< Revelation chapter 17
Read This First on Revelation 18 >
REVELATION 18:1
And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory.
After these things...
This refers to the order and place of the visions given here in these chapters where the chronological narrative has been resumed. The visions recorded in chapter 17 involved the destruction of Mystery Babylon as it takes place on earth.
Here in chapter 18 we seem to take a step back in order to describe and reveal the true nature of Mystery Babylon. In 18:2 we see that the fall of Mystery Babylon is declared in the realm of the spiritual heavens as being an accomplished fact. Rather than being an actual step back in time, therefore, it seems that we can understand this to say that while this decree is being made in heavenly places the events recorded in chapter 17 concerning the destruction of Mystery Babylon are taking place on earth.
the earth was lightened with his glory...
The glorious announcement brought by this angel is from a level of the highest a greatest revelation of the glory of G-d. It is this that is being reflected in the glory of the light of the angel. The light is not the light that comes from sun or stars but is a spiritual light, the light of the power of the grace and truth of the God of Israel.
REVELATION 18:2
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.
Babylon the great is fallen...
Here the mystery aspect of this woman of prophetic vision is not mentioned. What might be called, Mystery Babylon, (as I have called it previously), is here simply called, "Babylon", as if we were going back to the first beast of Daniel's visions and to the prophet Jeremiah's prophecies. The meaning is that when this Mystery Babylon ends, then the whole captivity of Israel ends, from Babylon to Media-Persia , to Greece, to Rome. For this reason, because this is the time of end of the Jewish people and of all Israel, Babylon is here called "Babylon the great".
We will see how this fall of the last mystery Babylon means the fall of Babylon the great, of all the empires of the gentile captivity of Israel in the verses that follow. For it is here that the people of Hashem, Jews and other individuals and families attached to them, are called to come out of her, out of the one who has held them captive. It is this call to come out of captivity which brings about the downfall of Mystery Babylon, and, in doing so, the downfall of all the powers of Babylon from the beginning.
We have seen in chapter 17 verse 16 that:
...the ten horns which you saw upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
The beast is forced by Hashem into being the one who destroys its own power. For Rome first came to power through the powers given to Babylon, Persia and Greece to hold Israel in captivity. That is to say, Rome first came to power mysteriously through the power of this spiritual harlot in this vision. In the end, by destroying this woman of this vision, the entity that was formed out of the empire of Rome, the fourth beast, the unnatural beast, like Pharaoh, is forced to let Israel go out of captivity. This leaves the fourth beast, the unnatural beast, in the place of having no power to try to leverage G-d, so that it can only come out and try to make war with G-d directly in the open. This is the war for the hearts and minds and worship of the human race. The campaign raised by the beast is the campaign to build the kingdom of technique, of the civilization of planet earth, a final Tower of Babel reaching out into the stars, answering to no god but Adam and the dragon.
With no power of Babylon left to hide behind, this beast is then open to immediate defeat by the Word of G-d, and taken and thrown into a gravity well of darkness.
the habitation of devils... The ten tribes having been first cut off by the northern power of Assyria, Jerusalem and the Jewish people were first taken captive into Babylon. This long captivity among the nations was due to the failure of the children of Israel to fully come out of Egypt in their hearts and to fully enter into the Land of Israel through faith in Hashem alone. Upon this final release from captivity, all Israel is prepared to become Messianic Torah Israel in heart and soul. Babylon the great, the system of imperial power through market power, which was able to maintain power by holding the truth of Israel under its power, now no longer having the permission of G-d to do so, is left empty, to be inhabited only by its devils. And it is therefore no longer of any other use to the global technological empire of the fourth beast and its ten horns than to be consumed by them.
REVELATION 18:3
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.
through the abundance of her delicacies...
Had it been presented to the peoples of the earth immediately in the beginning of their efforts to build their civilizations that they would either worship and love Hashem or worship and become one with the beast of artificial intelligence and the evil inclination they would not have worshipped that beast. But through the seductions of Mystery Babylon,"through the abundance of her delicacies " eventually, through the course of history, they give themselves over to be ruled by their evil inclination entirely.
REVELATION 18:4
And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that you be not partakers of her sins, and that you do not receive of her plagues.
Come out of her my people...
