Revelation

The Fall of Babylon

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Prerequisite/Law

Lesson: 23-30

Genre: Talk

Track: 191

Dictation Name: RR129M23

Location/Venue:

Year: 1960’s-1970’s

Revelation 18, the Fall of Babylon.

“18 And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.

2 And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

3 For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.

4 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

5 For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

6 Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.

7 How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.

8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

9 And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning,

10 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

11 And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buyeth their merchandise any more:

12 The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble,

13 And cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men.

14 And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.

15 The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,

16 And saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls!

17 For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,

18 And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city!

19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

20 Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.

21 And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.

22 And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more in thee; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in thee;

23 And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.

24 And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.”

This chapter is the key chapter to Revelation, it is impossible to understand this book without an understanding of this chapter. As we have seen, man’s great dream which is summed up in Babylon, is the dream of creating a paradise without God and without Gods law, of destroying all godly order, all godly law, and creating a totally man-mad, humanistic order.

This dream is summed up by Revelation in the figure of Babylon echoing the dream of a one world apart from God in the tower of Babel, and the empires of old culminating in the empire of Babylon, a dream that was echoed again by Alexander the Great in his Macedonian empire, by Rome, and by many an empire today; and certainly by the United Nations. This chapter echoes the Old Testament proclamations of doom on the nations. The prophets as they pronounce Gods judgement on the nations, saw the nations at war not merely against Judah and Israel, but against the Lord of Hosts. Indeed, they more than once said that Judah and Israel deserved judgement from these nations for they themselves were apostate, but they saw Assyria and Babylon, and all the empires and nations of old, basically at war with God. They were empires that declared themselves to be independent of God and man, and so the doom was pronounced by the prophets, and their words are echoed in Revelation 18 which sums up the whole of the prophetic judgement of God upon the dream of the nations to create a paradise without God, to set aside Gods law.

Very specifically for example, Isaiah’s prophecies against Babylon in chapters 13, 21, and 47 are echoed, as well as Jeremiahs prophecies in chapters 50 and 51, and Ezekiel’s judgement upon Tyre in chapters 26 and 27, and many of the other prophetic discourses.

The first step in this judgement of Babylon is the exposure, the announcement of verse 1. And according to many of the commentators through the centuries, the angel or messenger, (because angel can be translated also as messenger) of verse one symbolizes the body of men who in faith and in terms of the word of God unveil the apostate character of Babylon. This therefore must be the proclamation of the word of God, to declare that Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.

Now this echoes the prophecies concerning the fall of Babylon. When Babylon was a great city, the center of an Empire, the prophets were to announce that Babylon is finished, is fallen, and the time shall come when it shall be inhabited no more; when it will be only the dwelling place of wild animals and of birds. This is comparable to someone announcing today that Los Angeles will disappear, and will be inhabited no longer, and in time to come will be a desert with only wild animals and birds inhabiting its remains. But this was the message the prophets were called upon to proclaim concerning the city of Babylon, the center of the Babylonian empire. And now Revelation says, this must be the message of every true minister of the word. To declare that this dream of Babylon, this one world order, and any kind of state that is to establish itself apart from God is doomed, is fallen. To declare this in advance, that the judgement of God is on every such order, and they shall pass away.

Thus, even as the prophets announced, the fall of the Babylonian empire in advance, and God in faithfulness to His word brought it about exactly as He declared. The Christian is to declare, concerning these humanistic pretensions of man which surround us today, that Gods judgement is against them; that the sentence of judgement has been passed, and therefore the Babylon of today is fallen, is fallen, and shall rise no more.

Babylon, the dream of paradise without God, of cradle to grave security by man’s own act, is doomed and finished; and therefore men must separate themselves from this dream of Babylon and from everything connected with it, lest they share its doom. “Come out of her my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” And so the ministry of the word requires first the sentence of judgement, the sentence of judgement upon Babylon; and second the call to separation. The call to separation from Babylon and everything that it involves, from all of its pride and its lusts, its dreams, its pretensions, and its hopes.

Now the sins of Babylon are described or pictured in verse five as a huge mountain, as another tower of Babel reaching up to heaven in their pretensions and audacity; for its sins have reached unto heaven. But they have not been forgotten by God, but God hath remembered her iniquities and waited. For it is the long suffering and patience of God which is our salvation according to Saint Peter. The patience of God extends to the sinner an opportunity for repentance, and to the redeemed an opportunity to work out the meaning of his salvation and to prepare himself. But finally judgement comes. And because of her sins which were double, her punishment will be in strict justice, double.

