Where In The Bible Will I Find:

The Identity Of Spiritual Babylon?

The apostle John, while exiled on the island of Patmos for preaching the Word of God, was privileged to see into and from heaven things that would shortly come to pass (Rev. 1:1). Through visions from the angels of God he saw the children of God being persecuted, entangled in bondage under a foreign power much like the former children of Israel during their Egyptian bondage.

Paul had prophesied that a failing away of the church would come and, "…that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God" (II Thess. 2:3-4).

History shows that this failing away did come about five hundred years after the establishment of the church. The first great enemy of the church was pagan Rome by whom the children of God were persecuted and thousands were put to death because of their faith and obedience to God. Then during the sixth century and up to the eighteenth century, for twelve hundred and sixty years, through the Reformation period and up to the Restoration period, the second great enemy of the Lord's church was papal Rome. John said he saw an angel flying in heaven saying, "…fallen, fallen is Babylon the great..." (Rev. 14:8).

Literal Babylon had long since disappeared; and so just as Jerusalem, the capitol of God's ancient people and the place where the gospel was first preached, was typical of the church (Gal. 4:24-31), so Babylon that once captured Jerusalem was made a type of the apostate church (papal Rome). Literal Babylon took the city, destroyed the temple, removed the Holy vessels, and put the people of God in bondage for seventy years. The antitypical Babylon, (papal hierarchy), through a perversion of the church, took away the true worship of God, and put the people in spiritual bondage to papal authority for twelve hundred and sixty years. This did not mean that the spiritual Babylon would cease to exist for its destruction will be at the coming of the Lord (II Thess. 2:8).

It was to fall in the sense that it would no longer be able to make the world bow to the papacy. The Reformation ended that bondage, but did not destroy the papal system any more than freeing the children of Israel from the Egyptian bondage destroy Egypt. The angel said that Babylon, "…hath made all nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of fornication." During the supreme domination of papal Rome she had made the nations drunk with her false doctrines.

God has already broken Babylon's stranglehold on the world, but she will still exist as a tool of Satan till the end of the world, for the "wrath" refers to the punishment that would fall upon her and those she deceives, or intoxicates, with her false teachings, and will then be destroyed at the Lord's coming.