Zechariah 1:15 with Isaiah 47:6 teach us that the four heavenly horsemen find the nations with their four empires, who are holding Israel captive through the centuries, to be at peace with their power, as if the power given to them over Israel was given to them for their merit, for their sakes. And it is this attitude that leads them to hold Israel captive beyond the measure Hashem intended and to oppress Israel far beyond what Hashem wills. They are not concerned with what Hashem judges necessary for Israel’s correction. They are interested in the leverage holding Israel captive seems to give them to rule the world.
What is the meaning then when these four horsemen return again to bring judgment in the earth, (Revelation 6), after they have first returned with this report? The meaning is that they come, in the name of Hashem, the God of Israel, to disrupt the false peace of the empires who hold Israel captive.
Following the prophetic judgment upon Babylon in Isaiah 47, which points directly to the judgment upon "Babylon the great", the whole system of the spiritual whoredom of the empires which hold Israel captive during the long centuries of history, we read in Isaiah 48:20 the following:
Go out from Babylon, flee from Chaldea, declare this with a shout of joy, proclaim it,send it out to the end of the earth; say, “The Lord has redeemed his servant Jacob!”
And we see that this is the prophetic word given before time to the Jewish people and to all Israel. Now we will begin to see that the mystery of Babylon and how the Babylonian captivity is finally brought to an end is unlocked through the key of the historic overthrow of Nebuchadnezzar by Persia. The angelic prince of Persia resisted the angel Gabriel when he came in answer to Daniel's prayer for Jerusalem. Even though Cyrus was anointed by the word of prophecy to free Jerusalem from Babylon, it was not only the liberator that the Persian king, Cyrus, represented.
The dark angelic prince of Persia also stood behind Cyrus. For as Gabriel explained to Daniel, although Jerusalem would be freed externally after 70 years, as Jeremiah foretold, there would be a deeper, spiritual captivity of 70 prophetic weeks. And this would turn into centuries upon centuries. There were two streams of prophetic power that the Persian conquest of Babylon represented. One was the prophecy of the good, the final liberation of Israel from all captivity that would come in the end. The other was the prophecy of the evil, the prolonged captivity that would continue until the good became victorious in the end.
In the end, there would be an anointing for good among the nations that would be the key to Jerusalem's final liberation. But the true nature of this anointing would remain a secret. The force that would overthrow "Babylon the great" would only be due to evil being turned against evil, a house divided against itself, like Persia and Babylon, like Greece and Persia, like Rome and Greece. Finally, the divided house of evil would take the form of the beast divided against Mystery Babylon, the spiritual Harlot.
There would come a time when an evil Cyrus would appear, a falsely anointed one, a false defender of Jerusalem. Indeed, there would be many false messiahs, even before that final false Cyrus. These false messiahs would appear within the system of spiritual harlotry itself, tied to the reigns held by Mystery Babylon herself. Then at the end there would come the most evil Cyrus, a little horn, a final King of the North, whose subjected ten kings, like ten horns, would destroy Mystery Babylon. And the secret would be that it would be the voice among the nations, a voice anointed for good, proclaiming, "Hashem has redeemed His People!" that would be the instrument that Hashem would use to put it into the hearts of the ten horns of the beast to turn against Mystery Babylon, the source of the beast's own power. For they, the north and the south, are one house, divided against itself.
REVELATION 18:5
For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
God has remembered...
By Micah the prophet it had already been promised concerning the purpose of Israel's Babylonian captivity that it would be through the mystery of this captivity that Israel would come to its final redemption.
Micah 4:10 Be in pain, and labour to bring forth, O daughter of Zion, like a woman in travail; for now you shall go forth out of the city, and shall dwell in the field, and shall come even unto Babylon; there you shall be rescued; there shall Hashem redeem you from the hand of your enemies.
Although it does not at first clearly appear, Micah says that it would be in the very same spiritual place of Jerusalem's captivity, Babylon, where Jerusalem would find her ultimate redemption. This is the prophecy underlying all that follows in this vision of the Revelation of Zion's Redeemer.
The mystery of the Babylonian captivity began in the 70 years of Jerusalem's captivity in Babylon itself. It appeared that after 70 years the Babylonian power, like Pharaoh, let Jerusalem go. But, as indicated by Pharaoh's own false release of the children of Israel, the gentile power, here also, did not completely relinquish its power over Jerusalem and Judah. Cyrus outwardly conquered Babylon but Persia was spiritually conquered by Babylon, by the spirit of its power.
