This passes then from redemption out of the really apostate earth, when redemption from amid profession was necessary, to the dealing of God, first in testimony, and then in judgment, with evil in all its forms as to men, the beast being reserved in judgment for a fuller description. This was rather the judgment of men and their corruption under those circumstances, the Lamb’s open war and victory being another thing. This is God’s judgment of the state of things; not the Lamb’s war with hostile power.
We have here then a general prospective view of God’s dealings with the subject—apostasy; for subject it is to Him: first, saving His saints out of it,
worse form than mere apostasy or profession. Viewed in this light, “without the city,” would, in the general application, refer to the great city of the corporate Roman empire: in the application in crisis it would, as before, be taken for Jerusalem.
In the application in the text (p.115) of the claim of true worship, there are most important principles—the acknowledging God, not man, as the source in creative power of every blessing, or order of blessing, or power, or streams and fountains of true influence, and consequent condition of men: than which there cannot be a more important principle possible for daily use. The sense given above in the text, I believe to be the most important for the Church in the present time.
The fall of Babylon, as a system, I should note here, does not imply its final absolute destruction: it becomes a great deal worse by it in its character.
