_THE BEAST AND BABYLON._
REV. xvii.
At the close of chap. xvi. we reached the end of the three great
series of judgments which constitute the chief contents of the
Revelation of St. John,--the series of the Seals, the Trumpets, and
the Bowls. It cannot surprise us, however, that at this point other
visions of judgment are to follow. Already we had reached the end at
chap. vi. 17, and again at chap. xi. 18; yet on both occasions the
same general subject was immediately afterwards renewed, and the same
truths were again presented to us, though in a different aspect and
with heightened colouring. We are prepared therefore to meet something
of the same kind now. Yet it is not the whole history of that "little
season" with which the Apocalypse deals that is brought under our
notice in fresh and striking vision. One great topic, the greatest
that has hitherto been spoken of, is selected for fuller
treatment,--the fall of Babylon. Twice before we have heard of Babylon
and of her doom,--at chap. xiv. 8, when the second angel of the first
group gathered around the Lord as He came to judgment exclaimed,
"Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great, which hath made all the nations
to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication;" and again at
chap. xvi. 19, when under the seventh Bowl we were told that "Babylon
the great was remembered in the sight of God, to give unto her the cup
of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath." So much importance,
however, is attached by the Seer to the fortunes of this city that two
chapters of his book--the seventeenth and the eighteenth--are devoted
to the more detailed descriptions of her and of her fate. These two
chapters form one of the most striking, if at the same time one of the
most difficult, portions of his book. We have first to listen to the
language of St. John; and, long as the passage is, it will be
necessary to take the whole of chap. xvii. at once:--
And there came one of the seven angels that had the seven bowls,
and spake with me, saying, Come hither; I will show thee the
judgment of the great harlot that sitteth upon many waters: with
whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and they that
dwell in the earth were made drunken with the wine of her
fornication. And he carried me away in the Spirit into a
wilderness: and I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-coloured
beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten
horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked
with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a
golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean things of her
fornication, and upon her forehead a name written, Mystery,
Babylon the great, the mother of the harlots and of the
abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the
blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus:
and when I saw her, I marvelled with a great marvelling. And the
angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee
the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her,
which hath the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that thou
sawest was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss:
and he goeth into perdition. And they that dwell on the earth
shall marvel, they whose name hath not been written in the book of
life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast,
how that he was, and is not, and shall be present. Here is the
mind that hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on
which the woman sitteth. And they are seven kings: the five are
fallen, the one is the other is not yet come; and when he cometh,
he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is
not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goeth
into perdition. And the ten horns that thou sawest are ten kings,
which have received no kingdom as yet; but they receive authority
as kings with the beast for one hour. These have one mind, and
they give their power and authority unto the beast. These shall
war against the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them: for He is
Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they also shall overcome
that are with Him called, and chosen, and faithful. And he saith
unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth,
are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. And the ten
horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the
harlot, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her
flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire. For God did put in
their hearts to do His mind, and to come to one mind, and to give
their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God should be
accomplished. And the woman whom thou sawest is the great city,
which reigneth over the kings of the earth (xvii.).
The main questions connected with the interpretation of this chapter
are, What are we to understand by the beast spoken of, and what by
Babylon? The Seer is summoned by one of the angels that had the seven
Bowls to behold a spectacle which fills him with _a great marvelling_.
Thus summoned, he obeys; and he is immediately carried away into a
wilderness, where he sees _a woman sitting upon a scarlet-coloured
beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns_.
1. What is this beast, and what in particular is his relation to the
beast of chap. xiii.?
At first sight the points of difference appear to be neither few nor
unimportant. The order of the heads and of the horns is different, the
horns taking precedence of the heads in the earlier, the heads of the
horns in the later, of the two.[444] The first is said to have had
upon "his heads" names of blasphemy; the second is "full of" such
names.[445] There are diadems on the horns of the former, but not of
the latter.[446] Of the first we are told that he comes up "out of the
sea," of the second that he is about to come up "out of the
abyss."[447] In addition to these particulars, it will be observed
that several traits of the first beast are not mentioned in connexion
with the second. These last points of difference may be easily set
aside. They create no inconsistency between the descriptions given;
and we have already had occasion for the remark, that it is the manner
of the Seer to enlarge in one part of his book his account of an
object also referred to in another part. His readers are expected to
combine the different particulars in order to form a complete
conception of the object.