Like the power of Pharaoh, the power of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Roman empires was nothing other, at its source, than the power and authority that had been originally granted to it by G-d to hold Israel in captivity. It was through the abuse of this power and authority that first Pharaoh and then the Babylonian system of Persian, Greek and Roman captivity attempted to indefinitely retain power.
We see from the 9th chapter of Daniel that the angel of G-d explains this to Daniel in terms of the 70 years of Jerusalem's authorized Babylonian captivity being turned into 70 prophetic weeks of multiplied years. This abuse of authority and power over Jerusalem in varied forms of political and military captivity, ultimately spiritual captivity, through the mysterious system of the Babylonian captivity, is allowed by G-d in order to
"...finish the transgression, and to make an end of sin, and to forgive iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to seal vision and prophet, and to anoint the most holy place. Daniel 9:24
What then are Babylon's sins that G-d remembers when it comes time, as Micah says, for Jerusalem to be finally fully redeemed from the long mystery of her Babylonian captivity? The sins of the whoredom of the Babylonian powers was to falsely claim authority over Jerusalem and the Jewish people after G-d had commanded them to be released. It is this sin that He determines now to remember. Until this time G-d chose to use the abuse of authority that He gave to the gentiles to hold Israel captive as the means he would use to accomplish the complete work of atonement for Jerusalem. Now, at this point in the revelation of Jerusalem's anointed Beloved Redeemer, the work of the 70 weeks is accomplished and G-d will, therefore, judge Babylon.
REVELATION 18:6
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.
as she rewarded you...
This is to say that the judgment that God has designed for Babylon in the end of days is one of measure for measure. And this is to be through the very consequences of the means of entrapment through which she worked to seduce and deceive she would be exposed and her house collapsed into rubble. For if her lies were designed to take souls captive, then her lies would come back upon her head with twice the impact to destroy both her and all the immoral and idolatrous form of civilization that she had created. All of this is important to see. Yet it is most critical to see that in this measure for measure judgment of God upon the Great Spiritual Prostitute it is the very people whom souls she aimed to use as merchandise whom God has appointed to be the ones to enact this judgment upon her, to expose her for who and what she is once and for all, for all the world to see.
All forms of slavery as a business are enterprises that have Mystery Babylon as their mother. But it is she herself who sought to make the souls of Israel her own merchandise in the slave trade. Therefore it is the wisdom of God that it should be the souls of Israel who judge her on the day of the revelation of their full spiritual redemption to the world. Their salvation shall expose her as the slave of sin and of the devil, and all her works shall be exposed as the lie of the evil inclination of idolatry. The lie of purity and righteousness and enlightenment to which she pretended shall then be an embarrassment even to her true master, the beast upon which she rode to power.
Then also the rulers of the nations who loved and served her shall be ashamed and shall hate her. No civilization of the past shall be left to them and they shall turn to one that is entirely new and artificial, the invention of the spiritual dragon, whose insane intellect deceived Adam and Eve in the beginning. For, when the Spiritual Prostitute of Babylon is judged and exposed by the truth, the conscience of all humanity will be ashamed and will know that human civilization was defiled and made impure by her, through embracing her. Even then in their shame the nations will not yet repent but will give their power to the beast. And for this reason Israel's salvation alone will be made to be the salvation of the world. For the conviction of Mystery Babylon, the Great Spiritual Prostitute, of sin is the conviction of all the nations of the world of sin. Her judgment is their judgment. Therefore they shall be turned over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that their spirit might be saved in the of Jerusalem's embrace of her Mashiach.
Therefore we need to understand the judgment of the Great Spiritual Prostitute both clearly and well.
REVELATION 18:7
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.
I sit a queen, and am no widow...
And this was the leaven of Babylon from the beginning: (Isaiah 47:7-9)
7“Yet you said, ‘I will be a queen forever.’
These things you did not consider
Nor remember the outcome of them.
8“Now, then, hear this, you sensual one,
Who dwells securely,
Who says in your heart,
‘I am, and there is no one besides me.
I will not sit as a widow,
Nor know loss of children.’
9“But these two things will come on you suddenly in one day:
Loss of children and widowhood.
They will come on you in full measure
In spite of your many sorceries,
In spite of the great power of your spells.
