‘Mystery Babylon’ May Be Identified By:

            I. Her Context in the book of Revelation;

            II. Her Description;

            III. Prophetic Referents in the Old Testament; and

            IV. Prophetic Referents in the New Testament.

 

I. Identifying Mystery Babylon by Its Context in the book of Revelation:

A. Structure of the Book:

            A cursory examination of the structure of the book reveals that the destruction of Mystery Babylon is at the core of the book.  The pages of the “scroll” of chapter five are peeled off as the “seals” are opened.  The seventh seal consists of the seven trumpets; the seventh trumpet consists of the seven last plagues, the seventh of which is the destruction of Babylon.  As in a roll, one must peel off the outer leaves to get to the inner ones; at the inner core of the scroll is the account of the destruction of Mystery Babylon.  With this accomplished the glorious appearing of Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords follows.  The events of the scroll reveal the dark side of the mystery.  The appearance of Christ reveals the full Light of God as it comes to perfection.

B. Foreshadowing:

            The destruction of Mystery Babylon is central to the structure of the book as attested by the fact that it is foreshadowed as early as 1:3 by the words “the (appointed) time is near.”  The entire Old Testament witnesses to the fact that God is a time-telling God.  Although He is the Eternal God, His revelation within the affairs of men is related to time.  He commands His people to appear before Him at “appointed times“; things happen “in the fullness of time.”  So the question immediately arises: “Appointed time for what?”  In the context of the book , the reference to an appointed time that is at hand, (1:3) indicates that the events, which the book records, are at hand, that is, within reach.  In the context of the Scriptures, the “appointed time” is that spoken of by Daniel; that is, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jewish nation and people, (Daniel 9:24-27).

            We should expect to find confirmation of this in the context of the New Testament.  The most controversial prophecy of Christ was that of the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the people.  He had indeed set a limit to the time of its fulfillment: the generation that heard Him would not pass away until His prophecy was fulfilled.  The time of a generation was approximately forty years.  In the folk literature of the day there was a belief in the “forty years of the Messiah.”[1]  This was commonly understood to mean the period for testing His claims.  The “appointed time” of which Revelation 1:3 speaks, then, is the time for the fulfillment of the prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem.

            Another foreshadowing is in Revelation 10:6-7.  The angel declares that:

There should be no more delay, but that in the days of the trumpet call to be sounded by the seventh angel, the mystery of God, as he announced to his servants the prophets, should be fulfilled. (RSV)

            The God of Israel had been so longsuffering that He had delayed His judgments and wrath repeatedly.  He had chastened the people in many ways, most specifically by the captivity in Babylon.  But the penalty foretold for sin must eventually come to pass, and that time had come.

            The appointed time had two facets: destruction and salvation.  At the sounding of the seventh trumpet:

The nations/tribes raged, but thy wrath came, and the (appointed) time for the dead to be judged, for rewarding thy servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear thy name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth/land. (Rev. 11:18 RSV)[2]

            Among the scenes and activities viewed in this panorama is the angel saying: “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of her impure passion,” (15:8).  The earth/land is reaped and cast into the winepress of God’s wrath.  Translated into the original, literal fulfillment, the land of Judah was thrown into chaos by the wars, insurrections, betrayals, famine and pestilence that proceeded the fall of Jerusalem (Wars, Books 3 and 4).  But at this point the winepress was still outside the city itself, (15:20)

            At the pouring out of the seventh great bowl of wrath, “a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, ‘It is done!‘”, (16:17), another definite foreshadowing of the coming destruction.

The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations/ (tribes) fell, and God remembered great Babylon, to make her drain the cup of the fury of his wrath. (16:19 RSV)[3]

 

C. The Midnight Cry:

            The call: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues,” (Revelation 18:4) indicates that Mystery Babylon was a place where some of the saints still lived.  Indeed, we know that there was a “synagogue” of Christians in Jerusalem up to the time of the final wars.  The original message of the book, with its sense of urgency, may have been directed to these saints primarily for the purpose of calling them out of the city, (Eusebius, History 3.5.4.)  Just as Lot had been called out of Sodom, as Israel had been called out of Egypt, as the Jews had been called out of Babylon, as Joseph with Christ was called out of Egypt, so were the Christians of AD 70 called out of Jerusalem, the wicked city, before the judgments of God fell upon it.[4]

            The two specific signs of Jerusalem‘s fall, which Christ had foretold, were now apparent.  These two signs would indicate that it was time to flee:

             One, Luke 21:20-22:

When you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart, and let not those who are out in the country enter it; for these are days of vengeance, to fulfil all that is written. (RSV)

Titus’ army compassed Jerusalem on the outside; three armies compassed the city inside.

