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Revelation 18:1

Adam Clarke
Bible Commentary

The earth was lightened with his glory - This may refer to some extraordinary messenger of the everlasting Gospel, who, by his preaching and writings, should be the means of diffusing the light of truth and true religion over the earth.

Albert Barnes
Notes on the Whole Bible

And after these things - After the vision referred to in the previous chapter.

I saw another angel come down from heaven - Different from the one that had last appeared, and therefore coming to make a new communication to him. It is not unusual in this book that different communications should be entrusted to different angels. Compare Revelation 14:6, Revelation 14:8-9, Revelation 14:15, Revelation 14:17-18.

Having great power - That is, he was one of the higher rank or order of angels.

And the earth was lightened with his glory - The usual representation respecting the heavenly beings. Compare Exodus 24:16; Matthew 17:2; Luke 2:9; Acts 9:3. This would, of course, add greatly to the magnificence of the scene.

Uriah Smith
Daniel and the Revelation, 663

Verse 1

SOME movement of mighty power is symbolized in these verses. (See under verse 4.) The consideration of a few facts will guide us unmistakably to the application. In chapter 14 we had a message announcing the fall of Babylon. Babylon is a term which embraces not only the Roman Catholic Church, but religious bodies which have sprung from her, bringing many of her errors and traditions along with them.DAR 663.2

A Moral Fall. — The fall of Babylon here spoken of cannot be literal destruction; for there are events to take place in Babylon after her fall which utterly forbid this idea; as, for instance, the people of God are there after her fall, and are called out in order that they may not receive of her plagues; and in these plagues is embraced her literal destruction. The fall is therefore a moral one; for the result of it is that Babylon becomes the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. These are terrible descriptions of apostasy, showing that, as a consequence of her fall, she piles up an accumulation of sins even to the heavens, and becomes subject to the judgments of God, which can no longer be delayed.DAR 663.3

And since the fall here introduced is a moral one, it must apply to some branch of Babylon besides, or outside of, the pagan or papal divisions; for from the beginning of their history, paganism has been a false religion, and the papacy an apostate one. And further, as this fall is said to occur but a short period before Babylon's final destruction, certainly this side of the rise and predicted triumph of the papal church, this testimony cannot apply to any religious organizations but such as have sprung from that church. These started out on reform. They ran well for a season, and had the approbation of God; but fencing themselves about with creeds, they have failed to keep pace with the advancing light of prophetic truth, and hence have been left in a position where they will finally develop a character as evil and odious in the sight of God as that of the church from which they first withdrew as dissenters, or reformers. As the point before us is to many a very sensitive one, we will let members of these various denominations here speak for themselves.DAR 664.1

The Tennessee Baptist says: “This woman [popery] is called the mother of harlots and abominations. Who are the daughters? The Lutheran, the Presbyterian, and the Episcopalian churches are all branches of the [Roman] Catholic. Are not these denominated ‘harlots and abominations' in the above passage? — I so decide. I could not, with the stake before me, decide otherwise. Presbyterians and Episcopalians compose a part of Babylon. They hold the distinctive principles of papacy in common with papists.”DAR 664.2

Alexander Campbell says: “The worshiping establishments now in operation throughout Christendom, incased and cemented by their respective voluminous confessions of faith, and their ecclesiastical constitutions, are not churches of Jesus Christ, but the legitimate daughters of that mother of harlots, the Church of Rome.”DAR 664.3

Again he says: “A reformation of popery was attempted in Europe full three centuries ago. It ended in a Protestant hierarchy, and swarms of dissenters. Protestantism has been reformed into Presbyterianism, that into Congregationalism, and that into Baptistism, etc., etc. Methodism has attempted to reform all, but has reformed itself into many forms of Wesleyanism. All of them retain in their bosom — in their ecclesiastical organizations, worship, doctrines, and observances — various relics of popery. They are at best a reformation of popery, and only reformations in part. The doctrines and traditions of men yet impair the power and progress of the gospel in their hands.” — On Baptism p. 15.DAR 665.1

Mr. O. Scott (Wesleyan Methodist) says: “The church is as deeply infected with a desire for worldly gain as the world.DAR 665.2

“The churches are making a god of this world.DAR 665.3

“Most of the denominations of the present day might be called churches of the world with more propriety than churches of Christ.DAR 665.4

“The churches are so far gone from primitive Christianity that they need a fresh regeneration, a new kind of religion.”DAR 665.5

Says the Golden Rule: “The Protestants are out-doing the popes in splendid, extravagant folly in church-building. Thousands on thousands are expended in gay and costly ornaments to gratify pride and a wicked ambition, that might and should go to redeem the perishing millions! Does the evil, the folly, and the madness of these proud, formal, fashionable worshipers stop here?DAR 665.6

