of all
seduction to men and of all idolatry in the earth: such was Popery. But
this was not all. All the blood of the saints was found in her: she was the
persecuting murderess of those God delighted in, and who bore witness to
Jesus. [see note #16]
The prophet was astonished-for it was what the church had come to.
The angel then describes the beast on which she rode. It had been, ceased
to exist, and then it comes up again from direct diabolical sources-comes
up out of the abyss. The renewed Roman Empire, which had disappeared, is
blasphemous and diabolical in nature, and in this character goes to
destruction: yet all but the elect on the earth will be in admiration of it
when they see the beast that was, is not, and shall be present. Of itself
this marks the Roman or Latin Empire, only that it will reappear more
formally. But Rome is more distinctly marked. It is the city of the seven
hills. Nor was this even all. It was the existing authority in the time of
the prophecy: five of its governing powers had fallen; one was there; there
was then one yet to come for a short space, and then the beast out of the
abyss, the last diabolical state of the empire, would appear, and it would
be destroyed. The last however is not a new form; it is one of the seven,
though an eighth. My impression is, that the first Napoleon and his brief
empire is the seventh, and we have now to wait for the development of the
last. The beast, though imperial, has ten horns, ten distinct kingdoms.
They have their power, and for the same period, with the beast. But they
all give their power to the beast, and make war against Christ, the
rejected One on earth; but He shall overcome them. For, despised as He may
be, supreme authority is His, and there are others coming with Him, not
merely angels but called ones, His saints.
Details are then added. The waters are explained as peoples, multitudes,
nations, and tongues-masses of populations in their diverse divisions. Next
the ten horns, the kingdoms which are associated with the beast, and the
beast (for so it is to be read) hate the whore and eat her flesh and burn
her with fire (first, take all her substance and fatness, and then destroy
her); for they are to give their kingdom to the blasphemous beast until
God's words are fulfilled. And then we are expressly to]d that the woman
(not " the whore "-the last is her corrupt idolatrous character-but the
"woman"), who as riding the beast was to be such, is Rome. All this chapter
17 is description.