            Two, Matthew 24:15 (=Mark 13-21):

So when you see the desolating sacrilege spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains; let him who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in his house; and let him who is in the field not turn back to take his mantle….For then there will be great tribulation such as has not been from the beginning of the world, until now, no, and never will be. (RSV)

 

The reference Jesus made here is to Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11. 

Daniel 11:31: Forces from him shall appear and profane the temple and fortress, and shall take away the continual burnt offering.  And they shall set up the abomination that makes desolate. (RSV)

 

Daniel 12:11: And from the time that the continual burnt offering is taken away, and the abomination that makes desolate is set up, there shall be a thousand two hundred and ninety days. (RSV)

 

            Josephus says:

And now Titus gave orders to his soldiers that were with him to dig up the foundations of the tower of Antonia, and make him a ready passage for his army to come up; while he himself had Josephus brought to him (for he had been informed that on that very day, which was the seventeenth day* of Panemus, [Tamuz] the sacrifice called ‘the Daily Sacrifice‘ had failed, and had not been offered to God for want of men to offer it, and that the people were grievously troubled at it (Wars, 6.2.1).

 

            In Whiston‘s footnote to this passage he says:

This was a very remarkable day indeed, the seventeenth of Panemus, [Tamuz] AD 70, when according to Daniel‘s prediction, 606 years before, the Romans [?] ‘in half a week caused the sacrifice and oblation to cease,’ Dan. ix.27; for from the month of February, AD 66, about which time Vespasian entered on this war, to this very time, was just three years and a half, (p. 574).

 

(That is, a “time, times and half-a-time”.  It was, rather, the civil war of the Jews that caused it.)

            It is very clear from the specificity of the historical account of Josephus that Jesus‘ prophecy was fulfilled to the letter.  We must understand therefore that Daniel‘s prophecies pertained to the “end of the age” upon the physical Jewish nation and found their literal fulfillment precisely in the events surrounding the wars of AD 70.  This “end of the age” is therefore a “sure word of prophecy” and is the pattern for the end of any nation, (or church,) that forgets God and is turned into hell.  Ultimately it is the pattern, or example, of the end of the whole world when the Gentile age is completed. 

            The perverted notion that the physical, genetically identifiable nation continued to exist after that time not only ignores the facts of history but obscures the prophecies of Daniel, making the example of no effect for purposes of future application and interpretation.  But worst of all, the mistaken notion denies the fulfillment of Jesus‘ prophetic ministry, for which prophecy He was crucified, and upon which He staked His claim to being a True Prophet.

            Believing fully in Jesus’ prophecy, the Christians in Jerusalem were ready to flee the city.  The call to come out, which is furnished by the book of Revelation, was the signal for the mass exodus.  Eusebius‘ account is:

The members of the Jerusalem church, by means of an oracle given by revelation to acceptable persons there, were ordered to leave the City before the war began, {i.e., the war with the Romans), and settle in a town in Peraea called Pella.  To Pella those who believed in Christ migrated from Jerusalem.[5]

     There is some evidence, however, that they were ‘raptured or translated supernaturally from Jerusalem to another place, setting the pattern for the final translation of the Church in the end of the world at the close of the Gentile age.[6]  Eusebius translates the Greek verb ‘metokismenon’ by the word ‘migrated’.  This word may also be translated ‘carried away’, possibly indicating they were caught away, ‘raptured’, as was Philip in Acts 8:40. (WS at 18:4)

            Josephus mentions the writings of the ancient prophets:

And particularly that oracle which is just now going to be fulfilled upon this miserable city…for they foretold that this city should be then taken when somebody shall begin the slaughter of his own countrymen! And are not both the city and the entire temple now full of the dead bodies of your countrymen (6.2.1)?[7]