The context of this prophecy in Isaiah is God speaking about the true reason that Babylon was given the power to take Jerusalem into captivity. It was God who made this happen. God was returning his people to the condition of exile that they were in when they were in Egypt. For the covenant he made with them was a covenant of death and resurrection, death in Adam through the death of Mashiach and resurrection in the Son of Adam, who was made their corporate head in the redeemed and new creation. It had nothing to do with any qualities of Babylon. Yet the spirit that was in Babylon believed that it was not God's power and authority that had done this but her own. She saw that she had take Israel captive, even Jerusalem, and her pride was puffed up so that it filled the whole earth. She thought herself greater than the divine people, that she was herself most divine, that nothing could touch her. This was her pride when she sat as a queen in Babylon in the beginning. And this was her pride when she became a concubine queen in Persia, then in Greece, then in Rome.
Indeed, in Rome, this delusion went completely to her head. For there her husband, the Fourth Beast, was spiritually eternally defeated and spiritually imprisoned and she was was left to rule entirely on her own for many generations. Also, the Good News being declared first to the Jews and also to the Greeks, was declaring that the rulers of Rome were as spiritually cut off and dead as the firstborn of Pharaoh and Egypt. Against this the satanic harlot countered that it was not so, that she was no widow.
REVELATION 18:8
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 judges her.
the Lord God who judges her...
No one knows the day nor the hour of the appearing of Israel's glorified Redeemer, Matthew 24:36. No one except the Lord God, Hashem Elohim, the Father of the Redeemer of Israel. It is the judgment upon Mystery Babylon, the Mother of all Spiritual Prostitution, that opens the way for the return of Mashiach in glory. For as the Spirit of Mashiach brings all Israel out of this Babylon, the spiritual seductress of the ancient global Roman civilization, in the end of days, Jerusalem's redemption shall be complete. And she shall enter her bridal chamber to prepare herself to embrace her Mashiach.
This is the Day of Hashem, into which Yochanan entered by the Holy Spirit on the island of Patmos in order to receive this Revelation. And this judgment of the Roman Babylon Prostitute is the event that the whole of the Day of Hashem turns upon. It was by her seductions that the children of Israel were mislead and partially blinded and kept in exile. It was never by the propaganda of the beast itself. For the children of Israel were sealed in their foreheads with the name of Hashem Elohim.
The children of Israel never worshipped the beast, neither in spirit at the beginning when Mashiach walked among them, nor at the end when the whole world marvelled at the beast and worshipped him after the Ten Horns were used by God to destroy the exposed Roman Babylon Prostitute. For the beast himself was defeated long before by Mashiach, by his prayer for Jerusalem, when Hashem raised him from the dead and anointed him as the head of his people. Therefore even when they received false Messiah's they were always saved by Yehoshua HaMashiach from them and were never left to worship them.
Once the Roman Babylon Prostitute was exposed by the truth of the Good News of God and destroyed by her own lovers, the beast in the in the prison of the bottomless pit was shown to be full of nothing but empty blasphemies, able to do nothing but deceive the nations who did not know Hashem. Therefore the beast would be released from the bottomless pit for a little while, for there remained nothing but for him to be destoryed by the brightness of the coming of the Saviour and Redeemer of Israel.
REVELATION 18:9
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,
the smoke of her burning...
Even when the Roman Babylon Prostitute is exposed for the imposture of a queen that she is, the rulers of the nations do not willingly abandon her. They do not love the truth but are exposed as having themselves always loved the lie of the Great Spiritual Prostitute. Nevertheless, they can no longer pretend to godliness and morality, and in the name of saving themselves and their civilization from an apocalypse they openly declare themselves the enemies of God and the Lamb of God. Those who were for millennia the lovers of the Babylon Prostitute, now, in order to save themselves from the truth of the Good News of God, are forced to give their allegiance to the beast, "when they see the smoke of her burning".
The true smoke of her burning is spiritual, the smoke of her demons, and the leaders of the nations inhale it as they watch it coming out of her in her death throes. All souls of the nations who do not come out of Babylon together with the children of Israel will be caught up in and deceived by the carnal pathos of these leaders of the nations and will be carried away by their technique to end in the worship and service of the beast.
REVELATION 18:10
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.
Standing afar off ...
That is to say, the time will have come when all the rulers of the nations will have become prepared to switch their allegiance from the conservative political empire of the past millennia to the new, never seen before artificial civilization of the science of Technique, a global civilization of the little horn of the Forth Beast. "For all their lives they were in bondage through the fear of death", Hebrews 2:14-15. And now their fear and their enslavement is brought to its highest peak. For due to their desire for the liberty of sin, even in the hour of their greatest fear of death they fear the devil more than they fear God, although it is to save them from the works of the devil that the Mashiach of God is come to save them.
