Revelation 18The Fall of Babylon

This glorious, bright, authoritative angel is emitting light, and he shouts with a powerful voice (a “mega voice,” he called it, from the Greek megalē phōnē), declaring prophetically the doom of Babylon. His appearance reflects how close he is to the glory of God, and how recently he’s been in God’s manifest presence: he’s literally coming from the presence of God and still shining like it. He is resplendent with God’s glory in this moment, because he has just received a direct command from God Himself.

The Greek word for his “splendor” is most often used for God (Ezekiel 43:2; 1 Timothy 6:16; Psalm 104:2). Daniel 10:6 also describes an angel shining bright, and we could imagine that one had come from the presence of God too. Moses was marked by a lingering radiance as he came from the presence of God (Exodus 34:29–35); he had to veil his face so they didn’t see that it was fading.

The tables discussed: What is the difference between human splendor, angelic splendor and God’s splendor? How do we know which one we’re seeing?

So this is heaven’s prophetic declaration, eulogizing the coming death of Babylon.

Babylon is the great prostitute of chapter 17, which represents the world’s false religions, including unfaithful Christians. Babylon is a typology throughout Scripture for all peoples who are unfaithful to God. And there’s a contrast between the prostitute Babylon and the bride of the Lamb (19:7–8), a very specific contrast that runs all the way into chapter 21.

Two of those he filled in out loud. First-century Babylon was Rome, and Rome was exploiting lots of nations, but specifically Egypt: there were people starving in Egypt while everyone in Rome lived in excessive luxury, because Rome was taking all their stuff and their grain. And on the wine: in the health world now, alcohol is looked at as a poison, for good reason, even if you take the addiction part out of it. So there’s poison versus healing going on there.

Then, Babylon is also the great city that in the last days will hold sway over all the nations of the world. John’s readers would have seen this as Rome. However, in calling it Babylon, John, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, leaves room for it to be any city that holds that sway in the last days. It certainly could be Rome again, with all the corruption we see there, but there’s room for other cities.

Ancient writers regularly wrote lavish praise of the power of important cities, and many did this specifically about Rome. John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, writes descriptively about the city’s power and wealth to condemn it and write its funeral eulogy, instead of writing about its greatness. He flips the script.

“Fallen! Fallen!” The prophetic declaration is stated as if it’s already done, just as Isaiah 21:9 (“Babylon has fallen, has fallen!”) and Jeremiah 51:8 do about Babylon. That happens all through the prophetic texts: things that haven’t happened yet are said as if they’re already done.

The haunt for animals was prophesied about the actual Babylon by Isaiah and Jeremiah, and John echoes it: “desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses; there the owls will dwell, and there the wild goats will leap about. Hyenas will inhabit her strongholds, jackals her luxurious palaces” (Isaiah 13:21–22); “So desert creatures and hyenas will live there, and there the owl will dwell. It will never again be inhabited” (Jeremiah 50:39).

The Hebrew word for “wild goats” in Isaiah is also used for demons in a lot of other scriptures. So Isaiah ties the demonic and the animals together, the same way John does here.

Now another voice. This is likely another angel speaking on God’s behalf with the full force of God’s authority. The evidence goes both ways: the voice says “my people,” which sounds like God speaking, but then talks about God in the third person: “God has remembered.” So it’s most likely an angel, or even the altar crying out, as we saw earlier in Revelation, with the full force of God’s authority.

“Come out of her, my people”: this is one of the big commands of the book of Revelation, heaven’s command to His people. Come out from sin. Come out from false religions. Come out from the partnership with the demonic. Come out from the excessive luxuries and the exploitation. Come out from Babylon.

This command echoes Jeremiah and Isaiah when they were in exile in Babylon itself: “Flee out of Babylon; leave the land of the Babylonians, and be like the goats that lead the flock” (Jeremiah 50:8); “Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing! Come out from it and be pure, you who carry the articles of the Lord’s house” (Isaiah 52:11). See also Genesis 12:1, when God calls Abraham to leave his country and his people, and Jeremiah 51:45. Paul echoes these texts in his second letter to the church in Corinth: “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17).