Babylon is described in verse seven as being confident of her omnipotence and her permanence. Now judgement descends upon her. Her plagues are fourfold, and trouble comes to her from every quarter. She has been an enemy to the faith, she has seduced the nations and kings and merchants, and now she is to perish totally; to disappear even as a great millstone is cast into the sea, and disappears. Because a millstone turned by animals as they grind grain, cast into the sea, drops to the bottom. In this image there is also an echoing of Jeremiahs prophecy against Babylon. When Jeremiah was given the pronouncement of judgement upon Babylon by God, he was ordered to send (Zariah?) to Babylon to read that pronouncement to the people of Babylon, who would of course only laugh at the pronouncement; and then to go to the river and tie a stone to the prophecy and throw it into the waters, and to say: “Even as this water absorbs this judgement, as the stone sinks into it and disappears from sight, so Babylon will disappear from sight and history, and will be seen no more.” And so Babylon the great, the dream of history, of man apart from God is to disappear totally, even as a stone into the waters, as a great millstone sinks immediately beneath the waters.

Now, what is the nature of this destruction of Babylon? It is described very plainly for us in verses 10 following. The result of her collapse is the mourning of the merchants and the shipmasters of the world, according to verses 11 following, and 17 following. In other words, of the world of commerce and of business, what happens? They lose their markets, first of all, for treasures. Second for the luxuries of clothing, third for luxury items of housing, fourth for aromatics, fifth for articles of food, sixth for means of transportation, and seven for the traffic or market in human beings. This is what happens when Babylon falls, when it collapses.

Now the significance of this is clear cut, is it not? The collapse of Babylon, of this dream of a human paradise without God and without Gods law, is precipitated by a great economic disillusionment or collapse. So that the result is world-wide economic chaos.

Babylon is here portrayed symbolically as a great city, and the merchants of the world are afraid to enter into it, they stand in the outskirts in the desert, or they stand afar off at sea, and witness with weeping as she perishes, at her burning, her total collapse, her destruction. And they mourn and they wail at her total downfall.

And in verse 14 Babylon is told: “And the fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.”

And in verse 17: “For in one hour so great riches is come to nought.” The whole thing collapses and disappears.

The picture therefore is an obvious one. The dream collapses. The attempt to create a one world dream, a paradise apart from God, to set aside God and Gods law, and create this perfect one-world order, crumbles into dust and disappears. And so it has been again and again in the past, and the culminating instance will be when the one world dream, the epitome of the humanistic hope, sinks into the waters like a millstone.

In the face of all this one clear duty is presented to the saints of God: “Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her.”

The destruction is going to be a fearful one, but it is the vengeance of God. For in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth; in other words, every one who has ever been killed in all of history, has been killed- all murder has been committed, all warfare- because of this dream of Babylon, of a world order without God. Of life without the law of God. And so the destruction of Babylon, even though it involves tearing apart much that you prize, and it involves a radical dislocation for you who live when Babylon falls; must be a source of joy. And you are to rejoice, for by her sorceries were all nations deceived.

This chapter therefore gives us a tremendous key, not only to Revelation, but to history. This chapter has a progressive fulfillment. It harks back, as we have seen, to the tower of Babel where this dream first came to focus, and God there by supernatural act confounded their hope before they progressed very far. But then the dream was revived by the empires which were destroyed, and it came to great focus again in Babylon, and there it collapsed; as the Medes and the Persians moved in against it. And then another took up the dream, and again it collapsed; and then it culminated in Rome. But Rome too collapsed, this time without any outer enemy, because now the dream became clearer, and the judgement became all the more open. And Rome built itself up to be this one world order on humanistic law, and it collapsed. But before its collapse God had established a remnant, the church to carry on.

And now again we see this dream being brought to focus in particularly telling form, and the judgement of God as pronounced in Revelation is, that when they seem most triumphant, when they have seduced all nations so that there is no longer any hostility among men to this one-world dream, God shall destroy it, He shall bring judgement to bear upon it, so that from within this very edifice which they attempt to create tumbles and collapses and disappears. It sinks into the waters like a great millstone, and will never rise again.

We are to rejoice, because it is a confirmation of God’s word: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.” The world must be under Gods law, or it will be under Gods judgement. We are surrounded today by Babylon, but we have the assurance: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, and shall rise no more.” In advance, God tells us the verdict. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for this Thy word. And we thank Thee that Babylon is fallen, and Thou hast separated us unto Thyself with Thy summons to come out from among her, and has made us a people holy unto Thee. Protect us therefore by Thy grace, and make the way straight before us, that we might build according to Thy word, might fulfill Thy purpose for us, and might see the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ. Bless us to this purpose, in Jesus name, amen.

