17 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. 5 And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations.” 6 And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.
Just as there is a trinity of evil, dragon, beast, false prophet, in opposition against the Holy Trinity, so also in opposition to the Church, the true and holy Bride of Christ, there is the harlot, Babylon. Now this, it would seem, is the key to proper and worthy interpretation of the vision, for it means that it stands for a principle which is valid for every age in the history of the Church. There is no doubt - and this is verified in 9 and 18 - that for John the harlot was Rome, pagan Rome in all her imperial arrogance and power. But if we were to refer to the writings of the Reformers or the Westminster Confession of Faith, we would certainly discover that Luther and Calvin and their successors identified the harlot with papal Rome, the Catholic Church in all its evil oppression of the peoples of the world. Similarly, modern interpretations have not been wanting which have referred this vision to modern totalitarian powers. Now, endless confusion has arisen here, and true insights have been ignored, because it has not been recognised that what John is unfolding here is a permanent principle in symbolic form. John was right in thinking of pagan Rome, that godless empire that was drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs, under Nero and Domitian, and the other. Caesars that wasted and harried and decimated the Church of God. But Luther was right too, when he pointed at the Pope of Rome and said, 'That is what the book of Revelation speaks of'. Anything, in fact, can be an embodiment of this evil principle. And insomuch as papal Rome in Luther's day 'Wielded tyrannical power, and turned persecutor, and stood between the souls of men and Christ, and depraved men's consciences and withheld the truth from them, and connived at all manner of evil, and sought political aggrandisement, and become a political engine in the world, then she inherited the features of Babylon.' Anything fitting this description deserves this title today, whether it be in the political or religious scene. The danger is lest we become exclusive in our interpretation. It has just as much reference to Communism as to anything else in history, for Communism is doing just the things today that pagan Rome did in John's, and papal Rome did in Luther's.