"Outside the city, the wine-press is trodden!" wonderful figure! "Fully ripe," is said to be the condition of the "grapes of the vine of the earth." What grape, more so a ripe grape, can stand the weight of a man as his foot crushes down upon it? And the iron heel of "The Lion of Judah," crushes out the life of these gathered hell-led, hell-inspired hosts, "and blood came forth out of the wine-press of God's wrath, up to the bits of the horses for distance of 1,600 stadia." A river of blood 160 miles in length, and reaching to the horses' bits in depth! Even if it be taken as a figure only, the figure is never so great as the fact it prefigures! "The land shall be drunk with blood, and its dust made fat with fatness, for it is the day of Jehovah's vengeance, the year of recompenses for the controversy against Zion." Isaiah xxxiv. 7, 8.
As a picture of the absolute triumph of God, on this occasion, the Psalmist uses the most awful figure of any in the Bible—THE LAUGHTER OF GOD! "He that sitteth in the Heavens SHALL LAUGH; the Lord shall have them in derision." Ps. ii. 4. "God is not mocked!"
"And the Beast (Anti-christ) was taken." The ring-leader is first taken, not slain with the others. Taken alive, he is cast into the Lake of Fire. The confidence of the mighty host of Hell-inspired warrior hosts, had been "Who is like unto the Beast? Who can war with him?" But they see him taken, taken alive, taken without being able to lift a finger against his captors. Tophet had been prepared for him, and into that awful abyss he sinks to rise no more.
"And with him the False Prophet who wrought the miracles in his presence." Colleagues in evil on earth, the two are hurled into the same Lake of Fire.
"And the rest were slain with the Sword of the Sitter on the horse, (The Conquering Christ,) which sword proceeded out of His mouth." "He speaks and it is done."
"And a certain angel standing in the sun," has been placed there ready to call forth the final actors on this hideous battle-field, "cried with a great voice, saying to all the fowls that fly in mid-heaven, 'Hither be gathered together to the great supper of God, that ye may eat the flesh of kings, and flesh of captains of thousands, and flesh of mighty men, and flesh of horses, and of those that sit on them, and flesh of all (classes of people,) both free and bond, and small and great … and the fowls were filled from their flesh." Rev. xix.
At the great and terrible conflict there are lightnings and thunders of unheard of force and might. "The Lord of Hosts," says Isaiah xxix. 6, "shall visit with thunder, with earthquake, and great noise, with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire." All through God's judgments, during the seven years of Anti-christ, aerial convulsions will be continual. One reason for this, during the later events will doubtless be to overwhelm and destroy the myriad aerial engines of war used by the senselessly deluded attacking hosts arrayed against Jerusalem and against Christ and His Saints.
"And there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great." Rev. xvi. 18. Jerusalem will be split into three parts, as a result of this earthquake. But the effect upon the nations is utter ruin,—"the cities of the nations fell." London, New York, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, every other city, collapses like a rent balloon, and the opened earth swallows up palaces and cots, men and women, and what the overwhelming and the falling shall not slay, shall perish in the awful conflagrations produced.
"And Babylon the great was remembered in the presence of God to give her the cup of wine of the fierceness of His anger." Babylon, the great, the colossal city of mighty splendor, re-built, as we saw earlier in this book, will have become exclusively a commercial city. All the vice and sin and voluptuousness of all the vilest cities of the whole world, through all the ages, gathered up into one whole foulness, would be as virtue compared with the foulness and vice and voluptuousness of the Great Babylon.
"Fallen, Fallen, Babylon the Great." May we gather from the twice-repeated word "Fallen," that the collapse comprises the two things "Babylon, mystery!"—the foul religious system, the false worship,—and also Babylon the city?