THE CLOSING MESSAGES.—NO. 12.
By Roswell F. Cottrell
THAT the kingdoms of the earth are not the Babylon of the book of Revelation, is evident from several considerations. 1. She is the great city that “reigneth over the kings of the earth.” The beast, upon which the woman was seated, represents the kingdoms of the divided empire of Rome. Surely, the woman is not identical with the beast upon which she rides. But let Babylon represent the apostate church, as she was from the sixth to the sixteenth century, controlling the kings of Europe, and, through them, shedding the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and how strikingly true is the application of the figure! 2. Babylon commits fornication with the kings of the earth. “The kings of the earth have committed fornication with her.” Then she is distinct from those kings. But the professed church, nominally espoused to Christ, compromises the pure doctrines of the gospel, lowering the standard of the truth, and mixing Christian doctrines with heathenism, to secure the patronage of kings, to exalt herself as a queen, and to crush, by bloody persecution, all that refuse to go down with her in her apostasy, but remain loyal and true to Christ and the gospel—when applied to such a one, how true the representation. Otherwise, the figure has no aptness. 3. Add to the foregoing the fact that when the plagues come, which are emphatically the plagues of Babylon, “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, standing afar off for fear of her torment,” and the point is fully established that Babylon is distinct from the civil governments of the world. It has been held by some that the city of Rome was this Babylon, and that the literal destruction of that city by fire, would be the fall of Babylon. It is thought that the text: “The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth,” proves that the woman is the city of Rome, situated on her seven literal hills. But the seven heads are not literal mountains. In chap. xiii, we read that one of these heads received a deadly wound by a sword and was healed. This was not a literal mountain, but one of the forms of government of the Roman empire—the papal form received150a death-wound and was healed. That the heads are governments and not hills, is further evident from the crowns that were seen upon them; and, further still, from the fact that they are successive, only one of them existing at a time. Whiting literally translates the text, “The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth, and they [the mountains] are seven kings.” The heads and the mountains then are two sets of symbols to represent the kings or civil governments over which the woman rules; even as the “woman” and that great “city” are two symbols of the ecclesiastical power “which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” Of these governments it is said, “Five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come.” Apply this to the city of Rome at the time indicated in the prophecy, and she was standing on a single hill, five had tumbled down, the sixth she then occupied, and the seventh was still to be thrown up by some future volcanic eruption. Rome was the literal seat of that government which was symbolized as the beast. When the civil government of Rome was changed from its Pagan to its Papal form, it is said that “the dragon gave him his power, and his seat.” All know that the seat of this government was Rome; and that the civil power once exercised there by pagan emperors, was afterward wielded by the popes. The seat of the beast and the woman that sits upon the beast cannot be identical. Hence the woman is not the city of Rome. But the people of God are called out of Babylon that they may escape her plagues. Are they chiefly in the city of Rome? But they are in Babylon after her fall is announced. Now, if Rome is Babylon, and her fall is the destruction of that city, then the people of God will be found in her, even after she shall be “utterly burned with fire.” Thus the folly of every false view of the subject is readily seen, when we apply the various specifications given; but when we take the right view, every portion of the prophecy will sustain it. The prophecy is infallible in all its parts; and when we find an object to which every specification perfectly applies, we have arrived at an infallible conclusion.