world. Then came the statement of the sudden and total manner of her final destruction.[1] Her worldly wealth, the power of riches, is marked as her great final character as thus judged and destroyed: and here she was like Babylon of old; and in her was found all the blood slain upon the earth—as in Jerusalem all that was shed up to her
- ↑ There seems to me, an intimate connection between the continuance of Babylon and the Serpent being in heavenly places: he exercises his power thus as influence, secretly, as false worship. He is the object of false worship; and hence, in this dispensation, he works by the corruption of Christian profession; and yet this still as the god of this world, which title he cannot lose, for it is all he has:—“the course of this world… the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. This is said of him as still έν τοῖς ἐπουρανίοις in the heavenlies.
False worship, as the source of power, would be its heathen character; false worship, as the source of means of fellowship its Babylonish character in the Christian dispensation: in a word, this is rather His anti-priestly character and spiritual influence: the man of sin, or lawless one, is not revealed. Power continues outwardly owned of God, and the letter [he that letteth] remains: when he is cast down he loses this character which is opposed to Christ as Priest, and to Him as acting by His Spirit in maintaining the holy communion of His saints and washing their feet. He then raises power as of earth (the king doing according to his will) against the heavens, for he has no place in them even falsely: he could render his influence as anti-priest paramount to supreme civil authority, which is of God using the name of God falsely in religion; but he cannot, save an open rebellion when cast down, bring power against God.
