There are, in the New Testament, three mystic women treated as symbols of evil, and these three appear to us to indicate three stages in the progress of ecclesiastical corruption. The first is the woman in Matt. 13 who took leaven and hid it "in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." Is not this the commencement of the evil? It is the first introduction into the unleavened mass of professing Christendom of those corrupting principles of which we have seen such ample proof in apostolic times. It was then that "the mystery of iniquity" began to work. Then we have, in Rev. 2:2020Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. (Revelation 2:20) "that woman Jezebel," symbolic, as we have seen, of Romanism as a system, established and bearing children amid that which had once been the Church of God. Jezebel was not a daughter of Israel, but a Zidonian princess whom Ahab, king of Israel, disobeyed the law of God in marrying. It was for her sake that he went and served Baal, and made a grove, and did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were above him, and, in short, sold himself "to work evil in the sight of the Lord." Jezebel was the instigator of all this, and the ruthless, heartless persecutor of God's people. Still she could use God's name, and proclaim a fast, and pretend great horror of blasphemy, and this even at the very time when, by treachery and false witness, she was perpetrating the murder of Naboth of Jezreel. Such is the divinely selected symbol of Popery!
But there is a third mystic woman, who is introduced to our attention in Revelation and who is described as "the great whore that sitteth upon many waters; with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication," and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk. The apostle sees her as a woman sitting "upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns." This woman is "arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication." "And upon her forehead," says the apostle, "was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration." Such is the last view Scripture affords us of corrupt Christianity—papal, no doubt, as to that which mainly fills the scene, but not exclusive of anything under other names, which shares the papal spirit and character. This woman is not a harlot merely, but the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth! Jezebel may symbolize her as a corruptress and mother of children within, but to set forth her seduction of the nations, and the pomp and magnificence of her rule, she is shown to us as here, seated on the beast, arrayed in gorgeous apparel, with her golden wine cup in her hand, with which she makes the earth's kings and inhabitants drunk. And she is in the height of her glory, when the vengeful stroke descends. "How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.”
One difficulty as to this interpretation must not be passed over. Babylon the great forms the subject of two chapters in the Apocalypse. It is from chapter 17 we have chiefly quoted, and if it stood alone, there could be no difficulty in recognizing ecclesiastical corruption, of which Rome is the head and center, in the woman there described. "Drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus," would of itself establish this interpretation. But in chapter 18, when the fall of Babylon has been declared, we find all the merchants, and shipmasters, and sailors bemoaning her downfall. The entire description in chapter 18 suggests the idea of a vast maritime, commercial power. This, as is well known, Rome is not, and here is the difficulty to which we refer. But we have only to suppose the extension of Rome's influence over those regions in which she once reigned paramount, and the difficulty vanishes at once. We do not say that this will be accomplished but our sad abuse of the light and blessings of the Reformation on the one hand, and the present aspect of religious society in these countries on the other, make this solution of the difficulty possible.
We cannot now enter into the details of Babylon's overthrow. They connect our present subject with the past and future history of the fourth Gentile monarchy. This again will be found to link itself with the prophetic history of the Jews' return to their own land, and their re-establishment there. The Antichrist, the man of sin, will be found connected with corrupt Christianity as having paved the way for him, and having prepared men's hearts to receive him. It has always been so. Religious corruption sears the consciences of those who are its agents or its dupes, while, by its manifest hollowness and hypocrisy, it outrages the natural conscience of the spectators, and provokes them to discard religion altogether.
W. Trotter