This episode will discuss another Angelic Power closely associated with the Mighty Angel: The Angel of Great Authority. These two angels reveal the characteristics of God’s power, sovereignty, and glory to humanity. As I’ve also said, the seven Angelic Powers were recognized during the second temple period, when the temple in Jerusalem was rebuilt after the seventy-year captivativity in Babylon, as the seven Spirits of God. The Seven-Branched Menorah represented this in the temple.
From the description of the seven Spirits of God in Isaiah 11:1-2 we’ve discussed 3 of those Spirits. We saw that the Angel of the Abyss and the Angel of Death were associated with each other as grave and death. In the same way, the *Mighty Angel and the Angel of Great Authority are associated with each other.
In Revelation 18:1-5, we see The Angel of Great Authority. The Angel of Great Authority [exousia; divinely delegated power, coming directly from God] exhibits God’s Royal Kingship and authority over heaven and earth. In Revelation 18:1, we see this angel came down from heaven as one sent as an emissary of God. He represents God as king because his royal splendor illuminated the earth. Now, we must keep in mind this is apocryphal language. This doesn’t mean that an actual angel will descend from heaven looking like this. As a representation of God as king, the angel John sees has the royal authority of God to speak. What he says will happen.
Next, at the beginning of verse 2, this angel calls out in a mighty voice, which implies his close association with the Mighty Angel and that his voice is heard throughout heaven and earth. What does he say? “It has fallen, Babylon the Great has fallen.” The Greek word for fallen here is epesen, an aorist active indicative verb meaning “has fallen” or “the inevitability of the fall.” Using this aorist verb means the fall of Babylon is imminent and final. This fall wouldn’t happen for hundreds or even thousands of years. It was happening right then. Who is this Babylon? Babylon isn’t Rome; it isn’t some country or city today or in the future. Babylon was Jerusalem and the land of Israel.
The city that crucified the Lord (Revelation 11:8). The city prostituted itself with idol worship (Revelation 17:4-6). In Jerusalem, Stephen was stoned, James the Apostle was beheaded, and James the brother of Jesus was thrown off the highest point of the temple.
In Ezekiel 16:2-3 the prophet calls out the detestable practices of Jerusalem. In Matthew 23:37, Jesus laments Jerusalem’s unwillingness to repent of its evil. Revelation says Jerusalem became the home of demons, unclean spirits, unclean birds, and every unclean beast. In Revelation, angels are depicted as men, and men are described as animals. These demons and unclean birds and beasts are men who filled Jerusalem. After the murder of Jesus, Jerusalem devolved. Insurrection increased, and zealots, mercenaries, and criminals filled the streets. Violence, unrest, and mobs became an everyday occurrence. Jerusalem was a 1st century Thunder Dome, which would all lead to its destruction by Rome.
We come to verse 3 and see the sexual immorality and greed of Babylon/Jerusalem described. This doesn’t mean actual physical sexual immorality but spiritual immorality. Jerusalem was God’s spiritual wife, but instead, she was a prostitute. In Ezekiel 16:30-32, the prophet says Jerusalem was a brazen prostitute, worshipping idols on every street. The majority of the Jews and those in Jerusalem were constantly worshipping and honoring idols and false gods. When the merchant’s wealth and excess are mentioned here, the focus is on the temple. The Pharisees, priests, scribes, and city leaders became wealthy by abusing the temple system. They extracted money from the Jews for everything involving the temple rituals. They used that money to live luxurious lives and hold on to those lives by paying off the Roman governors and the Ceasars. All these “merchants of power and greed” lived off the oppression of the Jewish priests and leaders. They didn’t hate Christians because they believed in Jesus as the Messiah. They hated them because they threatened their golden goose, the temple. The Resurrection and ascension of Jesus to the throne of God ended the need for a temple because, as scripture tells us, Jesus is the temple of God.
Then, finally, in verses 4-5, believers are told to flee Jerusalem and leave Judea. This happened just before Jerusalem’s destruction when believers fled to a town outside Judea called Pella. The sins and the crimes of Jerusalem were rebellion against God, idolatry, greed, and the blood of God’s faithful witnesses. The earthly Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD by Rome as God’s judgment for breaking their covenant with Him. But a New Jerusalem will come down from heaven when this old creation ends and God establishes the New Heaven and Earth.
The Angel of Great Authority was sent to John as the extension of God’s Royal authority and his judgment decree over Judea, the Jews, and Jerusalem. The imagery of this angel arriving in glory to judge Babylon/Jerusalem indicated God’s power was imminent and immutable. To the first-century believers, this was a message of comfort because the corruption and oppression of an idolatrous apostate, Jerusalem, were being judged. Like the Mighty angel, this angel reflects the might and righteousness of the Royal divine will of God. We think of judgment as a punishment. In Jewish culture, judgment is God putting things right. Think of it like a judge in a court. When someone stands before a judge at trial, the role of the judge isn’t to punish the lawbreaker; it’s to make things right when the law is broken. Lawbreakers don’t just break laws; they break lives, communities, and nations. The judge’s job is to fulfill justice by making things right because of the damage caused by the lawbreaker. God’s judgment of Israel and Jerusalem was to make things right for the centuries: idolatry, apostasy, persecution, murder, greed, injustice, cruelty, and rebellion.
In 70 AD, Rome fulfilled the judgment of the Angel of Great Authority, and the time of the Jewish covenant ran out. Judea, Jerusalem, and the people of the Mosaic covenant ceased to be. Babylon fell, past tense. The Israel of God today isn’t a piece of land in the Middle East, it’s those who have faith in Christ, no matter your ethnicity. Jerusalem on earth today is a city made rich from tourists, but it isn’t God’s city. The Jerusalem of God is in heaven, and it will descend with Christ when he returns to establish the New Earth. God’s temple will never be a building because God’s temple is his Son, Jesus Christ.
