Revelation chapters 17-18

Reflexion, A Spiritual Community

I’m going to begin with a quote by St. Augustine

In The City of God he traces two cities through world history
Augustine, “Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly [city] by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly [city] by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.”
- John, the visionary, identifies the heavenly city as Jerusalem and the earthly city Babylon
• Babylon is featured in chapters 17 and 18, then in chapters 21-22 we visit the new Jerusalem
- Growing up, I was taught that in these chapters of Revelation, Babylon was the Roman Catholic Church
• this was reinforced in commentaries and books I read later on
◦ but one morning, reading these chapters, I said to myself, |
“This is not the Roman Catholic Church! If anything, it’s the USA.”
• now I realize that the city revealed exercises a worldwide and inescapable influence