Notes on the book of Revelations/Chapter 18

by John Nelson Darby

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Having thus seen her in her active will, in her connection with the will of others, and her end in wealth and fatness, the announcement of her fall as a corporate system is declared.

And here I find much more of the purely worldly part of the system; and this its character, though the other be not denied. And here she is seen as fallen. Babylon the great, not spoken of here as the mother of harlots, the whore, or the woman, but simply as Babylon the great, as a city or dwelling-place. She had not ceased to exist, however, at all; but she was fallen and become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every unclean spirit, and the hold of every unclean and hateful bird. This was her present condition and judgment—her condition morally—and as discerned by the Church, who, through the Spirit, knew all things on the testimony of God.

The fall of Babylon seems to be her losing the place of active governing or leading power, ruling as such, the beast and many waters, involving her moral degradation not destruction.

God now calls His people out of her. I do not say that this call had not application whenever the truth of the third verse was perceived; but it was now definite and positive, for the truth was declared judicially? Woe to them who remained! Her sins had reached to heaven, and they would receive of her plagues if they stayed. It was a warning on account of consequences now. The separation must be made, for God had begun to judge her. She had already fallen from power; the seductive power of wealth and corruption. She still, it seems, said in her heart, she should be a queen and see no sorrow—still maintained her pride, though she was fallen; and the Church knew God was now judging her.^[1] The desolation of all the temporal prosperity of the great city, is sorrow and trouble to the kings of the earth. This seems a distinct thing from the ten horns, hating her and burning her with fire. The kings of the earth are not these specific ten horns; and indeed the. horns were the power of the kingdoms, exercised by the then ruling power, perhaps; but all those who had been dwelling in the security of the settled and ordered earthly system,—the kings of the earth, as the inhabitants of the earth,—those who had been committing fornication with the great whore,—these bewailed her burning.^[2] The ten were a definite class, brought forward with the beast, in his last actings against the Lamb, for the accomplishment of which God puts it into their heart to get rid of the great whore. The ten kings are never spoken of as committing fornication with the harlot. The kings of the earth and inhabitants of the earth are mentioned as having so conducted themselves. The rising of the ten kings into active power, is a distinctly noticed and subsequent event. Their specific description as active, is from xvii. 12 to ver. 17.

The destruction and judgment of the great city involved the ruin of all mere secular interests—wealth—all that was Tyrian in its character—though souls of men had been added to that renowned city’s traffic; for the great city traded in them also. Any thing to enrich, characterized the conduct of the city, taught by direct and accomplished apostasy. The city was, in a certain sense, distinct from the merchants: she was the whole system—they stood aloof from, the fear of her torment when God was judging her,—and the ship-masters withal. But heaven and the holy apostles and prophets were called to rejoice over her. She had been the enemy of heaven, as the whole lust of the earth, to shut out God, and withal the persecutor and enemy of the revelation and testimony of the heavenly glory, the judgment of the world, and the coming of the Son of man—in a word, of the great power of testimony by which the Church was constituted in the world. Then came the statement of the sudden and total manner of her final destruction.^[3] Her worldly wealth, the power of riches, is marked as her great final character as thus judged and destroyed: and here she was like Babylon of old; and in her was found all the blood slain upon the earth—as in Jerusalem all that was shed up to her destruction—as being the chief and perfected form of apostasy from God.

In this description of Babylon we have the whole spirit and character of the world except power, royal power; for that is of God however used, and that (in the hands of the kings of the earth) was corrupted by her; and then these ten horns or kings hated her and destroyed all its fulness and power. These were not Babylon, but they gave their power to the beast; so that power also which did come from God, might be found in open rebellion against Him to whose hand all power was intrusted and given—the Lamb; and thus the last and final form of evil be produced, involving (for it was then the question whose power was to stand) the destruction and setting aside of the form and subsistence of apostasy.

Thus, in Babylon we have wealth, corruption, sorceries, arts, luxuries, bodies and souls of men sold, fornication committed with the kings and dwellers upon earth, and they made drunk with it:^[4] the principle of confederate will, but the corruption not the exercise of royal secular power as of God though it might, by seduction, rule and govern this power, and thus separate it from its Divine source, and actually set aside and hinder the unqualified assertion of its supremacy, as of God over all. This, as we have seen, is distinct from the direct apostasy of power, which is founded on the hatred and consumption of the whore, and has its place in the beast. Power was given to Nebuchadnezzar, and he built Babylon: but here we have the woman in the exercise of her own will corrupting and ruling, uniting the characters of Israel towards God (save, that she was a harlot not an adulteress, for she had been but espoused as a chaste virgin to Christ), and Tyre towards the world. When in exercise we have always the ecclesiastical taking the lead in evil, as in Kore and the chief priests: so here this mysterious’ woman sits on the beast and many waters. When the kings begin to act, and are going to give their power by their will, they begin by her destruction or consumption at any rate. And note the act of Christ’s power is on the feet and toes themselves. God judges Babylon as a great moral system denying his supremacy, not in open hostility to Christ’s power.

We have the fall of Babylon distinguished, I think, from the destruction of Babylon. Her fall includes moral degradation, and being the dwelling-place of unclean spirits. This is judgment on her; and she falls because of her making the nations drink of the wine of the poison of her fornication xiv. 8. This we find in the ecclesiastical course, so to speak, of closing facts. Her final judgment we find in the close of the filling up the wrath of God cxvi. 19. The connection of the former seems to be with xvili. 2; of the latter, with xviii. 21.

1. The full judgment comes after God’s people are come out of her. Her fall is a warning to them, these are rapidly brought together here at her judgment.
2. See Ezekiel xxvii. 35, 36, and the previous verses, The Prince of Tyre sits in the midst of the seas.
3. There seems to me, an intimate connection between the continuance of Babylon and the Serpent being in heavenly places: he exercises his power thus as influence, secretly, as false worship. He is the object of false worship; and hence, in this dispensation, he works by the corruption of Christian profession; and yet this still as the god of this world, which title he cannot lose, for it is all he has:—“the course of this world… the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. This is said of him as still έν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις in the heavenlies.
   ⁠False worship, as the source of power, would be its heathen character; false worship, as the source of means of fellowship its Babylonish character in the Christian dispensation: in a word, this is rather His anti-priestly character and spiritual influence: the man of sin, or lawless one, is not revealed. Power continues outwardly owned of God, and the letter [he that letteth] remains: when he is cast down he loses this character which is opposed to Christ as Priest, and to Him as acting by His Spirit in maintaining the holy communion of His saints and washing their feet. He then raises power as of earth (the king doing according to his will) against the heavens, for he has no place in them even falsely: he could render his influence as anti-priest paramount to supreme civil authority, which is of God using the name of God falsely in religion; but he cannot, save an open rebellion when cast down, bring power against God.
4. The character of Babylon as whore, seems lost by the enmity of the ten horns, because she cannot help it. The religious mischief is, after this, done by the false prophet, the other form of the two horned beast. Thereon the character of Babylon becomes more purely secular; but the devil dwells there, or it is the habitation of demons, and not therefore simply worldly interests.