Read Revelation 17-18

Revelation 17

v1-6: Babylon was a great and powerful city that rejected and opposed God. This city is symbolic of a world opposed to God - the world we are living in and surrounded by. This world seems so attractive, so successful, and so secure, with “all the allurements of worldly honour and riches.” But it is evil, full of “idolatry and all sorts of sexual immortality and wickedness” and “of all false religion and corrupt living.”

v7-13: When one worldly power Satan uses to attack God’s people with persecution and promotion of deceptive teaching disappears, another will rise, and this will happen throughout history right up until the end. “Idolatry and cruelty are the result and product of hell - and it will return there and go into destruction.”

v14-18: Another Babylon will come and take the place of the previous one, until a final Babylon comes for one final onslaught against Christ and His people. “Christ must reign until all enemies be put under his feet. He will be sure to face many enemies, and much opposition, but he will also be sure to gain the victory.” God will even use the powers of evil to serve His purposes and bring about Babylon’s downfall.

Revelation 18

v1-8: “The downfall and destruction of Babylon form an event so fully determined in the purpose of God, and so significant to his interests and glory, that the visions and predictions about it are repeated.” The fall of Babylon is declared “as something that had already taken place,” such is the certainty we can have that this world opposed to God will one day come to an end. This world will get what it deserves for its rebellion and opposition to God. “The evil of Babylon had been very great, because she had not only abandoned the true God and set up idols herself; she had also with great skill and diligence drawn all kinds of people into spiritual adultery.” We are to come out of Babylon. Though we live in the world, we are not to live like the world.

v9-24: Those who shared in this rebellion of the world, “who had shared in her physical pleasures, and… who had profited from her wealth and trade,” will mourn at coming end to this world. “The pleasure of sin” they enjoyed, lasted “only a season,” and will end “in dismal sorrow.” Their “sorrows will be as excessive as their pleasure… were.” The cause of their mourning, was “not their sin, but their punishment. They did not mourn their fall into idolatry, self-indulgence, and persecution, but their fall into ruin.” They didn’t mourn because of “the anger of God that had fallen on them,” but because of “the loss of their outward comfort.”