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 her desolation.  Similarly, since the first world war, the influence of Babylonish religion has declined ramakably on a global scale.  In Japan, Shinto emperor worship has proscribed following the second world war.  In China,  the Communist government controls all religious appointments and activity.   In Protestant northern Europe, most people have becom indifferent to religion. And the Roman Catholic Church has recently  been weakened by schisms  and internal dessent in its global domain. - Compare Mark 3:24-26.

All these trends are doubtless a part of the 'drying up of 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 the 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 a lurking place for every unclean and hated bird!"   (Revelation 18:2b)  Soon she will be literally such   a wasteland, as desolate as Babylon's ruins in modern Iraq. see also JEREMIAH 50:25-28.

The word "demons" here is likely  a reflection of the word "goat-shaped demons" (Se' i-rim')  found in Isaiah's description of fallen Babylon:   "And here the haunters of waterless regions will certainly lie down, and their houses must be filled  with eagle owls. Ad there the  ostriches must reside, and goat-shaped demons themselves will 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 swor 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 their frightful visions they keep acting craz.  Therefore the haunters of waterless regions will dwell 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 Sodum and Gomorrah. - JEREMIAH 50:35-40.

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

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