Therefore, even thought they will marvel to see the mother civilization being suddenly and utterly destroyed, they will not come near to her in her death throws. For they will all be under the dominion of the Ten Horns, the Group of Ten, who will be formally in the process of giving their allegiance to the little horn.
REVELATION 18:11
And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no one buys their merchandise any more:
no one buys their merchandise any more...
This is the merchandise of lies... This is the merchandise of the propaganda of money which produced the Industry of Money in the end times of human history.
The love of money is the evil insight that it is possible to manipulate the abstract power of simple exchange, in the exchange of ownership. Through the genius lie, it is possible to possible to manipulate that power without others fully knowing what you are doing and to make money out of nothing. This is the evil genius of the love of money, which is the root of all corruption. It is simply a matter of twisting the truth, the truth of the nature of responsibility in ownership, the truth of freewill. This is the evil genius of the serpent in the Garden.
When the spiritual prostitution of Mystery Babylon was finally able to turn the genius of the love of money into an institution, it was then possible to build the institution of the love of money into an industry. This industry of the deepest of all spiritual corruption was then able to gain dominance and control over all trade upon the face of the earth. All the merchants of the earth who were bought up in the evil spirit of Mystery Babylon were made corporations of human depravity. And through this industry of the love of money they became exorbitantly wealthy. They understood very well where there wealth came from, who its mother was, who had given birth to the demon of it. Therefore, even when they were forced to turn away from her demonically burning ruins and give their political support and service to the beast, they did so sorrowfully. For they did not see the beast as being the source of their wealth, only as their last hope for escaping the power of God.
REVELATION 18:12
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,
The merchandise of gold, and silver, and...
This is not simply gold and silver, jewels and pearls, etc., it is those commodities as sold from the stores of deceit by the merchants of deceit. For they anointed all commodities with an aura of supposed godly righteousness. Such a spiritual aura surrounding all merchandise was kept by the manipulations of the Great Prostitutes merchants away, for the most part, from the conscious eye. But it was always there in the spiritual peripheral vision of every consumer's deceived conscience. For it was not so much the products of gold and silver or plastic and steel, or wood or brick, or pleasure or success that they sold. It was the products of corrupt ideology. It was the genius of lies themselves that they sold and seduced the souls of consumers to buy. It was belief that they sold. For the industry of of the love of money is an industry of manipulating and corrupting faith.
There is no greater belief to ignite the fire of delusion for these merchants of the ideology of money than a God-given belief in the truth. For the truth was the precious stone that the serpent mined in the Garden of Eden. Belief in the truth was the first belief of what God said to Adam in the Garden ws the first belief that the serpent corrupted. And the ideology of money has come from corrupting the truth of God's word into the love of money ever since. The love of money is in the end transformed by the beast into the love of Technique.
REVELATION 18:13
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 humans.
and souls of humans...
Because there is not limit to amoral greed, in the end everything human and every commodity associated with the physical enhancement of the human being, even every living thing becomes money.. Not just bodies are sold but souls... All humanity became money in the spiritual prostitution of Babylon, and the nature and condition of humanity became slavery. So in the rebellion and liberation of humanity in the Beast humanity will become mere technique. Humanity will be its own Great Technology in the form of the Beast. The very nature and mind of humanity will become artificial in the demonic empire of the Beast.
REVELATION 18:14
And the fruits that your soul lusted after are departed from you, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from you, and you shall not find them any more at all.
your soul lusted...
This greed is not a common greed, it is soul lust. And the soul given over to lust is the slave of lust. This is the slavery of a soul sold to greed, sold to Mystery Babylon, the Mother of Spiritual Greed. The False Prophet of the Beast will promise liberation from this slavery, claiming that the source of the slavery of spiritual greed through which Mystery Babylon ruled through the ages was the slavery that God designed through which to possess his creations for the amusement of his will. All who lusted for money as though financial success was Godliness will be deceived by the False Prophet. Even when they have lost their advantage in the inequity of money, and have lost any possibility of gaining the edge over others through pseudo-righteousness ever again, they will continue to believe that the have everything to gain by creating their own ethics and morality and not being subject to the authority of God.
