id to be "drunken (1) with the blood of the saints, and
(2) with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." The twofold statement is
seen to cover the two great periods, before Christ and since. And it
covers also the two great powers through which the spirit of evil has
chiefly worked in those two periods. But the name given first in the
plains of Shinar, and used characteristically of the God-defying power
of evil, is given here, Babylon. It will be Babylon again at the very
end after the Church system is overthrown.

It is plainly said that the beast represents the great civil or
governmental power in its final stage, the shape it will be in at the
end when these events occur.[161] The chief dominating political power
of the world will have passed through a succession of changes, seven
kingdoms successively following each other. At the end there will be a
combination of some sort, with ten great subdivisions, and one great
head over all.

But at the last, the civil power will discard the Church, and persecute
it. The spirit of evil thus gets embodiment typically in the great
Babylon power, then in the Church, and at the very last, in a coalition
of civil powers heading up in a new Babylon.

Then follows announcement of the fall of Babylon. The city is regarded
here as the earthly capital of the organized system of unseen evil
spirit power at work in the world. The city and the system are
inseparably allied. The name Babylon is used in the Bible for both
system and city.

If the question be asked what city is meant here, there can be but one
answer. From the twelfth of Genesis on the Bible never touches history,
except as history touches Israel as a nation. A thoughtful review of the
book makes this clear. And this book of Revelation is a gathering-up of
Bible threads, and only these. There is only one city in the Bible
record that answers to the description here, "the great city which
reigneth over the kings of the earth." "Babylon _the_ great."

But the old Babylon lies in ruins. And its ruined condition has been
quoted as the fulfilment of the famous passage in Isaiah xiii. 19-22. It
should be carefully noted that the present conditions at the site of old
Babylon do not seem to satisfy fully the language of that passage. It
would seem to be another illustration of the rare use of language in the
Bible, which adapts a passage accurately to one event, and then to a
second event, a long time afterward.

This would, of