“These splendid monuments of popish pride, upon which millions are squandered in our cities, virtually exclude the poor, for whom Christ died, and for whom he came especially to preach.”DAR 665.7

The report of the Michigan Yearly Conference, published in the True Wesleyan of Nov. 15, 1851, says: “The world, commercial, political, and ecclesiastical, are alike, and are together going in the broad way that leads to death. Politics, commerce, and nominal religion, all connive at sin, reciprocally aid each other, and unite to crush the poor. Falsehood is unblushingly uttered in the forum and in the pulpit; and sins that would shock the moral sensibilities of the heathen go unrebuked in all the great denominations of our land. These churches are like the Jewish church when the Saviour exclaimed, ‘Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.'” Is their condition any better now than it was then?DAR 665.8

Robert Atkins, in a sermon preached in London, says: “The truly righteous are diminished from the earth, and no man layeth it to heart. The professors of religion of the present day, in every church, are lovers of the world, conformers to the world, lovers of creature-comfort, and aspirers after respectability. They are called to suffer with Christ, but they shrink even from reproach.DAR 666.1

“Apostasy, apostasy, apostasy, is engraven on the very front of every church; and did they know it, and did they feel it, there might be hope, but alas! they cry, ‘We are rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.'”DAR 666.2

G. F. Pentecost, the noted evangelist, said in the Independent, in February, 1883, that the conversion of sinners was becoming “a lost art.”DAR 666.3

Abundance of similar testimony might be produced from persons in high standing in these various denominations, written, not for the purpose of being captious and finding fault, but from a vivid sense of the fearful condition to which these churches have fallen. The term Babylon, as applied to them, is not a term of reproach, but is simply expressive of the confusion and diversity of sentiment that exists among them. Babylon need not have fallen, but might have been healed (Jeremiah 51:9) by the reception of the truth; but she rejected it, and confusion and dissensions still reign within her borders, and worldliness and pride are fast choking out every plant of heavenly growth.DAR 666.4

Chronology of this Movement. — At what time do these verses have their application? When may this movement be looked for? If the position here taken is correct, that these churches, this branch of Babylon, experienced a moral fall by the rejection of the first message of chapter 14, the announcement in the chapter under consideration could not have gone forth previous to that time. It is, then, either synchronous with the message of the fall of Babylon, in chapter 14, or it is given at a later period than that. But it cannot be synonymous with that; for that merely announces the fall of Babylon, while this adds several particulars which at that time were neither fulfilled nor in process of fulfilment. As we are therefore to look this side of 1844, where the previous message went forth, for the announcement brought to view in this chapter, we inquire, Has any such message been given from that time to the present? The answer must still be in the negative; hence this message is yet future. But we are now having the third angel's message, which is the last to be given before the coming of the Son of man. We are therefore held to the conclusion that the first two verses of this chapter constitute a feature of the third message which is to appear when this message shall be proclaimed with power, and the whole earth be lightened with its glory.DAR 666.5

The work brought to view in verse 2 is in process of accomplishment, and will soon be completed, by the work of Spiritualism. What are called in Revelation 16:14 “spirits of devils working miracles” are secretly but rapidly working their way into the religious denominations above referred to; for their creeds have been formulated under the influence of the wine (errors) of Babylon, one of which is that the spirits of our dead friends, conscious, intelligent, and active, are all about us; and this renders such denominations unable to resist the approach of evil spirits who come to them under the names and impersonations of their dead friends.DAR 667.1

A significant feature in the work of Spiritualism, just now, is the religious garb it is assuming. Keeping in the background its grosser principles, which it has heretofore carried so largely in the front, it now assumes to appear as respectably religious in some quarters as any other denomination in the land. It talks of sin, repentance, the atonement, salvation through Christ, etc., almost as orthodoxly as the most approved standards. Under the guise of this profession, what is to hinder it from intrenching itself in almost every denomination in Christendom? The basis of Spiritualism is a fundamental dogma in the creeds of almost all the churches. Its secret principles are, alas! too commonly cherished, and its dark practices too commonly followed, to put them at variance on that ground, so long as they seek a common concealment. What, then, can save Christendom from its seductive influence? Herein is seen another sad result of rejecting the truths offered to the world by the messages of chapter 14. Had the churches received these messages, they would have been shielded against this delusion; for among the great truths developed by the religious movement there brought to view, is the important doctrine that the soul of man is not naturally immortal; that eternal life is a gift suspended on conditions, and to be acquired through Christ alone; that the dead are unconscious; and that the rewards and punishments of the future world lie beyond the resurrection and the day of Judgment. This strikes a death-blow to the first and vital claim of Spiritualism. What foothold can that doctrine secure in any mind fortified by this truth? The spirit comes, and claims to be the disembodied soul, or spirit, of a dead man. It is met with the fact that that is not the kind of soul, or spirit, which man possesses; that the “dead know not anything;” that this, its first pretension, is a lie, and that the credentials it offers, show it to belong to the synagogue of Satan. Thus it is at once rejected, and the evil it would do is effectually prevented. But the great mass of religionists stand opposed to the truth which would thus shield them, and thereby expose themselves to this last manifestation of satanic cunning.DAR 667.2

