The Great City Devastated

 Decline of Babylon the Great

Ancient Babylon's fall in 539 B.C.E. was the start of a long decline that ended in her desolation. Similarly, since the first world war, the influence of Babylonish religion has declined remarkably on a global scale.  In Japan, Shinto emperor worship was proscribed following the second world war.  In China, the Communist government controls all religious appointments and activity.  In Protestant norther Europe, most people had become indifferent to religion. And the Roman Catholic Church has been weakened by schisms and internal dissent in it global domain. - Compare MARK 3:24-26. 

All these trends are doubtless part of the 'drying up the Euphrates' in preparation for the coming militaristic attack  on Babylon the Great.  This 'drying up' is reflected, too, in the pope's announcement of October 1986 that church must "again become mendicant"-because of huge deficits.  (Revelation 16:12)  Particularly since 1919 has Babylon the Great been exposed to public gaze as  a spiritual wasteland, just as the mighty angel here announces: "And she has become a dwelling place of demons and a lurking place of every unclean exhalation, and lurking place of every unclean hated bird!" (Revelaton 18:2b) Soon, she will be literally such a wasteland, as desolate as Babylon's ruins in modern Iraq.- JEREMIAH 50:25-28. 

The words "demons  is likely a reflection of the word "goat-shaped  demons" (se'i-rim')  found in Isaiah's  descriptions of fallen Babylon:  "And there the the haunters of waterless regions will certainly lie down and their houses must be filled with eagle owls.  And there the ostriches must reside, and goat-shaped demons themselves will go skipping about there." (Isaiah 13:21)   It may not refer to literal demons but rather to shaggy-haired, desert-dwelling animals whose appearance  made onlookers think of demons.  In the ruins of Babylon the Great, the figurative existence of such animals, along with stagnant, poisonous  air ("unclean exhalation") and unclean birds, signifies her spiritually dead condition. She hold forth no life prospect whatever for mankind. - Compare EPHESIANS 2:1, 2. 

Her situation also matches Jeremiah's prophecy: "There is a sword against the Chaldeans," is the utterance of Jehovah, "and against the inhabitants of Babylon and against her princes and against her wise ones. . . . There is a devastation upon her waters, and they must be dried up.   For it is a land of graven images, and because of her frightful visions they keep acting crazy.  Therefore the haunters of waterless regions will dwell with  the howling animals.  And in her the ostriches much dwell; and she will nevermore be dwelt in, nor will she reside for generation after generation."'  Idolatry and chanting of repetitious prayers cannot save Babylon the Great  from a retribution resembling God's overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah. -  JEREMIAH 50:35-40. 

Next time: The Great City Devastated -Passion-Arousing Wine

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