The more positive points of difference, again, may be simply and
naturally explained. In chap. xiii. 1 the horns take precedence of the
heads because the beast is beheld rising up out of the sea, the horns
in this case appearing before the heads. In the second case, when the
beast is seen in the wilderness, the order of nature is preserved. The
distribution of the names of blasphemy is in all probability to be
accounted for in a similar manner. At the moment when the Seer beholds
them in chap. xiii. his attention has been arrested by the heads of
the beast, and he has not yet seen the whole body. When he beholds
them in chap. xvii., the entire beast is before him, and is "full of"
such names. The presence of diadems upon the ten horns in the first,
and their absence in the second, beast depends upon the consideration
that it is a common method of St. John to dwell upon an object
presented to him ideally before he treats it historically.[448] We
know that the ten horns are ten kings or kingdoms[449]; and the diadem
is the appropriate symbol of royalty. When therefore we think of the
beast in his ideal or ultimate manifestation in the ten kings of whom
we are shortly to read, we think of the horns as crowned with diadems;
and it is thus accordingly that we see the beast in chap. xiii. On the
other hand, at the point immediately before us "the ten kings have
received no kingdom as yet;"[450] and the diadems are wanting. The
application of this principle further explains the difference between
what are apparently two origins for these beasts,--"the sea" and "the
abyss." The former is mentioned in chap. xiii., because there we have
the beast before us in himself, and in the source from which he
springs. The latter is mentioned in chap. xvii., because the beast has
now reached a definite period of his history to which the coming up
out of "the abyss" belongs. The "sea" is his real source; the "abyss"
has been only his temporary abode. The monster springs out of the sea,
lives, dies, goes into the abyss, rises from the dead, is roused to
his last paroxysm of rage, is defeated, and passes into
perdition.[451] This last is his _history_ in chap. xvii., and that
history is in perfect harmony with what is stated of him in chap.
xiii.,--that by nature he comes up out of the sea.
While the points of difference between the beasts of chap. xiii. and
chap. xvii. may thus without difficulty be reconciled, the points of
agreement are such as to lead directly to the identification of the
two. Some of these have already come under our notice in speaking of
the differences. Others are still more striking. Thus the beast of
chap. xiii. is described as the vicegerent of the dragon[452]; and the
object of the dragon is to make war upon the remnant of the woman's
seed.[453] When therefore we find the beast of chap. xvii. engaged in
the same work,[454] we must either resort to the most unlikely of all
conclusions--that the dragon has two vicegerents--or we must admit
that the two beasts are one. Again, the characteristic of a rising
from the dead is so unexpected and mysterious that it is extremely
difficult to assign it to two different agencies; yet we formerly saw
that this characteristic belongs to the beast of chap. xiii., and we
shall immediately see that it belongs also to that of chap. xvii. Nay
more, it is to be noticed that both in chap. xiii. and in chap. xvii.
the marvelling of the world after the beast is connected with his
resurrection state.[455] This was undoubtedly the case in chap. xiii.;
and in the present chapter the cause of the world's astonishment is
not less expressly said to be its beholding in the beast _how that he
was, and is not, and shall be present_.[456] Let us add to what has
been said that the figures of the Apocalypse are the product of so
rich and fertile an imagination that, had a difference between the two
beasts been intended, it would, we may believe, have been more
distinctly marked; and the conclusion is inevitable that the beast
before us is that also of the thirteenth chapter.
Turning then to the beast as here represented, we have to note one or
two particulars regarding him, either new or stated with greater
fulness and precision than before; while, at the same time, we have
the explanation of the angel to help us in interpreting the vision.
(1) The beast _was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the
abyss: and he goeth into perdition_. The words are a travesty of what
we read of the Son of man in chap. i.: "I am the first and the last,
and the living One; and I became dead: and, behold, I am alive for
evermore."[457] An antichrist is before us, who has been slaughtered
unto death, and the stroke of whose death shall be healed.[458] Still
further we seem entitled to infer that when this beast appears he
shall have the marks of his death upon him. _They that dwell on the
earth shall marvel when they behold the beast, how that he was, and is
not, and shall be present._ The inference is fair that there must be
something _visible_ upon him by which these different states may be
distinguished. In other words, the beast exhibits marks which show
that he had both died and passed through death. He is the counterpart
of "the Lamb standing as though it had been slaughtered."[459]
(2) _The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.
And they are seven kings: the five are fallen, the one is, the other
is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little while._
Notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary by numerous and
able expositors, these words cannot be applied directly to any seven
emperors of Rome. It may be granted that the Seer had the thought of
Rome sitting upon its seven hills in his eye as one of the
manifestations of the beast, but the whole tenor of his language is
too wide and comprehensive to permit the thought that the beast
itself is Rome. Besides this, the heads are spoken of as being also
"mountains;" and we cannot say of any five of the seven hills of Rome
that they "are fallen," or of any one of them that it is "not yet
come." Nor could even any five successive kings of Rome be described
as "fallen," for that word denotes passing away, not simply by death,
but by violent and conspicuous overthrow;[460] and no series of five
emperors in other respects suitable to the circumstances can be
mentioned some of whom at least did not die peaceably in their beds.
