Revelation 18 - Introduction

Analysis Of The Chapter

This chapter Revelation 18 may be regarded as a still further “explanatory episode” (compare analysis to chapter 17), designed to show the effect of pouring out the seventh vial Revelation 16:17 on the formidable anti-Christian power so often referred to. The description in this chapter is that of a rich merchant-city reduced to desolation, and is but carrying out the general idea under a different form. The chapter comprises the following points:

(1) Another angel is seen descending from heaven, having great power, and making proclamation that Babylon the great is fallen, and is become utterly desolate, Revelation 18:1.

(2) A warning voice is heard from heaven, calling on the people of God to come out of her, and to be partakers neither of her sins nor her plagues. Her torment and sorrow would be proportionate to her pride and luxury; and her plagues would come upon her suddenly; death, and mourning, and famine, and consumption by fire, Revelation 18:4.

(3) Lamentation over her fall - by those especially who had been connected with her; who had been corrupted by her; who had been profited by her, Revelation 18:9;

(a) By kings, Revelation 18:9. They had lived deliciously with her, and they would lament her.

(b) By merchants, Revelation 18:11. They had trafficked with her, but now that traffic was to cease, and no man would buy of her. Their business, so far as she was concerned, was at an end. All that she had accumulated was now to be destroyed; all her gathered riches were to be consumed; all the traffic in those things by which she had been enriched was to be ended; and the city that was more than all others enriched by these things, as if clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls, was to be destroyed forever.

(c) By ship-masters and seamen, Revelation 18:17. They had been made rich by this traffic, but now all was ended; the smoke of her burning is seen to ascend, and they stand afar off and weep.

(4) Rejoicing over her fall, Revelation 18:20. Heaven is called upon to rejoice, and the holy apostles and prophets, for their blood is avenged, and persecution ceases in the earth.

(5) The final destruction of the city, Revelation 18:21. A mighty angel takes up a stone and casts it into the sea as an emblem of the destruction that is to come upon it. The voice of harpers, and musicians, and pipers would be heard no more in it; and no craftsmen would lye there, and the sound of the millstone would be heard no more, and the light of a candle would shine no more there, and the voice of the bridegroom and bride would be heard no more.