 

            Josephus indicates that Titus had tried to persuade the people to come out to him in surrender, promising that he would spare their lives.  Some did come out to him and were spared.[8]

            While these Scriptures show merely the foreshadowing, chapter 17 brings us to the event itself; Mystery Babylon is displayed, described, and interpreted.  The entire chapter along with chapter 18 and the first five verses of chapter 19 are devoted entirely to the account of the destruction of Mystery Babylon.  It is apparent from the amount of text given to the subject, the position of the account at the core of the “scroll” and the foreshadowing throughout the book that the destruction of Mystery Babylon is at the heart of the message and purpose of the writing.

 

Mystery Babylon vs. The Bride:

            A further indication of the identity of Mystery Babylon is its juxtaposition over against the Bride, the Lamb‘s wife.  Immediately following the passages describing the ugly, fallen Whore, Babylon, the marriage of the Lamb is announced and the beautiful, pure Bride is described in all her glory, (19:7-9).  The contrast between the two “women” enhances the descriptions of both, making the Whore appear uglier and the Bride more beautiful.  Then the Bridegroom appears to claim her, (19:11-21), putting down all her enemies, (19:17-21).  This contrasts to the fact that the Whore was destroyed by her lovers, 17:16-17.  After the angels attend to certain details of the mop-up in chapter 20, chapters 21 and 22 continue to describe the beauty, glory and peace of the Bride.

            A similar contrast between the Daughter of Zion and the Daughter of Babylon may be found in Isaiah where chapter three is in direct contrast to chapter 61.  Whereas the wicked Jerusalem was to be stripped of her garments, the New Jerusalem of the everlasting covenant, the daughter of Zion was to be covered with the robe of righteousness, (61:10).  Whereas the fallen city was to have “burning instead of beauty,” the city accepting Christ, (61:1) was to have “beauty for ashes, (61:3).

            Mystery Babylon is the ugliest woman in all literature.  Her elaborate adornments of clothing and jewelry only enhance her ugliness.  She has a tattoo on her forehead proclaiming and flaunting her sin.  She is living with a hideous beast.  She not only is drunk, and still drinking, but also is making the whole earth drunk with her “wine.”  Although her cup is golden, it contains the most hideous of wines: human blood.

            To visualize her ugliness, it is necessary to see her in the context of the idolatrous religion of that era called the bacchanalia festivals, worshipping the god Bacchus, Greek Dionysus, the god of wine.  These orgies consisted of the worship of dementia, unyielding madness, induced by drunkenness.[9]  The orgies are violent, often featuring the slaughter of one’s own kin, a woman slaughtering her own children and dismembering them as an offering to the idol.  These orgies were so debauched that the Romans abolished them in 186 B.C. but they re-emerged in the first century AD, the time of the writing of the book of Revelation.[10]

            The image of Mystery Babylon is that of the worshipper of Bacchus who has slaughtered her own children, the saints and martyrs of Jesus Christ, and is drunk with their blood.  The application to today is all too apparent:  The drug culture, now not only with wine but also other drugs, has sprung up as a deliberate attempt to “get out of oneself” into dementia.  When a people reject the living God, reality becomes unbearable.  The religion of the Pharisees, “Judaism,” has no power against these forces of darkness; it is like the disease AIDS, destroying the body’s immune system.  Sin is the great sickness unto death of the human race, and the only immunity available is the Lord Jesus Christ.  The resurgence of “Judaism,” anti-Christianity, has brought the resurgence of atheism and “humanism,” offering no hope in this world or the world to come.  Without hope, reality is unbearable and so the prevalence of drug induced dementia.

            It must also be stated that Bacchus/Dionysus is regarded as the father of Greek drama (ibid.) which in turn is the father of modern drama.  Although appearing on the surface to be more benign, for modern man the craze for drama in the movies or the sports arena is the means of escaping reality.  By means of this escape we insulate ourselves against reality, removing ourselves from immediate contact.  Even our wars are viewed as dramas, mostly destroying an enemy at a distance and therefore removed from reality.  As the Bacchantes, worshippers of Bacchus, performed their evil deeds as if performing a drama, so modern man executes his wars.