Finally, the word "kings" in the language of prophecy denotes, not
personal kings, but kingdoms.[461] These seven "mountains" or seven
"kings," therefore, are the manifestations of the beast in successive
eras of oppression suffered by the people of God. Egypt, Assyria,
Babylonia, Persia, and Greece are the first five; and they are
"fallen"--fallen in the open ruin which they brought upon themselves
by wickedness. Rome is the sixth, and "it is" in the Apostle's days.
The seventh will come when Rome, beheld by the Seer as on the brink of
destruction, has perished, and when its mighty empire has been rent in
pieces. These pieces will then be the ten horns which occupy the place
of the seventh head. They will be even more wicked and more oppressive
to the true followers of Christ than the great single empires which
preceded them. In them the antichristian might of the beast will
culminate. They are "ten" in number. They cover the whole "earth."
That universality of dominion which was always the beast's ideal will
then become his actual possession. They _receive authority as kings
with the beast for one hour_; and together with him they shall rage
against the Lamb. Hence--
(3) _And the beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth,
and is of the seven._ The reader will notice that the expression of
the eighth verse of the chapter "and is about to come up out of the
abyss," as also another expression of the same verse, "and shall be
present," are here dropped. We have met with a similar omission in the
case of the Lord Himself at chap. xi. 17, and the explanation now is
the same as then. The beast can no more be thought of as "about to
come up out of the abyss," because he is viewed as come, or as about
"to be present," because he is present. In other words, the beast has
attained the highest point of his history and action. He has reached a
position analogous to that of our Lord after His resurrection and
exaltation, when all authority was given Him both in heaven and on
earth, and when He began the dispensation of the Spirit, founding His
Church, strengthening her for the execution of her mission, and
perfecting her for her glorious future. In like manner at the time
here spoken of the beast is at the summit of his evil influence. In
one sense he is the same beast as he was in Egypt, in Assyria, in
Babylonia, in Persia, in Greece, and in Rome. In another sense he is
not the same, for the wickedness of all these earlier stages has been
concentrated into one. He has "great wrath, knowing that he has but a
short season."[462] At the last moment he rages with the keen and
determined energy of despair. Thus he may be spoken of as "an eighth;"
and thus he is also "of the seven," not one of the seven, but the
highest, and fiercest, and most cruel embodiment of them all. Thus
also he is identified with the "Little Horn" of Daniel, which has
"eyes like the eyes of a man, and a mouth speaking great things."[463]
That Little Horn takes the place of three out of the ten horns which
are plucked up by the roots; that is, of the eighth, ninth, and tenth
horns. It is thus itself an eighth; and we have already had occasion
to notice that in the science of numbers the number eight marks the
beginning of a new life, with quickened and heightened powers. Thus
also fresh light is thrown upon the statement which so closely follows
the description of the beast,--that _he goeth into perdition_. As in
the case of Belshazzar, of Nebuchadnezzar, and of the traitor Judas,
the instant when he reaches the summit of his guilty ambition is also
the instant of his fall.
Before proceeding to consider the meaning of the "Babylon" spoken of
in this chapter, it may be well to recall for a moment the principle
lying at the bottom of the exposition now given of the "beast." That
principle is that St. John sees in the world-power, or power of the
world, the contrast, or travesty, or mocking counterpart of the true
Christ, of the world's rightful King. The latter lived, died, was
buried, rose from the grave, and returned to His Father to work with
quickened energy and to enjoy everlasting glory; the former lived, was
brought to nought by Christ, was plunged into the abyss, came up out
of the abyss, reached his highest point of influence, and went into
perdition. Such is the form in which the Seer's visions take
possession of his mind; and it will be seen that the mould of thought
is precisely the same as that of chap. xx. The fact that it is so may
be regarded as a proof that the interpretation yet to be offered of
that chapter is correct.
It may be further noticed that the beast's being brought to nought and
being sent into the abyss takes place under the sixth, or Roman, head.
We know that this was actually the case, because it was under the
Roman government that our Lord gained His victory. The history of the
beast, however, does not close with this defeat. He must rise again;
and he does this as the seventh head, which is associated with the ten
horns. In them and "with" them he assumes a greater power than ever,
gaining all the additional force which is connected with a
resurrection life. The objection may indeed be made that such an
exposition is not in correspondence either with the view taken in this
commentary that the beast is active from the very beginning of the
Christian era, or with those facts of history which show that, instead
of falling, Rome continued to exist for a lengthened period after the
completion of the Redeemer's victory.