REVELATION 18:15
The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing,
made rich by her...
In Daniel 12:4 the angel foretells that in the end of history knowledge would increase and human movement and transportation would be exponentially multiplied. The Industrial Revolution and the Information Age both arose out of the dark angelically inspired period of the Enlightenment — which was the crowning achievement of Mystery Babylon, the Mother of Spiritual Prostitution. This is specifically how it was not simply the love of money that became the root of all evil in the end, but the love of the industry of money. And yet, after she had given birth to all of this through the enticement of her spiritual immorality, after she had fashioned this great delusion, God judged her and exposed her for the great empty lie that she was in one hour. And those who were her agents and spiritual pimps were terrified.
REVELATION 18:16
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!
Alas, alas, that great city...
Why in truth was the great city civilization of Mystery Babylon great? Why in truth did she clothe herself in fine linen and purple and scarlet, gold and pearls and precious stones? In truth it was because the greatest gem, the gem of God's truth was in her, which was the truth that she twisted into a lie. But the truth of God could never be truly corrupted, could never be truly twisted.
Only the human understanding of God's truth could be twisted and changed into what it is not in the human mind. For just as the serpent could not change the truth of what God actually said in the Garden, so Mystery Babylon could not change the truth of salvation, that it is of the Jews, into a lie that allows the human mind to believe that the repair of the world and eternal life comes in some measure from human autonomous action.
Those who loved the Great Spiritual Prostitute loved her most deeply because she enabled them to answer back to the Jews and to the words of deeds of Yehoshua and save some measure of their carnal human pride, saying, "Salvation is not of the Jews! It is the whole human race!"
REVELATION 18:17
For in one hour so great riches is come to nothing. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
as many as trade by sea...
In visionary terms, this is what we call trade and commerce... An empire and a global civilization based on a false theology about Israel, about the Jewish people. A simple twisting of the story about Yehoshua and the Jews was used to build, in the end, a great industry of the love of money. Therefore, the "sea" here can be read in its prophetic meaning of "the peoples of the world," as in Revelation chapter 10.
When the time is come and the Father of the Saviour of Israel, Yehoshua HaMashiach, permits, the false theology about Yehoshua and the Jews will be exposed and corrected for all the world to hear and to know. The Spirit of God will make the world unable to deny that the prayer of Yehoshua, the prayer of his actions and the prayer of his words, was all for Jerusalem and the Jewish people, that they would not even be charged with sin, but would be justified in all things, for the sake of God's name, for the sake of God's love for his son.
On that day, in that hour, Babylon will fall. There will be no more greatness in her. She will no longer have a hold of the truth, to twist it in the mind of children. Those who profited from her deceptions will then fall back. They will no longer want to be seen as her associates. They will be totally at a loss. For they will have no where to turn but to repentance toward God, or else to the Beast. And in the Beast there will be no truth at all, no Good News of the new cutting of the covenant of the Torah with Israel. There will be nothing of Yehoshua HaMashiach at all. And they were somewhat attracted to the God of Israel, and they were drawn to Yehoshua, thinking could come to some arrangement with God, some way to save their pride and appease God at the same time. But now there was nothing they could grab onto. Nothing to the left and nothing to the right. There was only God and the Jews, or else the humanity they had always known and its technology.
They had wanted an apocalypse that humanity could somehow proudly survive, but in one hour it seemed this Apocalypse had become something that only Israel would survive, and those who attached themselves to the Jews.
REVELATION 18:18
And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What is like unto this great city!
What is like unto this great city!
All that Humanity has come to pride itself in is gone... Its rich civilization is gone and with it its arts and intellectual world. Its pride in human reason is gone. Its pride in tribe and nuclear family is gone. Everything it ever built is gone.
It is left with the nightmare of the military monster world order, demonic science demonic technique... demonic artificial intelligence... and still it would rather that than repentance and obedience to God.
REVELATION 18:19
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.
dust on their heads...
Even on the mark of the beast which some had already willingly put there...
Those people who cast dust upon their heads are saying in a symbolic way that they are as good as dead. Here the act takes upon it an association to the demonic digital dust of being linked with the image of the Beast. The realization has come upon the inhabitants of the earth that they have been turned over to having no future but that of the technique of the Dragon fallen from heaven and its beast upon the earth. That technique is itself a kind of living death. For it is artificial life. Now that they are left with no human history, the glamour of a future of artificial intelligence and a technological world is beginning to fade for them.
