Mourning and Rejoicing at Babylon's End - Hurling a Great Millstone

Hurling a Great Millstone

What John next sees confirms that Jehovah's judgment of Babylon the Great is final:  "And a strong angel lifted up a stone like a great millstone and hurled it into the sea, saying:  'Thus with a swift pitch will Babylon the great city be hurled down, and she will never be found again.' " (Revelation 18:21)  In Jeremiah's time, a similar act with powerful prophetic meaning was performed.  Jeremiah was inspired to write in a book "all the calamity that would come upon Babylon."  He gave the book to Seraiah and told him to travel to Babylon.  There, following Jeremiah's instructions, Seraiah read a declaration against the city: "O Jehovah, you yourself have spoken against this place, in order to cut it off so that there may come to be in it no inhabitant, either man or even domestic animal, but that she may become mere desolate wastes to time indefinite."  Seraiah then tied a stone to the book and threw it into the river  Euphrates, saying:  "This is how Babylon will sink down and never rise up because of the calamity that I am bringing in upon her." -Jeremiah 51:59-64.

The throwing of the book with the attached stone into the river was a guarantee that Babylon would plunge into oblivion, never to recover. The apostle John's seeing a strong angel perform a similar act is likewise a powerful guarantee  that Jehovah's purpose toward Babylon the Great will be fulfilled.  The completely ruined  condition of ancient  Babylon today testifies powerfully to what will befall false religion in the near future. 

The strong angel now addresses Babylon the Great, saying:  "And the sound of singers who accompany themselves on the harp and of musicians and of flutists and of trumpeters will never be  heard in you again, and no craftsman of any trade will ever be found in you again, and no sound of a millstone will ever be heard in your again, and no light of a lamp will ever shine in your again, and o voice of a bridegroom and of a bride will ever be heard in you again; because your traveling merchants were the top-ranking men of the earth, for by your spiritistic  practice all the nations were misled." - Revelation 18:22. 23.

In comparable terms, Jeremiah prophesied concerning apostate Jerusalem:  "I will destroy out of them the sound of exultation and the sound of rejoicing, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the hand mill and the light of the lamp.  And all this land must become a devastated place, an object of astonishment."  (Jeremiah 25:10, 11) As the principal part of the Babylon the Great, Christendom will become a lifeless ruin, as so vividly depicted by Jerusalem's desolate condition after 607 B.C.E. The Christendom that once rejoiced lightheartedly and bustled with everyday noise will find herself conquered and abandoned.

Indeed, as the angel here tells John, all of Babylon the Great will change from a powerful, international empire to an arid, desert like wasteland.  Her  "traveling merchants," including top-ranking millionaires, have used her religion for personal advantage, or as a cover-up, and the clergy have found it profitable to share the limelight with them.  But those merchants will no longer have Babylon the Great as their accomplice.  No more will she be hoodwinking the nations of earth with her mystic religious practices.

Next time: Mourning and Rejoicing at Babylon's End -An Appalling Blood guilt

From the Book of Revelation