his woman called
Babylon, said to be a City and also called a "mystery," is a symbol
of the _false_ church of Christ; and, being a harlot, and the mother
of harlots, or churches like herself (and thus the _Mother Church_),
and harlot signifying fornication, and fornication, idolatry--image
worship--then a professed Church of Christ, which teaches and
practises image worship.

The great city ruling over the kings of the earth in John's day and
situated on seven mountains, or "mounts," is ROME; as the city
represents the woman Babylon who is the symbol of the false Church
of Christ, then you have a false church of Christ seated (and
remember, the word is "_seated_") in Rome. A Church seated in Rome
is a _Roman Church_; and as the city rules over the earth, over the
world; and a world-wide rule is a universal rule; and the word for
universal, worldwide, is, also, "catholic," you have a catholic
church; and, _seated_ in Rome (Rome its capital centre), THE ROMAN
CATHOLIC CHURCH.

This Church is said to be drunken with the blood of the martyrs of
Jesus; and the pages of history glued together with the blood of
these same martyrs, and the burning, blistering record of the "Holy
Inquisition," affirm that the astounding picture is true in all its
crimson and scarlet details.

But the striking feature in the picture, and the one that is first
presented to us, is that the woman (the Church) is carried by a
beast. This beast is a symbol of government and teaches that the
Church "rules" over the governments of the world, is sustained by
the State, has attained to "temporal power." As the picture occurs
in the _third division_ of the book, and that division relates to
things still future, we have here a distinct prophecy that this
Apostate Roman Church shall again attain to temporal power, become a
State Church, supported and carried officially by the nations of the
earth.

The exactitude with which the picture has been painted, and that,
too, at a time when Rome had not yet come into the place of full
-blown apostasy and power; the startling way in which, step by step,
the prophetic outlines have been fulfilled even in our day, are
tremendously suggestive concerning the possibility of its complete
and final fulfilment; and bid us ask most earnestly--whence came the
mental eyesight which enabled the writer of the book to sketch out
for us centuries ahead of time, that which the page of after history
reveals to us as facts?