This ancient city of Babylon grew until it became a mighty, resistless, universal empire. For a time in its history it held the people of God in captivity. The day came, however, when this mighty city passed away forever. The only dwellers among its lonely ruins are wild beasts and hissing serpents. The Babylon mentioned in Revelation is the spiritual antitype. The great tower of ancient Babel finds its antitype in mystery Babylon, the mother, and the diversified city at its feet finishes its antitype in the multiplicity of sects and creeds, where they speak a different spiritual language, as they cluster around their mother’s knee. In this great apostate Babylon the true children of God have long been taken captive, but the day comes when God’s own make their escape and return to spiritual Jerusalem, their native home. The Revelator beholds spiritual Babylon in a fallen condition inhabited only by foul, devilish spirits, and unclean and hateful birds. Rev. 18:2. There are many prophecies in Daniel and other chapters of Revelation relating to the dark apostasy of the noonday, which we reluctantly forbear to consider in this work, but are compelled to do so lest our volume swell to too great proportions. In the conclusion of this chapter we desire to make a few quotations from other authors concerning mystery Babylon and her harlot daughters. “This woman (popery) is called the mother of harlots and abominations. Who are the daughters? The Lutheran, the Presbyterian, and the Episcopalian are all branches of the Roman Catholic. Are not these demonstrated harlots and abominations in the above passage? I so decide. I could not, with the stake before me decide, otherwise. Presbyterians and Episcopalians compose a part of Babylon. They hold the distinctive principles of papacy in common with papists.”—_Tennessee Baptist._ “I think Christ has a true church on earth, but its members are scattered among the various denominations, and are more or less under the influence of mystery Babylon and her daughters.”—_Bible Doctrine_ p. 249. “Is antichrist confined to the church of Rome? The answer is readily returned in the affirmative by Protestants in general, and happy had it been for the world were that the case. But although we are fully warranted to consider that church as the mother of harlots, the truth is that by whatsoever arguments we succeed in fixing that odious charge upon her, we shall by parity of reasoning be obliged to allow other national churches to be her unchaste daughters, and for this plain reason, among others, because in their very constitution and tendency they are hostile to the nature of the kingdom of Christ.”—_Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge._