Jesus and the End-Time

The End-Time in Outline
 Babylon the Great

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who is seated upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the dwellers on earth have become drunk." And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and bedecked with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her fornication; and on her forehead was written a name of mystery: "Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth's abominations." And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.
When I saw her I marveled greatly. But the angle said to me, "Why marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is to ascend from the bottomless pit and go to perdition; and the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, will marvel to behold the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven hills on which the woman is seated; they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he comes he must remain only a little while. As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eight but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to perdition. And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. These are of one mind and give over their power and authority to the beast; they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.
And he said to me, "The waters that you saw, where the harlot is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the harlot; they will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled. And the woman that you saw is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth."
 Revelation 17
There is much in this passage that I do not understand, but I have included it all because I wanted the last verse to appear in context. It is the interpretative clue to the whole chapter, and it was necessary to show that which it is interpreting. The woman on the beast, the woman who is drunk with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, the woman whose title in code is "Babylon the Great," this woman is the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth.

The woman is the city, but she is not any city. She is Babylon, not Jerusalem. She is the city characterized by the pride and fate of Babylon, the city of Nebuchadnezzar, the city that conquered Jerusalem, the city where Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the wall. But Babylon is only the name of the city in code; by the time John wrote these words, judgment had long since fallen on the city of Nebuchadnezzar. This Babylon is "the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth."

Why doesn't John just come out and say that the city is Rome and be done with it? His reference to the seven hills on which the woman is seated obviously implies Rome. It is fair interpretation to say that the city is Rome, and will always be Rome, because of the reference to the seven hills; but to me this geographical specificity denies the cosmic character of the struggle in Revelation. Rather, I see the city as the continuing expression of "the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth." In Old Testament times that was Babylon; in New Testament times it was Rome; if it has a specific geographic setting today, I am not qualified to name it. But by looking at the woman who represents the city we can draw a profile of this major symbol of evil in the end-time.

In order to do this we must take seriously the reality of evil in the world. Evil is more than sin; to say "he is a sinner" is qualitatively different from saying "he is an evil man." Evil transcends the individual will to become the expression of a society and of a race. It is the effect in the world of what is sometimes called demonic power. It is the consensus of societies and institutions who have "sold out" to the principalities and powers (Ephesians 6:12) that are at war against the Kingdom of God.

Walter Rauschenbusch, the pioneer of the social gospel, served as a pastor for eleven years in a New York slum so miserable it was called "Hell's Kitchen." He knew that evil was more than the sinfulness of individual men. He believed in the solidarity of evil; he saw it as massive and transcendental.1 However much Rauschenbusch's liberalism degenerated into humanism in some latter-day exponents of the social gospel, the movement began with a man who had a clearer practical understanding of evil than most Christians. And his direct experience of the solidarity of evil arose out of his experience in the city. If we have something of his understanding of the solidarity of evil, we will have a clearer grasp of the significance of the city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.

Cities as cities are not necessarily evil; in the Bible there is Jerusalem as well as Babylon, the city coming down from heaven as well as the city of Rome. The city is a means of organizing and governing affairs; it is a style of exercising power in the world. What is evil about the city of Revelation 17 is not its power but its abuse of power.

The vision leaves no doubt about the character of the woman and the city she represents. She offers wealth, for she is splendidly clothed and bedecked with jewels. She offers pleasure, for she is a prostitute. For those whose god is their belly and whose glory is their shame (Philippians 3:19), the woman offers all that is desirable in the world.

But she would not be significant if she did not possess the power to legitimatize evil. "And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." The city has the power to call good evil and evil good and to persuade others to think and behave accordingly. Immorality is rampant and cruelty is popular not only because mankind is attracted to immorality and cruelty, but also because the city that has dominion over the kings of the earth approves them. The city appeals to the worst instinct of men and throws the weight of its power on the side of evil. So, through history, Christians are fed to lions, Jews are murdered by the millions, peasant villages are slaughtered for the sake of this or that policy.

Cruelty arises out of the desire of the city to have its own way, but its pleasures are usually the standard pleasures of this world, the things that money can buy; the appropriate symbol for the city is the prostitute, offering her favors for a price. If you feel removed from all of this corruption, consider the last time you spent an hour watching a commercial television network. How many of the commercials you saw urged you to indulge yourself with things that you did not need? How many of them used sexual attraction to entice you to buy almost anything from shaving lotion to soda pop? How many of them lied to you in the process? We are involved here not only in the prostitution of sex but also the prostitution of language itself.

The television commercial is no worse than a great many other institutions in modern society; but it is so common that it serves as an excellent illustration of the presence of the city that has dominion, right now, in life as we know it.

Since I believe we are living in the end-time, I believe that we feel the effects of this city today. We lose the prophetic edge of the vision if we say that the woman is Rome or Babylon. The city that has dominionstill has dominion and seeks to get its way among us. If the city is not resisted, it will get its way. Why do you suppose it is so easy for Christians to forsake the tough disciplines of Christian living for an almost continuous pursuit of pleasure? They are hearing the call of Babylon the Great, the prostitute that is the city which has dominion over the kings of the earth.

Because of this city, the end-time is an evil time. You can see what is meant by the solidarity of evil; it is what happens when a multitude pools not only its talents and energies but also its lusts and perversions and fuels them with the wealth, beauty, and power that a city makes possible.

This is the city that John saw. We call it by no particular name in the present age, but it is no less powerful because of that. It is the city at enmity with the city of God.

Yet Babylon the Great does not fall by the hand of God; she is destroyed by those whom she served and who served her.

And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the harlot; they will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and giving over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.
The power of the city is temporary because the city also is enslaved by powers greater than itself. When the usefulness of the city comes to an end, these powers will overcome the city and destroy it. "The beast will hate the harlot." No sentence in Scripture is more descriptive of the cannibalism of evil. If evil cannot feed on what is good, it will feed upon itself.

The city is doomed, because the beast will hate the harlot. There is in C.S. Lewis's eschatological fantasy That Hideous Strength an awful scene in which the old men who have conspired with evil forces to take over the world turn on one another with homicidal rage.2 It is a good parable of evil. If it cannot destroy others it will destroy itself-or be destroyed.

This can be said for Babylon the Great. It is a symbol of what man achieves without God. But life does not exist in a vacuum; where God is not, there evil forces work their will. Man is never independent of the supernatural. Jesus told of a man who was freed of an evil spirit but who did not then fill his life with God. Seven other evil spirits then moved in, Jesus said, "and the last state of that man became worse than the first." But Jesus did not tell the story as an illustration of an individual's spiritual condition. Rather, he said, "So shall it be also with this evil generation" (Matthew 12:43-45).

So it is with the city. It is beautiful, it is rich, it is splendid, it is powerful-and it is horrible and cruel. We rejoice that it is not permanent. If you begin to believe that you find yourself in a situation where the influence of the city threatens to overwhelm you, you might be comforted by these words of Walter Judd as he testified before a committee of Congress: "Every despot seems invincible until the last five minutes."

Our concern is for those Christians who might give up and join Babylon the Great because they think the last five minutes will never come. For them and for us is the appeal of chapter 18, which details the fall of the city: "Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues" (18:4).

1 Walter Rauschenbusch, The Theology of the Social Gospel, Macmillan, 1918, pp. 77-94.

2 C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, Macmillan, 1970, pp. 352-355.

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