Are there any questions now? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] A good question, how long from the time the prophets prophesied concerning the fall of Babylon to its actual fall? It was from the earliest prophecies, a couple of centuries or more. From the time of Jeremiahs prophecies it was 70 years to the overthrow of Babylon, and then sometime after that before Babylon became totally uninhabited. So it did take time, but Babylon did become totally uninhabited. And nothing could have seemed more absurd at the time than the idea that Babylon would disappear. Now, it would be possible, you see, for a person at the time of the prophet, say of Isaiah, who prophesied it long before Babylon became an empire, Assyria was a power in Isaiah’s day, Babylon was nothing as yet. But it was possible, say in Jeremiahs day, when Babylon was a great empire, for someone to say: “Oh I can see how Babylon can be overthrown, but for it to disappear? This is impossible. Why it is as the crossroads of world trade, it is the city set on many waters, and to imagine it to be a desert is unthinkable.”

Now, Babylon had one of the most remarkable irrigation systems of all antiquity, the hydraulic engineers of Babylon were amazing, to find something equal to it you have to go back to the ancient kingdom of Sheba. Even earlier than that; and Sheba had dams that are staggering in size, that compare very favorably to some of our huge modern dams, and had its section of Arabia under superb irrigation and cultivation. But Babylon had a remarkable irrigation system, there were canals flowing the year round near every field; cross canals, so that it was spoken of as a city set on many waters. You had streams lined by trees everywhere, so that your farm was intersected by these streams. There was fish in these streams, there was swimming, they were a pleasant place to picnic by, and so you have of course the melancholy of the captives: “By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, yea we wept when we remembered Zion.”

The waters of Babylon, this was a familiar image. And yet, it all disappeared. They destroyed it themselves. They were overthrown by the Medes and Persians, but they destroyed the soil, they eroded it down to the bare rock in many places, they turned it into a desert; and finally the sands overtook Babylon, and people marched over Babylon as they did over Nineveh, and didn’t realize it was underfoot.

Another question? Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] What is the what?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Oh. Well, there is nothing in Scripture with respect to the subject, however, when you have a period of social decline and social degeneracy; you do have an increase of such things. You have, for example, a progressive destruction and a deterioration of the soil; so that you have a progressive decline in health. You have the progressive deterioration of people physically, physiologically. There is an important work that has been written by a Dutch scholar who is not a Christian, I am trying to find more information about it, but his thesis is that at the end of every age, when men lose the faith that makes up that age, there is also a radical altering as it were of the physical constitution, so that suddenly immunities that were there disappear, and man becomes tremendously liable to plagues and to diseases, and to physical deterioration.

Now, this scientist claims that there is actually a physical change when man loses the faith of a particular culture. It is an interesting thesis, I think that there is a good deal to it. You do find in a period of collapse, mental and physical conditions appearing in man which are not normal.

Now, with those who represent physical abnormalities, of course Christian care and Christian charity is a necessity and has always been practiced in the history of the church. Yes, you had a question?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, if that is true, then there will be no longer any use of linen, or of silk, or of wood, or of brass, of Iron, and so on. In other words, they are trying to prove too much. What it is saying is that this Babylon, with its dream of luxury, and power and control of all trade and commerce is collapsing, so all its traffic in these things, and its control of these things will disappear. So that, to try to say that these things themselves will disappear is to say that everything in the way of food and of clothing, and of shelter, and of luxuries is to disappear. In other words, they are proving too much, because if gold and silver are to disappear, then all these other things also must disappear; which makes the text an absurdity.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, of course the prophet Isaiah speaks of it as a sin when coinage is debased and becomes dross instead of silver; so that I don’t think that there is any warrant in scripture for that attitude, that is reading something into the text that is not there, it represents wishful thinking. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] That is in the first chapter of Isaiah, I believe the 22nd verse, where the reference is made in the indictment upon Israel to the coinage becoming dross, yes, Isaiah 1:22.

Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, I think that is a good point, because the hippies really are the child of Liberalism and Existentialism. They are the most consistent Liberals, there is no law and therefore there is no standard, and hence why should they live in terms of anything? To them society has reached the point where we are on the borders of a worthless world to be created by automation. Now, this is taught in our colleges and universities, therefore why should any man work? It is the day for the flower children, this is the thesis.

I was interested in reading Woodland Hills paper yesterday, the inquiring reporter was asking individuals what they thought about Johnsons tax proposals, and one young man answered that it was absurd, there shouldn’t be any taxes at all, because in ten years everything will be taken care of by machinery, by automation. So we will live, this is the implication, in a workless, taxless world. In other words, in Utopia.

Now, this is exactly what the theorists of the administration of Liberalism, of Marxism, of Fabianism, are propounding. The hippies are saying: “Well, why prepare ourselves for a working world when we are on the outskirts of paradise?” This is their thesis, and they are very logical and very consistent in terms of their unbelief. If there is no God, then the hippies are right, but because there is a God, they are under judgement. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes, there is a group in California that is working to get on the ballot in 68, an initiative to abolish the property tax. And their point is that property taxes are reaching the point of confiscation, and will increasingly be used to that end; as some few weeks ago I read a statement by one of the members of this group, which pointed out that in many rural areas which are close to big cities, the burden of taxation, for example in Los Angeles, Fresno, and Sacramento Counties, is being placed on the farmer. To the point where sometimes the tax is greater than the income of the farm, so they are simply trying to prevent this coming confiscation by this measure. Yes?