Notice: Christians are not called to conquer Babylon; we’re called to escape, to come out. If we try to conquer her, we’ll be sucked in. We have to come out from her and be separate.

This call to be separate references back to Jesus’ call to the churches, specifically in Sardis (3:1–6) and Laodicea (3:14–22). Remember, those letters set up all the themes for the book. The word hagios, “saint,” used all through Revelation and the New Testament, literally means separated to God, set apart for God. This concept is intrinsic to the text.

“Come out,” otherwise you’ll share in the punishment of Babylon. If you don’t come out, you’ll share in her sin, and you’ll share in her punishment. The call not to share in the punishment of the wicked echoes Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth: “Nevertheless, when we are judged in this way by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be finally condemned with the world” (1 Corinthians 11:32).

The tables discussed: What is the appeal of other religions today? How do we combat that?

A man at one of the tables raised the prosperity gospel. He agreed, 100%: there are absolutely unfaithful Christians, and that could be considered false religion as well. A number of denominations have wandered from the faith, and the first mark of it was that they lost their foundation in Scripture: they got wishy-washy on infallibility and inerrancy, then came out and said they don’t believe it, and then accepted a whole bunch of things antithetical to Scripture. There are other Christians with a high view of Scripture who interpret it differently than you or I, and he’d still go into the foxhole with them. But some interpretations can’t square with Scripture, even from people who say they hold a high view of it, so discernment is required. The dividing line is always the Scripture.

“Her sins are piled up to heaven” sounds a lot like Jeremiah: “We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to our own land, for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the heavens” (Jeremiah 51:9). When sins are that high, God has definitely noticed!

It’s in God’s line of sight now, like the tower of Babel (Genesis 11). God sees it and says, okay, this isn’t good.

This is now John’s own prophetic commentary, his prophetic wishes for Babylon. You had heaven’s prophetic declaration, then the voice from heaven; there are more declarations coming in a minute, but this is John’s.

“Pay her back double” echoes the psalmist: “Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us” (Psalm 137:8), and the prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 50:15, 29). Paying back double shows that the punishment is more than complete (Isaiah 40:2; Jeremiah 16:18; 17:18). Double payback was also the punishment the law expected for a thief (Exodus 22:4, 7, 9).

Babylon has been a thief. She’s been extorting people, so she needs to pay back double. But there’s also a completion to this.

Babylon as “queen” comes from Isaiah 47:8–9, and it evokes Jezebel (2:20) and the prostitute’s own machinations. She sees herself as queen.

There’s a pride and an arrogance in our culture tied to this, he said. You’ve got to make the connection.

The arrogance of Babylon saying it will never fall echoes Isaiah 32:9; Jeremiah 48:11; 49:31; Ezekiel 16:49; Amos 6:1; Obadiah 3. Ironically, Rome (the first-century Babylon, the Babylon to the first hearers) claimed to be the eternal city. The thoughtless lavishness of Roman elites at the expense of the other nations invited God’s wrath, as in Amos 4:1–2.

Ancient Babylon had fallen in a single night because of its hubris, as we see in Daniel (Daniel 5:30): it didn’t think anyone could ever destroy it, while Persia was on the doorstep. The new Babylon’s destruction would be instant too, but by judgment from God, with fire.

“I will never mourn.” The prostitute queen Babylon should be mourning, because her husband has died. Her bridegroom is materialism, and demons, and false religions. They’re all dead, so she should be repenting and mourning, but she won’t mourn.

“Consumed by fire” echoes the prophecy against Babylon in Jeremiah 51 (51:25, 30, 32, 58). Fire will also test each person’s work on the day of the Lord (1 Corinthians 3:13).

“Mighty is the Lord God who judges her” is a line of praise. Even in judgment, God’s greatness and praise can and must be declared by His people. Praise God all the time. The sin of the world does not detract one iota from the greatness and praise of our God!

Then the kings of the earth realize Babylon’s doom and mourn over her destruction. This is the first of three groups in mourning: the kings, the merchants, and then the sea captains.

The kings have tied their prosperity to the corrupt, immoral, exploitative prosperity of Babylon. Instead of opposing her horrifying acts, they partnered with them, or at least turned a blind eye to them, so they could enrich themselves. Now the one they’ve hitched their fortunes to is gone, so they mourn. There’s more fire: “the smoke of her burning” (like Isaiah 34:10; Ezekiel 28:18; 2 Peter 3:12).

