Protestants who make any attempt to interpret these prophecies usually limit the designation “Babylon the Great” in these verses to the church of Rome, because the woman symbolizing the apostate church in the preceding chapter is denominated “Babylon the Great.”  Ver. 5.  But the same verse also declares her to be the “Mother of harlots;” and if she as a degraded woman stands as the representative of a corrupt church, her unchaste daughters, also, must symbolize churches that are her descendants; and if the real name of the mother is Babylon, as stated, the proper name of her harlot daughters must be Babylon also.  Whether, therefore, the mother or the daughters are referred to, it is all “Babylon the Great,” because it is all the same family and is a part of that “GREAT CITY which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”  Chap. 17:18.  We must, therefore, have something besides the mere title “Babylon the Great” to determine which division of the great city is referred to in a given instance—­whether Pagan, Papal, or Protestant.

A careful study of the prophecy now under consideration will show that it has particular reference to the Protestant division of Babylon.  It contained many of God’s children; whereas Paganism was always a false religion and never held any of God’s saints.  Under the reign of Catholicism, the people of God are represented in all the symbols of this book relating thereto as existing entirely separate from that communion.  The description of this apostate church given in the preceding chapter shows clearly that instead of being partly composed of God’s saints, she was their most bitter and relentless persecutor, yea, was “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”  This is definite proof that the present phase of Babylon under consideration is the Protestant division; and her moral fall is the grand signal for the escape of God’s people who have partly composed her number, as the fall of ancient Babylon was for the escape of the Israelites.  In their younger days the Protestant organizations (symbolized by the daughters) were of much better character than the mother church from whom they descended.  Many of them started out on reform.  While a spiritual people, God worked with them; but when they made their image to the beast, they suddenly declined, and this voice from heaven finally declares them to be in a fallen condition—­entirely void of salvation, except a very few chosen saints that have not defiled their garments, contained therein.

That this application of the term Babylon is correct, and also, the fallen condition ascribed to her in accordance with the facts, I will prove by the following testimonies of Protestants themselves.  The first is from Vision of the Ages; or, Lectures on the Apocalypse, by B.W.  Johnson, member of the Christian sect.