When Systems Collapse and Illusions Burn
And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great…”
— Revelation 18
In Revelation’s final movements, the severest judgment is not first aimed at an individual. It is aimed at a city.
Babylon.
More is said about the fall of the city than about the fate of its inhabitants. Commerce collapses. Luxury vanishes. Ships stand at a distance. The wealthy weep — not for the suffering of others, but because their marketplace is gone.
Revelation is not subtle here. Babylon represents a system — an arrangement of power, wealth, prestige, indulgence, and self-congratulation that seems permanent until suddenly it isn’t.
The merchants mourn the loss of profit.
The kings mourn the loss of influence.
The spectators mourn the loss of comfort.
But heaven does not mourn.
In 2015, I framed this mostly as a counterargument — as a way of saying to political critics, “Look, Scripture critiques wealth and power too.” And that is true. Revelation 18 is not a defense of hoarded wealth or insulated luxury. The imagery is unmistakable: excess without righteousness is combustible.
But ten years later, the sharper insight is this:
Babylon is not merely “them.”
It is any system — left, right, secular, religious — that convinces us that prosperity equals righteousness, that scale equals legitimacy, that influence equals moral authority.
The danger of Babylon is not just wealth.
It is illusion.
It is the belief that what we have built cannot fall.
Revelation does not celebrate destruction for its own sake. It reveals fragility. The city that seemed invincible collapses in an hour. The structures people trusted most evaporate. What felt secure proves temporary.
And the weeping comes — not because justice failed, but because idols burned.
The fall of Babylon is not primarily a partisan statement. It is a warning to every age.
Whatever we build that competes with the Kingdom — however impressive, however profitable, however admired — will not endure.
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