“Woe,” ouai in the Greek, has the literal sound of mourning in it, kind of an onomatopoeia for mourning, and it was heard that way in the first century.

The lament over the merchants echoes Ezekiel’s lament over Tyre: “Your wealth, merchandise and wares, your mariners, sailors and shipwrights, your merchants and all your soldiers, and everyone else on board will sink into the heart of the sea on the day of your shipwreck” (Ezekiel 27:27).

The slave trade is named as one of the things to be destroyed. That echoes Ezekiel: “Greece, Tubal and Meshek did business with you; they traded human beings and articles of bronze for your wares” (Ezekiel 27:13). This kind of trade was often the kidnapping of children, and Scripture treats it as a capital offense (Deuteronomy 24:7).

The tables discussed: What’s the difference between good riches and bad riches? Good beauty and bad beauty?

Now the merchants, businessmen and traders themselves get in on the mourning. They were mourned about; now they mourn. The world will be sad about this.

“In one hour”: this is the second time the phrase is used. It’s the language of sudden, shocking arrival. No one saw this coming. That’s what it means.

Now the sea captains also begin to lament, mourn and eulogize the city. Their lament echoes Ezekiel’s lament over Tyre as well: “The shorelands will quake when your sailors cry out. All who handle the oars will abandon their ships; the mariners and all the sailors will stand on the shore. They will raise their voice and cry bitterly over you; they will sprinkle dust on their heads and roll in ashes” (Ezekiel 27:28–30).

“They will throw dust on their heads” is a desperate sign of mourning for the poor, when there’s not even any ash around (Joshua 7:6). People who don’t even have a fire to warm them just toss dust on themselves.

The earth is weeping while heaven and God’s people rejoice, because justice is now available to them. We don’t gloat. But we can rejoice when evil is thrown down and destroyed. The rejoicing over Babylon’s defeat echoes Jeremiah: “Then heaven and earth and all that is in them will shout for joy over Babylon” (Jeremiah 51:48).

Another mighty angel gets in on the destruction. “A mighty angel … boulder”: the angel finishes the job and declares completeness and finality to the destruction, levelling even more charges against the city. This is like Jeremiah 51:59–64, where Jeremiah’s scroll of disasters against Babylon is tied to a stone and thrown into the Euphrates: “So will Babylon sink to rise no more.”

In the Greek, ou mē, “no more at all,” is repeated six times, like a bell ringing out the finality of the destruction of the city. The arts, crafts, commerce and customs of the city have been permanently silenced.

Now this punishment obviously has not already happened, because Rome has not been utterly destroyed like this. Some people saw the fall of Rome in the fifth century as this, but it still wasn’t destroyed like this. It’s still reserved for another day, perhaps for another city that holds the kind of sway Babylon did.

No worker, no sound, no bride. The silencing of music echoes Ezekiel, “I will put an end to your noisy songs, and the music of your harps will be heard no more” (Ezekiel 26:13), and Jeremiah, “I will banish from them the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, the sound of millstones and the light of the lamp” (Jeremiah 25:10). The ending of the joyful sounds of weddings was pronounced about Judah and Jerusalem too (Jeremiah 7:34; 16:9).

“Your merchants were the world’s important people” echoes Isaiah 23:8, about Tyre, “whose merchants are princes.”

“By your magic spell” echoes Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.” Babylon was a sorceress (Isaiah 47:9). This refers to her partnering with the demonic, and her sway over the nations.

“Led astray” is the language of apostasy, falling away from God: taking people who could have had a right relationship with God and pulling them into a perverted relationship with Babylon and with false religions. This will be an anti-Christ place. Most of the governments in the world have already set themselves up to be this in some way; the seeds of it are there.

“The blood of prophets and of God’s holy people”: this is a persecuting-Christians place. Jesus Himself warned us of this kind of treatment (Matthew 5:12; 24:9; John 15:20). God’s dealing of vengeance for the blood of the innocent echoes Jeremiah 2:34. The martyrs from chapter 6 won’t have to wait any longer: justice is being done!