Revelation 14:8

‘And another, a second angel, followed, saying “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great which has made all the nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication”.'

The idea and wording connects with Isaiah 21:9, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen' where it relates to idolatry, and with Jeremiah 51:7 from where he obtains the picture of her making the earth drunk with her ideas. The doom of this great city, with all it represents of pride and rebellion, which has drawn on itself God's wrath because of its idolatry and sexual misbehaviour, and has led others to do the same, has at this stage already taken place (details are given later in Chapter s 17-18, which see). The time of final judgment now fast approaches. Let those called on consider that all ‘Babylon' has done for them is to lead them into uncleanness and make them drink the wine of God's wrath, and that now that Babylon has met its inevitable doom, they need to reconsider their ways.

John may well have thought of ‘Babylon' here especially in terms of Rome, simply because in his day Rome epitomised all that Babylon stood for, but to the spiritual beings who spoke of it and proclaimed it, it represents that which first began when Cain first ‘built a city', and then at the tower of Babel and continued in great Babylon and in all great cities that sought to conquer and to enforce idolatry, the occult and sexual perversion on others. It is only Rome to him because he sees in Rome a fulfilment of the idea that all who in their pride set themselves up against God and seek to live and build up riches without taking Him into account, as had Babylon before it, will fall (compare what is said to the Laodicean church (Revelation 3:15)). They are doomed to destruction. Had he known what we know he would have known that it meant more than Rome.

It was not just Rome or Babylon, but the idea that Babylon and Rome epitomised that would be destroyed. Indeed all the prophets see the destruction of the great cities of the world which set themselves up against God as inevitable. They see them as all doomed to total destruction in the end. This is not second guessing what will be but the inevitable consequence of what they are. They know that Babylon, Rome and all other such cities, and what they represent, exist only to be destroyed. They are anti-Christ, seeking to replace Him in men's minds, therefore they can have only one end. In every period there is another ‘Babylon' also doomed to destruction. There will be one in the final days. For Babylon represents man over against God, laden with sin and indulgence.