Revelation 17:18 Commentary and Bible Study

Some have tried to make this a literal city. In doing so, they are forced to confine this city to a single age, usually the age in which John lived. She is said to be Rome who seduced all the other nations to submit to her power. But we have already been told that the city referred to is Babylon. The harlot is MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT. She cannot refer to the literal city of Babylon, for that city has long since passed away. That city was itself treated as symbolic of something else in the prophets. In Isaiah 14, the king of Babylon is pictured as entering hell and being taunted by those already there. He is mocked for his ambitions to exalt his throne above the angels of God, for all his high ambitions have come to nothing and he has been brought down to hell. This passage is applied by Christ to Satan. Evidently Babylon is being used as a picture of the kingdom of the darkness. Both Isaiah and Jeremiah use language very similar to that in the next chapter when describing the final state of Babylon (Isaiah 13:20-22; Jeremiah 50:39-40; 51:37). This is an Old Testament prophetic view of the fall of Satan’s kingdom, the kingdom of this world. He is called the god of this world. He falsely claims to own all the kingdoms of the world and their glory when he offered them to Christ to induce him to Satanic worship. Babylon stands not for another earthly city, nor for anything limited to one age or one location. She stands for the seducing power of this world, both through the material pleasures that it offers and through the false religions with which it tries to draw man away from God.Why do the ten horns fall out with sensuality and utterly selfish pleasure? When greed and lust, arrogance and lawlessness, pride and self-love get to such a pitch, there will be such chaos, anarchy, and disorder, that it will obstruct the purposes of antichrist. Things will have gone too far, and there will be an implosion of the power of godlessness.