THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
AND THE REMOVAL OF ALL ROMAN THINGS
FROM THE EARTH
Since the whole world has become Roman, under the influence of Roman government and Roman religion, it may seem that God has been defeated. However, the book of Revelation shows us that our God surely has not been defeated.
At the end of this age, the Roman Empire will be restored and strengthened to produce its last Caesar, Antichrist, the man of lawlessness (Rev. 17:9-11; 2 Thes. 2:3-4, 8), who will be very powerful. It is he who will destroy the Roman church at the beginning of the great tribulation. Concerning this, Revelation 17:16 says, "The ten horns which you saw and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked and will eat her flesh and burn her utterly with fire." That the ten horns and the beast will hate the harlot and make her desolate means that Antichrist and the ten kings of the restored Roman Empire will persecute the Roman church. They will make the Roman church "desolate and naked," meaning that they will destroy her, rob her of her riches, and expose her; they will "eat her flesh," meaning that they will kill her members; and they will "burn her utterly with fire," meaning that they will annihilate her altogether.
Then, at the end of the tribulation, Christ will come down from the heavens, with the overcomers as His army, to fight against Antichrist directly and defeat him and cast him alive into the lake of fire (Rev. 19). That will be the last fighting of man against God, a fighting that began at Babel and that will increase and intensify until the war at Armageddon. With Christ’s defeat of Antichrist, the entire Roman Empire will be destroyed and all the Roman things will be removed, cleared away, from the earth. There will be no more Roman church or Roman Empire; that is, there will be no more Babylon. Then what will be prominent on earth will not be Babylon but the New Jerusalem.
THE TWO PROMINENT CITIES IN THE BIBLE—
BABYLON AND JERUSALEM
In the Bible there are two prominent cities—Babylon and Jerusalem. We see these two cities in Jeremiah and in Revelation. In the Old Testament, in Jeremiah, Babylon came to destroy Jerusalem and to make her a ruin, a desolation. At the end of the Bible, in Revelation, there are Babylon the Great and the New Jerusalem. Eventually, Babylon the Great will be destroyed, removed from the earth, and cast into the lake of fire, and the New Jerusalem will be brought in to be the prominent center of God’s eternal kingdom in the new heaven and new earth.
(Life-Study of Jeremiah and Lamentations, Chapter 37, by Witness Lee)