But, as to the first of these difficulties, it is not necessary to
think that the beast rages in his highest and ultimate form from the
very instant when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended to His Father.
That was rather the moment of the beast's destruction, the moment
when, under the sixth head, he "is and is not;" and a certain extent
of time must be interposed before he rises in his new, or seventh,
head. The Seer, too, deals largely in climax; and, although in doing
so he is always occupied with the climactic idea rather than with the
time needed for its manifestation, the element of time, if our
attention is called to it, must be allowed its place. Now in the
development of the beast there is climax. In chap. xi. 7 it is said
that "the beast that cometh up out of the abyss shall make war with"
the two faithful witnesses "when they shall have finished their
testimony," and this finishing of their testimony implies time. Again,
in chap. xii. 17 the increased wrath of the dragon against the remnant
of the woman's seed appears to be subsequent to the persecution of the
woman in the same chapter.[464] No doubt the thought of the increased
wrath of the dragon is the main point, but it may be quite truly said
that some time at least is needed for the increase. The view,
therefore, that the beast rages from the beginning of the Christian
era, from the moment when he rises after his fall, or, in other words,
is loosed after having been shut up into the abyss, is not
inconsistent with the view that his rage goes on augmenting until it
attains its culminating point.
The answer to the second difficulty is to be found in the consideration
that to the Seer the whole Christian era appears no more than "a little
season," in which events must follow closely on one another, so closely
that the time required for their evolution passes almost entirely, if
not indeed entirely, out of his field of vision. He has no thought that
Rome will last for centuries. "The times or the seasons the Father hath
set within His own authority."[465] The guilt of Rome is so dark and
frightful that the Seer can fix his mind upon nothing but that overthrow
which shall be the just punishment of her crimes. She is not to be
doomed; she is doomed. She is not to perish; she is perishing. Divine
vengeance has already overtaken her. Her last hour is come; and the ten
kings who are to follow her are already upon their thrones. Thus these
kings come into immediate juxtaposition with the beast in that last
stage of his history which had begun, but had not reached its greatest
intensity, before Rome is supposed to fall.
2. The second figure of this chapter now meets us; and we have to ask,
Who is the woman that sits on the beast? or, What is meant by Babylon?
No more important question can be asked in connexion with the
interpretation of the Apocalypse. The thought of Babylon is evidently
one by which the writer is moved to a greater than ordinary degree.
Twice already have we had premonitions of her doom, and that in
language which shows how deeply it was felt.[466] In the passage
before us he is awed by the contemplation of her splendour and her
guilt. And in chap. xviii. he describes the lamentation of the world
over her fate in language of almost unparalleled sublimity and pathos.
What is Babylon? We must make up our minds upon the point, or the
effort to interpret one of the most important parts of the Revelation
of St. John can result in nothing but defeat.
Very various opinions have been entertained as to the meaning of
Babylon, of which the most famous are that the word is a name for
papal Rome, pagan Rome, or a great world-city of the future which
shall stand to the whole earth in a relation similar to that occupied
by Rome towards the world of its day. These opinions cannot be
discussed here; and no more can be attempted than to show, with as
much brevity as possible, that by Babylon is to be understood the
degenerate Church, or that principle of degenerate religion which
allies itself with the world, and more than all else brings dishonour
upon the name and the cause of Christ.
(1) Babylon is the representative of religious, not civil, degeneracy
and wickedness. She is a harlot, and her name is associated with the
most reckless and unrestrained fornication. But fornication and
adultery are throughout the Old Testament the emblem of religious
degeneracy, and not of civil misrule. In numerous passages familiar to
every reader of Scripture both terms are employed to describe the
departure of Israel from the worship of Jehovah and a holy life to the
worship of idols and the degrading sensuality by which such worship
was everywhere accompanied. Nor ought we to imagine that adultery, not
fornication, is the most suitable expression for religious degeneracy.
In some important respects the latter is the more suitable of the two.
It brings out more strongly the ideas of playing the harlot with "many
lovers"[467] and of sinning for "hire."[468] In this sense then it
seems proper to understand the charge of fornication brought in so
many passages of the Apocalypse against Babylon. Not in their civil,
but in their religious, aspect have the kings of the earth committed
fornication with her, and they that dwell on the earth been made drunk
with the wine of her fornication. Her sin has been that of leading men
astray from the worship of the true God, and of substituting for the
purity and unworldliness of Christian living the irreligious and
worldly spirit of the "earth." To this it may be added that, had
Babylon not been the symbol of religious declension, she could hardly
have borne upon her forehead the term MYSTERY. St. John could not
have used a word connected only with religious associations to express
anything but a religious state awakening the awe, and wonder, and
perplexity of a religious mind. Babylon, therefore, represents persons
who are not only sinful, but who have fallen into sin by treachery to
a high and holy standard formerly acknowledged by them.