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes. Because humanism and Satan’s temptation are basically one. The temptation of Satan in Genesis 3:5 is: Ye shall be as God, every man his own his own God, knowing, which in the Hebrew there has the force of determining, good and evil. Every man will determine what is good and evil for himself. This is humanism. Man makes his own law, and man as his own God, so that humanism is the epitome of Satanism, and Humanism is propagating precisely the Satanic temptation as its philosophy and faith.

Our time… Yes, one more.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] No. The first meeting towards an ecumenical movement in recent times was I believe in the 1870’s, and it was a meeting of Western and Eastern theologians. Now in terms of our present day church scene, we would say those men were conservatives, but basically in terms of the picture then, they were liberals because as they began to discuss the theological questions, they started by saying they were ready to sacrifice the Filioque clause in the creed, that is, the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. In other words, they were ready to sacrifice a central point of importance just to compromise with the east. This was the first hint of the coming liberalism. Now, nothing came of that particular meeting, because the church by and large was very hostile to such theological surrender; but since then of course there is a different temper.

Our time is virtually over, but there is something that I did want to share with you from the Don Bell Report for January 26, 1968. It is a review of a very important work recently published, entitled: Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace. Now, this report was prepared by an elite group of leaders of the establishment, 15 men who were commissioned in August of 1963 by an unnamed Federal Agency to prepare this report, and they reported in 1966.

Now, the whole thing is highly anonymous. There were 15 men, none of their names were given; the supporting agency is not named, and when it was reviewed recently in one of the major papers of the east it was reviewed anonymously by a prominent contemporary. In that case at least the reviewer was more or less identified as Kenneth (Gaulbury?). But this report has some very important things to say, and this represents the top thinking in Washington today.

Here is a statement from their recommendations: “War has provided both ancient and modern societies with a dependable system for stabilization and controlling national economies. No alternate method of control has yet been tested in a complex, modern economy, that has shown itself remotely comparable in scope or effectiveness.” And here is the conclusion: “Although we do not imply that a substitute for war in the economy cannot be devised, no combination of techniques for controlling employment, production, and consumption has yet been tested that can remotely compare to it in effectiveness. It is, and has been the essential economic stabilizer in modern societies.”

Now there it is, plainly stated. The best way for controlling man and society and for bringing about a controlled economy is warfare. And so, in the name of making the world safe for democracy, we did have; first of all because this was the thesis of the Carnegie Foundation for Peace before World War 1 we had World War 1, we had World War 2 and the Korean War, and the War in Vietnam, and now we are having a problem with North Korea again, and we had the incident of the Pueblo, in spite of the fact that the North Korean officials had warned weeks before that they were going to do exactly what they did, if the Pueblo kept cruising off their shore. And so we had an incident created. And we will continue to have incidents created, so that at the right time if there is a danger of peace, we will have war for peace; war to bring about controls.

The purpose of war in the modern world is not to fight Communism, we are not fighting the Communists in Vietnam. If we were interested in fighting the Communists we could fight them at home and in Cuba very easily. We are fighting against freedom. And this is the basic purpose of warfare in modern times. The report from Iron Mountain is very plain spoken, it will…

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] It was Iron Mountain New York, not Michigan, near the site of the Hudson Institute. And they met there so that they would have privacy, and they met at various other places, but mostly at Iron Mountain; and they met for three years on an average of once a month, and they came up with something that was not new, the only difference is, that this time they published the statement because one member of the 15 insisted that it should be published.

Well, yes… one more.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience Member] …?...

[Rushdoony] Well, you have to understand that Orwell was not describing the future, he was describing the present, 1948 when he wrote the book. And he was simply saying: ‘This is what we have today, and carrying it to its logical conclusions, this is what it is going to be.’ So he simply took the year 1948 and reversed the 4 and 8 to get 1984. And this is what really led to Orwell’s death. He had no point in living, he was a socialist, and he saw what socialism meant. But he could not believe in Christianity, so there was no point to life. 1984 was already there in 1948. You already had ‘Newspeak’ and ‘Doublethink’ and everything else, and he knew it. He already had the destruction of history, and he knew it.

But it is interesting that 1984 is not seen by the left as a symbol for what is horrible, because you have the two volume work by the most prominent scientists of the Western world entitled: The World in 1984 which is this glorious dream of science in 1984, creating a totally new world. There is only one writer in the two volumes who is cynical, and so in a footnote, they describe him as being an old man, he doesn’t have the vision.

I have covered the book quite extensively in my chapter: “Man in 1984 in the Mythology of Science.”

Well, our time is up now and we stand adjourned.