And while Spiritualism is thus working, startling changes are manifesting themselves in high places in some of the denominations. The infidelity of the present age, under the seductive names of “science,” “the higher criticism,” “evolution,” etc., is making not a few notable converts. As typical cases, we may mention such men as the late Henry Ward Beecher, and such papers as The Outlook, formerly the Christian Union. Mr. Beecher was considered a leader of thought in the religious world, and his fame and influence were not confined to one hemisphere. He became very outspoken in his denial of doctrines which have been considered by all believers in the Bible as among the fundamental truths of revelation. As an illustration, we quote the following from the National Baptist of Sept. 6, 1883. It is from a reply by Mr. Beecher to J. S. Kennard, D. D., who had criticised some of Mr. B.'s views and utterances. He says: —DAR 668.1

“I am a cordial Christian evolutionist. I do not agree, by any means, with all of Spencer — his agnosticism — nor all of Huxley, Tyndall, and their school. They are agnostic; I am not, emphatically. But I am an evolutionist; and that strikes at the root of all medieval and orthodox modern theology, — the fall of man in Adam, and the inheritance by his posterity of his guilt, and, by consequence, any such view of atonement as has been constructed to meet this fabulous disaster. Men have not fallen as a race; men have come up. No great disaster met the race at the start. The creative decree of God was fulfilled, and any theory of atonement must be one which shall meet the fact that man was created at the lowest point, and, as I believe, is, as to his physical being, evolved from the animal race below him; but as to his moral and spiritual nature, is a son of God, a new element having come in, in the great movement of evolution at the point of man's appearance.”DAR 669.1

When the great facts which alone account for the existence of sin in our world, and for all the anomalies of the present state, are denominated “a fabulous disaster;” when it is avowed that man has not fallen, that the race did not meet the disaster of the introduction of sin by disobedience in the beginning, and that no atonement to meet this state of things is necessary, — what becomes of all those portions of the Scriptures in which these facts are recorded, and by which they are recognized? They must be relegated to the realm of fable. And when professed ministers of the gospel, to whom the people look for instruction, and on whose views they depend in these matters, lead out with such teaching, what reverence for the word of God can be expected from the masses? “Like priest, like people.” Such ministers are doing more for the cause of infidelity than all the Voltaires and Paines of a past age have done, or all the Ingersolls of the present age are doing. Worse than wolves without the fold, they are wolves within it, and all the more dangerous because arrayed in sheep's clothing.DAR 669.2

Others in high positions, and influential journals in the Christian world, speak in a similar strain. It has come to be a very easy thing to accuse the record of inaccuracy, and charge the sacred writers with a failure to comprehend their subjects. Much of the body of modern dogmatic theology may be classified under two heads, — funguses and fossils; and whatever declarations of Scripture do not agree with these conceptions, are set down as incorrect. Paul, they say, held erroneous ideas on a number of questions, more especially in reference to the second coming of Christ; and one learned doctor of divinity, as quoted without dissent in a leading religious journal, has asserted that even Christ himself misapprehended the question he was discussing, according to the record of Matthew 24! From the standpoint of such a lamentable outlook, and under the leadership of such men, how long before Babylon will become full of spirits that are foul, and birds that are hateful and unclean? What progress has already been made in this direction! How would the godly fathers and mothers of the generation that lived just before the first message was given, could they rise from their graves, and comprehend the present condition of the religious world, hearing its teaching and beholding its practices, stand aghast at the fearful contrast between their time and ours, and deplore the sad degeneracy! And Heaven is not to let all this pass in silence; for a mighty proclamation is to be made, calling the attention of all the world to the fearful counts in the indictment against these unfaithful religious bodies, that the justice of the judgments that follow may plainly appear.DAR 670.1

Verse 3 shows the wide extent of the influence of Babylon, and the evil that has resulted and will result from her course, and hence the justness of her punishment. The merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicades. Who take the lead in all the extravagances of the age? Who load their tables with the richest and choicest viands? Who are foremost in extravagance in dress, and all costly attire? Who are the very personification of pride and arrogance? — Are they not church-members? Where shall we look for the very highest exhibition of the luxury, vain show, and pride of life, resulting from the vanity and sin of the race? — Is it not to a modern church assembly on a pleasant Sunday?DAR 670.2