They were in denial. Just as they thought they could negotiate their future with God, they thought they could negotiate their future with the god of Technique. They watch the queen of human civilization going up in smoke and all their dreams of utopia turning to ashes, and now understand clearly that they have never had any power at all, that since the day Adam sinned they have always been living in the day of their death. And they cast dust on their heads. They begin to feel a twinge of regret and remorse for their having embraced their exile from God. For there is yet a hidden work of the Spirit in the soul of humanity, and there will yet be a redemption of humanity, even of the nations which are now preparing to worship the beast.
REVELATION 18:20
Rejoice over her, oh heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets; for God has avenged you on her.
God has avenged you...
What crime has been committed against heaven and against the holy apostles and against Moses and all the prophets? For what does their soul desire vengeance? Is it the harm done to the body? No it is not that. For they freely suffer all things in the body for the sake of the service of God. What is it, then, for which their soul seeks vengeance? It is for that word of Truth spoken from heaven which they spoke, which was twisted in the minds of the innocent and was turned into a lie to weaken the faith of the children of God.
And what vengeance has Hashem brought into the world on their behalf? He has brought the vengeance of strengthening the faith of Israel in Jerusalem by his Two Witnesses, so that All Israel is saved and is come out of Babylon, leaving her to the violence of the jealousy of her lovers. And they have destroyed her.
REVELATION 18:21
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.
cast it into the sea...
When the Mystery Roman Babylon is exposed for what it is it will then be recognized to be nothing more than the carnal dream of sinners to rule over the word of God. In this way, it will be cast into the sea of humanity. For it will be laid bare and indistinguishable from all other fantastical but entirely vapid inventions of the carnal mind. As glorious and great it was for so many centuries, it will be seen to have always been no more than a common con. All the actual works of lasting, redeemable value that were produced through it were the result of the work of the word of God and the Spirit of God which were the gem buried within it, which it sought to exchange for a lie. Not because of the civilization of Mystery Babylon, but despite it, developments occurred within humanity which God would redeem and rectify according to his purposes in the coming Messianic Era.
REVELATION 18:22
And the voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no more at all in you; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft shall be found any more in you; and the sound of a millstone shall be heard no more at all in you;
sound of a millstone ...
Here the millstone is representative of the category of industry as the specific example of the human skills and trades developed through the centuries under the influence of the rule of Mystery Babylon. And before this is mentioned the skill categories of social celebration and entertainment. All of these will still be spoken of, which is to say studied and developed, in the Messianic Era, including industry, but all development will be rectified through Godliness. No association will be made at all in the development that takes place in the Messianic Era with the development that took place in the era of the Roman Babylon spiritual prostitution of the past.
REVELATION 18:23
And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in you; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in you: for thy merchants were the great people of the earth; for by your sorceries were all nations deceived.
by your sorceries ...
The Roman Babylonian prostitute built a civilization on a hidden sorcery. The products of its great merchants were actually products of this hidden sorcery. What was this sorcery?
It was a spell cast over a humanity that was under the sentence of death decreed by its Creator. He decreed this sentence in order that there might ultimately be repentance and redemption in a new creation. But instead of this truth, this sorcery made people believe that they were free of any Divine judgment and that the world and the future belonged to them, that the earth belonged to humanity to do with as it would.
This spell first twisted the truth of Divine Judgment into a human horror story, something in the end to be mocked. Having accomplished this, the spell then made all who came under it to believe in the end that their own science and industry, and no go, was the source of truth and the hope of all generations to come. The bride and the bridegroom married and gave birth in this hope. The burning candle of this faith was that humanity was its own god and there was no other god above it. If the pains and suffering of ceaseless war and daily sufferings were too hard for the masses to rationalize in their efforts to remain under this spell, then the merchants of this sorcery also have warehouse upon warehouse of lies and compounds to ease the mind.
REVELATION 18:24
And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.
all that were slain upon the earth...
The Righteous testify that without acceptance of the punishment of death there is no resurrection. But against this testimony the world rages. And for their giving this testimony the righteous witnesses to the truth that the soul that sins will die are slain by those under the spell of the Roman Babylon continually. Yet this day of trial will come to an end. Mystery Babylon will be exposed by the truth of God's Good News being made known to the ends of the earth; and Babylon will be destroyed in one hour. Then the end will come.