(2) We have already had occasion to allude to a fact which must
immediately receive further notice,--that to the eye of St. John there
is an aspect of Jerusalem different from that in which she is regarded
as the holy and beloved city of God. Jerusalem in that aspect and
Babylon are one. Each is "the great city," and the same epithet could
not be applied to both were they not to be identified. Not only so.
The words here used of Babylon lead us directly to what our Lord once
said of Jerusalem. "Therefore," said Jesus, "behold, I send unto you
prophets, and wise men, and scribes: some of them shall ye kill and
crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and
persecute from city to city: that upon you may come all the righteous
blood shed on the earth, from the blood of Abel the righteous unto the
blood of Zachariah son of Barachiah, whom ye slew between the
sanctuary and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall
come upon this generation."[469] Precisely similar to this is the
language of the Seer, _And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of
the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus_.
It may indeed be thought impossible that under any circumstances
whatever St. John could have applied an epithet like that of Babylon,
steeped in so many associations of lust, and bloodshed, and
oppression, to the metropolis of Israel, the city of God. But in this
very book he has illustrated the reverse. He has already spoken of
Jerusalem as represented by names felt by a pious Jew to be the most
terrible of the Old Testament,--"Sodom and Egypt."[470] The prophets
before him had employed language no less severe. "Hear the word of the
Lord," said Isaiah, addressing the inhabitants of the holy city, "ye
rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of
Gomorrah,"[471] and again, "How is the faithful city become an harlot,
she that was full of judgment! righteousness lodged in her; but now
murderers;"[472] whilst the degenerate metropolis of Israel is not
unfrequently painted by Jeremiah and Ezekiel and other prophets in
colours than which none more dark or repulsive can be conceived.
In forming a conclusion upon this point, it is necessary to bear in
mind that to the eye of the faithful in Israel, and certainly of St.
John, there were two Jerusalems, the one true, the other false, to its
heavenly King; and that in exact proportion to the feelings of
admiration, love, and devotion with which they turned to the one were
those of pain, indignation, and alienation with which they turned from
the other. The latter Jerusalem, the city of "the Jews," is that of
which the Apocalyptist thinks when he speaks of it as Babylon; and,
looking upon the city in this aspect as he did, the whole language of
the Old Testament fully justifies him in applying to it the
opprobrious name.
(3) The contrast between the new Jerusalem and Babylon leads to the same
conclusion. We have already more than once had occasion to allude to
the principle of _antithesis_, or contrast, as affording an important
rule of interpretation in many passages of this book. Nowhere is it more
distinctly marked or more applicable than in the case before us. The
contrast has been drawn out by a recent writer in the following words:--
"These prophecies present two broadly contrasted _women_, identified
with two broadly contrasted _cities_, one reality being in each case
doubly represented: as a _woman_ and as a _city_. The harlot and
Babylon are one; the bride and the heavenly Jerusalem are one.
"The two women are contrasted in every particular that is mentioned
about them: the one is pure as purity itself, 'made ready' and fit for
heaven's unsullied holiness, the other foul as corruption could make
her, fit only for the fires of destruction.
"The one belongs to the Lamb, who loves her as the bridegroom loves
the bride; the other is associated with a wild beast, and with the
kings of the earth, who ultimately hate and destroy her.
"The one is clothed with fine linen, and in another place is said to
be clothed with the sun and crowned with a coronet of stars: that is,
robed in Divine righteousness and resplendent with heavenly glory; the
other is attired in scarlet and gold, in jewels and pearls, gorgeous
indeed, but with earthly splendour only. The one is represented as a
chaste virgin, espoused to Christ; the other is mother of harlots and
abominations of the earth.
"The one is persecuted, pressed hard by the dragon, driven into the
wilderness, and well-nigh overwhelmed; the other is drunken with
martyr blood, and _seated on_ a beast which has received its power
from the persecuting dragon.
"The one sojourns in solitude in the wilderness; the other reigns 'in
the wilderness' over peoples, and nations, and kindreds, and tongues.
"The one goes in with the Lamb to the marriage supper, amid the glad
hallelujahs; the other is stripped, insulted, torn, and destroyed by
her guilty paramours.
