And pearls.—Symbolizing her claim that she has sole power over all that the Lord bought by His death.—Matt. 13:45, 46.
Having a golden cup in her hand.—Symbolizing her claim that she is the repository of all Truth Divine.—Jer. 51:7.
Full of abominations and [filthiness] FILTHINESSES of [her] THE fornication OF HER AND OF THE EARTH.—“Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken; the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad [intoxicated with her errors]. (Jer. 51:7-9.)”—C. 156; Rev. 18:6; Isa. 65:4.
17:5. And upon her forehead [was a name written].—In plain sight of all the spiritually minded. (And how strange it is that everybody does not see it!)
Mystery.—“We have already called attention to the fact that the Church of Christ is called in the Scriptures the ‘Mystery of God,’ because, contrary to expectation, the Church was to be the Messianic Body which, under its Anointed Head, Jesus, shall rule and bless the world. We have also drawn attention to the fact that the Scriptures refer to Babylon as a counterfeit system (mother and daughters—some more and some less corrupt, some better and some poorer counterfeits), and there designated the ‘Mystery of Iniquity.’ We are to remember that it is Satan who in the Scriptures is credited with having ‘deceived the whole world’ on this subject; putting evil for good and good for evil; light for darkness and darkness for light. Satan ‘now worketh in the children of disobedience’ (Isa. 5:20; Eph. 2:2) even as he proffered his cooperation to our Lord Jesus.”—F. 199; 2 Thes. 2:7; Prov. 5:6.
Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.—“Since Papacy, the mother, is not a single individual, but a great religious system, in keeping with the symbol we should expect to see other religious systems answering to the illustration of daughters of similar character. To this description the various Protestant organizations fully correspond. The daughter systems parted from the mother under circumstances of travail, and were born virgins.” (D. 29.) “But some sincere Christians may still be anxiously inquiring,—‘If all Christendom is to be involved in the doom of Babylon, what will become of Protestantism, the result of the Great Reformation?’ This is an important question; but let the reader consider that Protestantism, as it exists today, is not the result of the Great Reformation, but of its decline.”—D. 28; Ezek. 16:44; Hos. 2:2-5; Isa. 1:21; Rev. 18:9; 19:2.
“The claims of apostolic succession and clerical authority are almost as presumptuously set forth by some of the Protestant clergy as by the Papal priesthood. And the right of individual private judgment,—the very fundamental principle of the protest against Papacy, which led to the Great Reformation,—is now almost as strenuously opposed by Protestants as by Papists. Protestants seem to have forgotten,—for they truly ignore,—the very grounds of the original protest, and, as systems, they are fast drifting back toward the open arms of the ‘Holy (?) Mother Church.’ ‘Let us hold out to you our hand affectionately’ (says Pope Leo to Protestants in his famous Encyclical addressed ‘To the Princes and Peoples of the Earth’), ‘and [pg 262] invite you to the unity which never failed the Catholic church, and which never can fail. Long has our common mother called you to her breast.’ The doctrine of ‘the Divine right of kings,’ taught or supported by almost every sect, is the foundation of the old civil system, and has long given authority, dignity and stability to the kingdoms of Europe; and the doctrine of the Divine appointment and authority of the clergy has hindered God's children from progressing in Divine things and bound them by the chains of superstition and ignorance to the veneration and adoration of fallible fellow-beings, and to their doctrines, traditions and interpretations of God's Word. It is this entire order of things that is to fall and pass away in the battle of this great day—the order of things which for centuries has held the people docile under the ruling powers, civil, social and religious. All this has been by God's permission (not by his appointment and approval, as they claim). But though an evil in itself, it has served a good, temporary purpose in preventing anarchy, which is immeasurably worse, because men were not prepared to do better for themselves, and because the time for Christ's Millennial Kingdom had not yet come. Hence God permitted the various delusions to gain credence in order to hold men in check until ‘The Time of the End’—the end of ‘The Times of the Gentiles’ (which expired October 1, 1914).”—D. 33.
17:6. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints.—“ ‘But the blood of Protestants is not called the blood of saints, no more than the blood of thieves, man-killers, and other malefactors, for the shedding of which, by the order of justice, no commonwealth shall answer.’—Rhemish (Catholic) translation, footnote.” (B. 320.) “ ‘She wore out the saints of the most high God.’ and ‘was drunken with the blood of the saints.’—Rev. 18:24.”—Z. '04-236; Rev. 16:6.
And with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.—Most of these martyrs will doubtless be honored by a place in the Great Company. (See Rev. 7:9.) This Scripture was fulfilled in the Dark Ages, but we are still in the Dark Ages, and will be until this system is destroyed. It takes more than a mere profession of faith to make a Christian. “Jezebel today has daughters—systems termed Protestant—which, nevertheless, copy largely the mother's spirit. It is through the influence of the daughters that the anti-typical Elijah may expect future persecutions, instigated by the mother, accomplished through the daughters, as typically represented in the case of John the Baptist, beheaded by Herod at the instance of Salome, but at the instigation of Herodias—Jezebel.”—Z. '04-237.
And when I saw her.—Discerned her true character.