But there is a redeeming feature in this picture. Degenerate as Babylon has become as a body, there are exceptions to the general rule; for God has still a people there, and she must be entitled to some regard on their account until they are called from her communion. Nor will it be necessary to wait long for this call. Soon Babylon will become so thoroughly leavened with the influence of these evil agents that her condition will be fully manifest to all the honest in heart, and the way be all prepared for the work which the apostle now introduces.DAR 671.1

Matthew Henry
Concise Bible Commentary
The downfal and destruction of the mystical Babylon are determined in the counsels of God. Another angel comes from heaven. This seems to be Christ himself, coming to destroy his enemies, and to shed abroad the light of his gospel through all nations. The wickedness of this Babylon was very great; she had forsaken the true God, and set up idols, and had drawn all sorts of men into spiritual adultery, and by her wealth and luxury kept them in her interest. The spiritual merchandise, by which multitudes have wickedly lived in wealth, by the sins and follies of mankind, seems principally intended. Fair warning is given to all that expect mercy from God, that they should not only come out of this Babylon, but assist in her destruction. God may have a people even in Babylon. But God's people shall be called out of Babylon, and called effectually, while those that partake with wicked men in their sins, must receive of their plagues.
Ellen G. White
The Acts of the Apostles, 54

On the other hand, there are some who, instead of wisely improving present opportunities, are idly waiting for some special season of spiritual refreshing by which their ability to enlighten others will be greatly increased. They neglect present duties and privileges, and allow their light to burn dim, while they look forward to a time when, without any effort on their part, they will be made the recipients of special blessing, by which they will be transformed and fitted for service. AA 54.1

It is true that in the time of the end, when God's work in the earth is closing, the earnest efforts put forth by consecrated believers under the guidance of the Holy Spirit are to be accompanied by special tokens of divine favor. Under the figure of the early and the latter rain, that falls in Eastern lands at seedtime and harvest, the Hebrew prophets foretold the bestowal of spiritual grace in extraordinary measure upon God's church. The outpouring of the Spirit in the days of the apostles was the beginning of the early, or former, rain, and glorious was the result. To the end of time the presence of the Spirit is to abide with the true church. AA 54.2

But near the close of earth's harvest, a special bestowal of spiritual grace is promised to prepare the church for the coming of the Son of man. This outpouring of the Spirit is likened to the falling of the latter rain; and it is for this added power that Christians are to send their petitions to the Lord of the harvest “in the time of the latter rain.” In response, “the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give them showers of rain.” “He will cause to come down ... the rain, the former rain, and the latter rain,” Zechariah 10:1; Joel 2:23. AA 55.1

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Ellen G. White
Christ's Object Lessons, 79

The great leaders of religious thought in this generation sound the praises and build the monuments of those who planted the seed of truth centuries ago. Do not many turn from this work to trample down the growth springing from the same seed today? The old cry is repeated, “We know that God spake unto Moses; as for this fellow [Christ in the messenger He sends], we know not from whence he is.” John 9:29. As in earlier ages, the special truths for this time are found, not with the ecclesiastical authorities, but with men and women who are not too learned or too wise to believe the word of God. COL 79.1

“For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; but God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to naught things that are” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28); “that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5). COL 79.2

And in this last generation the parable of the mustard seed is to reach a signal and triumphant fulfillment. The little seed will become a tree. The last message of warning and mercy is to go to “every nation and kindred and tongue” (Revelation 14:6-14), “to take out of them a people for His name” (Acts 15:14; Revelation 18:1). And the earth shall be lightened with His glory. COL 79.3

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Ellen G. White
Christ's Object Lessons, 228

The Bible declares that in the last days men will be absorbed in worldly pursuits, in pleasure and money-getting. They will be blind to eternal realities. Christ says, “As the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” Matthew 24:37-39. COL 228.1

So it is today. Men are rushing on in the chase for gain and selfish indulgence as if there were no God, no heaven, and no hereafter. In Noah's day the warning of the flood was sent to startle men in their wickedness and call them to repentance. So the message of Christ's soon coming is designed to arouse men from their absorption in worldly things. It is intended to awaken them to a sense of eternal realities, that they may give heed to the invitation to the Lord's table. COL 228.2

The gospel invitation is to be given to all the world—“to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” Revelation 14:6. The last message of warning and mercy is to lighten the whole earth with its glory. It is to reach all classes of men, rich and poor, high and low. “Go out into the highways and hedges,” Christ says, “and compel them to come in, that My house may be filled.” COL 228.3

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