"We lose sight of the bride amid the effulgence of heavenly glory and
joy, and of the harlot amid the gloom and darkness of the smoke that
'rose up for ever and ever.'"[473]
A contrast presented in so many striking particulars leaves only one
conclusion possible. The two cities are the counterparts of one
another. But we know that by the first is represented the bride, the
Lamb's wife, or the true Church of Christ as, separated from the
world, she remains faithful to her Lord, is purified from sin, and is
made meet for that eternal home into which there enters nothing that
defiles. What can the other be but the representative of a false and
degenerate Church, of a Church that has yielded to the temptations of
the world, and has turned back in heart from the trials of the
wilderness to the flesh-pots of Egypt? Every feature of the
description answers, although with the heightened colour of ideal
portraiture, to what such a professing but degenerate Church
becomes,--the pride, the show, the love of luxury, the subordination
of the future to the present. Even her very cruelty to the poor saints
of God is drawn from actual reality, and has been depicted upon many a
page of history. With the meek and lowly followers of Jesus, whose
life is a constant protest that the things of time are nothing in
comparison with those of eternity, none have less sympathy than those
who have a name to live while they are dead. The world may admire,
even while it cannot understand, these little ones, these lambs of the
flock; but to those who seek the life that now is by the help of the
life that is to come they are a perpetual reproach, and they are felt
to be so. Therefore they are persecuted in such manner and to such
degree as the times will tolerate.
One other remark has to be made upon the identification of Jerusalem
and Babylon by the Seer. It has been said that he has one special
aspect of the metropolis of Israel in his eye. Yet we are not to
suppose that he confines himself to that metropolis. As on so many
other occasions, he starts from what is limited and local only to pass
in thought to what is unlimited and universal. His Jerusalem, his
Babylon, is not the literal city. She is "the great harlot that
sitteth upon many waters;" and "the waters which thou sawest," says
the angel to the Seer, "are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and
tongues."[474] The fourfold division guides us, as usual, to the
thought of dominion over the whole earth. Babylon is not the Jerusalem
only of "the Jews." She is the great Church of God throughout the
world when that Church becomes faithless to her true Lord and King.
Babylon then is not pagan Rome. No doubt seven mountains are spoken of
on which the woman sitteth. But this was not peculiar to Rome. Both
Babylon and Jerusalem are also said to have been situated upon seven
hills; and even if we had before us, as we certainly may have, a
distinct reference to Rome, it would be only because Rome was one of
the manifestations of the beast, and because the city afforded a
suitable point of departure for a wider survey. The very closing
words of the chapter, upon which so much stress is laid by those who
find the harlot in pagan Rome, negative, instead of justifying, the
supposition: _And the woman whom thou sawest is the great city, which
reigneth over the kings of the earth._ Rome never possessed such
universal dominion as is here referred to. She may illustrate, but she
cannot exhaust, that subtler, more penetrating, and more widespread
spirit which is in the Seer's view.
Again, Babylon cannot be papal Rome. As in the last case, there may
indeed be a most intimate connexion between her and one of the
manifestations of Babylon. But it is impossible to speak of the papal
Church as the guide, the counsellor, and the inspirer of
anti-christian efforts to dethrone the Redeemer, and to substitute the
world or the devil in His stead. The papal Church has toiled, and
suffered, and died for Christ. Babylon never did so.
Nor, finally, can we think of Babylon as a great city of the future
which shall stand to the kings and kingdoms of the earth in a relation
similar to that in which ancient Rome stood to the kings and kingdoms
of her day. Wholly apart from the impossibility of our forming any
clear conception of such a city, the want of the religious or
spiritual element is fatal to the theory.
One explanation alone seems to meet the conditions of the case.
Babylon is the world in the Church. In whatever section of the Church,
or in whatever age of her history, an unspiritual and earthly element
prevails, there is Babylon.
We have spoken of the two great figures of this chapter separately. We
have still to speak of their relation to one another, and of the
manner in which it is brought suddenly and for ever to a close.
