In her was found the blood of prophets and of God’s holy people,
of all who have been slaughtered on the earth.
Revelation 18:24
In my previous devotional, Terminus, I spent a day investigating the mysterious identity of Babylon the Great. She is given the figurative description of a woman who sits on a strange looking beast. Read for yourself the 17th Chapter of Revelation because there’s not room to get into too much detail here. It’s not as important for today’s purposes whom she actually is (a country, religion, or something else) or when this takes place (during the First Century, in the future, or at both times). Rather, we’re more concerned about what she does in the realm of persecution.
The bottom line with this entity is that she’s bad, really bad. In Revelation 17:5, she is called “the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth”. Verse six, which is where the name of this whole devotional comes from, basically states the same thing as the verse above. The blood of the saints will be spilled.
Whatever your view on the timing of the rapture, these verses seem clear that (if this is a future “Babylon”) she comes against God’s holy people, i.e., saints, or Christians. And it doesn’t end well for them/us. She slaughters them. She makes them bleed. She makes martyrs out of them. The blood of the saints is on her head.
Babylon gets drunk killing followers of Christ. What does this expression mean? It basically means that she figuratively drinks the blood of Christians and finds it intoxicating to kill them. Pretty gruesome, isn’t it?
The reality is that there are enemies of the cross, past, present, and future. They hate Jesus, all that He stands for, and all who follow Him. They are out for blood, and they have spilled it throughout the ages. As we’ve studied previously in Revelation, it will all culminate at the End of the Age in a cumulative and massive loss of Christian life. It is an unfortunate but necessary step, a prerequisite to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
Just because we were born in America doesn’t guarantee us a persecution-free life. Therefore, we as believers must be ready if God has this path for us. And just remember, the brief time of suffering pales in comparison to the glorious riches that wait in eternity.