This relation appears in the words, _I saw a woman sitting upon a
scarlet-coloured beast_, and in later words of the chapter: _the beast
that carrieth her_. The woman then is not subordinate to the beast,
but is rather his controller and guide. And this relation is precisely
what we should expect. The beast is before us in his final stage, in
that immediately preceding his own destruction. He is no longer in the
form of Egypt, or Assyria, or Babylonia, or Persia, or Greece, or
Rome. These six forms of his manifestation have passed away. The
restrainer has been withdrawn,[475] and the beast has stepped forth in
the plenitude of his power. He has been revealed as the "ten horns"
which occupy the place of the seventh head; and these ten horns are
ten kings who, having now received their kingdoms and with their
kingdoms their diadems, are the actual manifestation in history of the
beast as he had been seen in his ideal form in chap. xiii. The beast
is therefore the spirit of the world, partly in its secularising
influence, partly in its brute force, in that tyranny and oppression
which it exercises against the children of God. The woman, again, is
the spirit of false religion and religious zeal, which had shown
itself under all previous forms of worldly domination, and which was
destined to show itself more than ever under the last. To the eye of
St. John this spirit was not confined to Christian times. The woman,
considered in herself, is not simply the false Christian Church. She
is so at the moment when _we_ behold her on the field of history. But
St. John did not believe that saving truth, the truth which unites us
to Christ, the truth which is "of God," was to be found in
Christianity alone. It had existed in Judaism. It had existed even in
Heathenism, for in his Gospel he remembers and quotes the words of our
Lord in which Jesus says, "And other sheep I have, which are not of
this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice; and
they shall become one flock, one Shepherd."[476] As then Divine truth,
the light which never ceases to contend with the darkness, had been
present in the world under every one of its successive kingdoms, so
also perversions of that truth had never failed to be present by its
side. All along the line of past history, in Heathenism as well as in
Judaism, the ideal bride of Christ had been putting on her ornaments
to meet the Bridegroom; and not less all along the same line had the
harlot been arraying herself in purple and scarlet and decking herself
with gold and precious stones and jewels, that she might tempt men to
resist the influence of their rightful King. The harlot had been
always thus superior to the beast. The beast had only the powers of
this world at his command; the harlot wielded the powers of another
and a higher world. The one dealt only with the seen and temporal, the
other with the unseen and eternal, the one with material forces, the
other with those spiritual forces which reach the profoundest depths
of the human heart and give rise to the greatest movements of human
history. The woman is therefore superior to the beast. She inspires
and animates him. The beast only lends her the material strength
needed for the execution of her plans. In the war, accordingly, which
is carried on by the ten kings who have _one mind, and who give their
power and authority unto the beast_, in the war which the beast and
they, with their combined power, wage _for one hour_ against the Lamb,
it would be a great mistake to suppose that the woman, although she is
not mentioned, takes no part and exerts no influence. She is really
there, the prime mover in all its horrors. The "one mind" comes from
her. The beast can do nothing of himself. The ten kings who are the
form in which he appears are not less weak and helpless. They have the
outward power, but they cannot regulate it. They want the skill, the
subtlety, the wisdom, which are found only in the spiritual domain.
But the great harlot, who at this point of history is the perversion
of _Christian_ truth, is with them; and they depend on her. Such is
the first part of the relation between the beast and the harlot.
A second, most unexpected and most startling, follows.
We have seen that in the war between the ten kings and the Lamb the
woman is present. That war ends in disaster to her and to those whom
she inspires. _The Lamb shall overcome them: for He is Lord of lords,
and King of kings._ The name is the same as that which we shall
afterwards meet in chap. xix. 16, though the order of the clauses is
different. This Lamb, therefore, is here the Conqueror described in
chap. xix. 11-16; and many particulars of these latter verses take us
back to the Son of man as He appeared in chap. i., or, in other words,
to the risen and glorified Redeemer. The thought of the risen Christ
is thus in the mind of St. John when he speaks of the Lamb who shall
overcome. The leaders of the Jewish Church had believed that they had
for ever rid themselves of the Prophet who "tormenteth them that dwell
on the earth."[477] They had sealed the stone, and set a watch, and
returned to their homes for joy and merriment. But on the third
morning there was a great earthquake, and the stone was rolled away
from the door of the sepulchre; and the Crucified came forth, the
Conqueror of death and Hades. Then the Lamb overcame. Then He began
His victorious progress as King of kings and Lord of lords. Then the
power and the wisdom of the world were alike put to shame. Was not
this enough? No, for now follow the words which come upon us in a way
so wholly unexpected: _And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the
beast, these shall hate the harlot, and shall make her desolate and
naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her utterly with fire._
What is the meaning of these words? Surely not that Rome was to be
attacked and overthrown by the barbaric hordes that burst upon her from
the North: for, in the first place, the Roman manifestation of the
world-power had passed away before the ten kings came to their kingdom;
and, in the second place, when Rome fell, she fell as the beast, not as
the harlot. Surely also not that a great world-city, concentrating in
itself all the resources of the world-power, is to be hated and burned
by its subjects, for we have already seen that this whole notion of a
great world-city of the end is groundless; and the resources of the
world-power are always in this book concentrated in the beast, and not
in the harlot who directs their use. There seems only one method of
explaining the words, but it is one in perfect consonance with the
method and purpose of the Apocalypse as a whole. As on many other
occasions, the fortunes of the Church of Christ are modelled upon the
fortunes of her Master. With that Master the Church was one. He had
always identified His people with Himself, in life and death, in time
and in eternity. Could the beloved disciple do otherwise? He looked
round upon the suffering Church of his day. He was a "companion with it
in the tribulation, and kingdom, and patience which are in Jesus."[478]
He felt all its wounds and shared all its sorrows, just as he felt and
shared the wounds and sorrows of that Lord who lived in him, and in whom
he lived. Here, therefore, was the mould in which the fortunes of the
Church appeared to him. He went back to well-remembered scenes in the
life of Christ; and he beheld these repeating themselves, in principle
at least, in the members of His Body.
Now there was one scene of the past--how well does he remember it, for
he was present at the time!--when the Roman power and a degenerate
Judaism, the beast and the harlot of the day, combined to make war
upon the Lamb. For a moment they seemed to succeed, yet only for a
moment. They nailed the Lamb to the cross; but the Lamb overcame them,
and rose in triumph from the grave. But the Seer did not pause there.
He looked a few more years onward, and what did he next behold? That
wicked partnership was dissolved. These companions in crime had turned
round upon one another. The harlot had counselled the beast, and the
beast had given the harlot power, to execute the darkest deed which
had stained the pages of human history. But the alliance did not last.
The alienation of the two from each other, restrained for a little by
co-operation in common crime, burst forth afresh, and deepened with
each passing year, until it ended in the march of the Roman armies
into Palestine, their investment of the Jewish capital, and that sack
and burning of the city which still remain the most awful spectacle of
bloodshed and of ruin that the world has seen. Even this is not all.
St. John looks still further into the future, and the tragedy is
repeated in the darker deeds of the last "hour." There will again be a
"beast" in the brute power of the ten kings of the world, and a harlot
in a degenerate Jerusalem, animating and controlling it. The two will
again direct their united energies against the true Church of Christ,
the "called, and chosen, and faithful." They may succeed; it will be
only for a moment. Again the Lamb will overcome them; and in the hour
of defeat the sinful league between them will be broken, and the
world-power will hate the harlot, and make her desolate and naked, and
eat her flesh, and burn her utterly with fire.
This is the prospect set before us in these words, and this the
consolation of the Church under the trials that await her at the end
of the age. "When the wicked spring as the grass, and all the workers
of iniquity do flourish; it is that they shall be destroyed for ever:
but Thou, O Lord, art on high for evermore. For, lo, Thine enemies, O
Lord, for, lo, Thine enemies shall perish; all the workers of iniquity
shall be scattered."[479]
Babylon is fallen, not indeed in a strictly chronological narrative,
for she will again be spoken of as if she still existed upon earth.
But for the time her overthrow has been consummated, her destruction
is complete, and all that is good can only rejoice at the spectacle of
her fate. Hence the opening verses of the next chapter.
FOOTNOTES:
[444] Comp. chaps. xiii. 1 and xvii. 3, 7.
[445] Comp. chaps. xiii. 1 and xvii. 3.
[446] Comp. chaps. xiii. 1 and xvii. 3, 12.
[447] Comp. chaps. xiii. 1 and xvii. 8.
[448] Comp. pp. 75, 199.
[449] Chap. xvii. 12.
[450] Chap. xvii. 12.
[451] Chap. xvii. 11.
[452] Chap. xiii. 2.
[453] Chap. xii. 17.
[454] Chap. xvii. 14.
[455] Comp. p. 222.
[456] Ver. 8.
[457] Chap. i. 18.
[458] Comp. chap. xiii. 3.
[459] Chap. v. 6.
[460] Comp. chaps. vi. 13; viii. 10; ix. 1; xi. 13; xiv. 8; xvi. 19;
xviii. 2.
[461] Comp. Dan. vii. 17, 23; Rev. xviii. 3.
[462] Chap. xii. 12.
[463] Dan. vii. 7, 8.
[464] Chap. xii. 13.
[465] Acts i. 7.
[466] Chaps. xiv. 8; xvi. 19.
[467] Jer. iii. 1.
[468] Micah i. 7.
[469] Matt. xxiii. 34-36.
[470] Chap. xi. 8.
[471] Isa. i. 10.
[472] Isa. i. 21.
[473] Guinness, _The Approaching End of the Age_, p. 143.
[474] Chap. xvii. 15.
[475] Comp. 2 Thess. ii. 7.
[476] John x. 16.
[477] Comp. chap. xi. 10.
[478] Chap. i. 9.
[479] Ps. xcii. 7-9.