And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.
Upon her forehead ... name - as harlots had. What's contrast to "HOLINESS TO THE LORD," inscribed on the mitre on the high priest's forehead.
Mystery - a spiritual fact heretofore hidden, incapable of discovery by reason, but now revealed. As the union of Christ and the Church is a 'great mystery' (a momentous spiritual truth, once hidden, now revealed, Ephesians 5:31-32), so the Church, by conformity to the world, becoming a harlot, is a counter "mystery." As iniquity in the harlot is a leaven working in "mystery" - i:e., latently ('the mystery of iniquity') - so, when she is destroyed, the iniquity shall be revealed in the man of iniquity, the open embodiment of all previous evil (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8). Contrast the "mystery of God" and "godliness," Revelation 10:7; 1 Timothy 3:16. Rome crucified Christ; destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jews; persecuted the early Christians in pagan times, and Protestant Christians in papal times; and probably shall be restored to its pristine grandeur, as under the Ceasars, just before the burning of the harlot and of itself with her. So Hippolytus ('De Antichristo,' in the second century) thought. Popery cannot be at once the 'mystery of iniquity' and the manifested Antichrist. Probably it will compromise for political power (Revelation 17:3) the Christianity still in its creed, and thus prepare for Antichrist's manifestation. The name Babylon given in the image, Daniel 2:1-49, to the head, is here given to the harlot. This connects her with the fourth kingdom, Rome, the last part of the image. Benedict XIII., in his indiction for a jubilee, A.D. 1725 AD, called Rome 'mother of all believers, and mistress of all churches' (harlots like herself). [The correspondence of syllables and accents is striking: Hee (G3588) pornee (G4204) kai (G2532) to (G3588) theerion (G2342); Hee (G3588) numfee (G3565) kai (G2532) to (G3588) arnion (G721). The whore and the beast; the Bride and the Lamb.]
OF HARLOTS - `of the harlots and of the abominations.' Not merely Rome, but Christendom, as a whole, as Israel, as a whole (Isaiah 1:21), has become a harlot. The invisible Church of believers is hidden in the visible. The lines which separate harlot and woman are not denominational, but can only be spiritually discerned. If Rome were the only Babylon, much of the spiritual profit of Revelation would be lost to us; but the harlot "sitteth upon many waters" (Revelation 17:1), and "ALL nations have drunk of the wine of her fornication" (Revelation 17:2; Revelation 18:3; "the earth," Revelation 19:2). External extensiveness over the world, and internal conformity to it-worldlines in extent and contents-is symbolized by the world-city's name, "Babylon." As the sun shines on all the earth, thus the woman clothed with the sun is to let her light penetrate to the uttermost parts. But she, in externally Christianizing the world, permits herself to be seduced by it: thus her catholicity is not that of the Jerusalem we look for ("the MOTHER of us all," Isaiah 2:2-4; Galatians 4:25; Revelation 21:2), but that of Babylon, the worldwide harlot city! [As Babylon was destroyed, and the Jews restored to Jerusalem, by Cyrus, so our Cyrus (Persian, the sun), the Sun of righteousness, shall bring Israel, literal and spiritual, to the holy Jerusalem at His coming.
Babylon and Jerusalem are the two opposite poles of the spiritual world.] Still, Rome is not accidentally, but in its very PRINCIPLE, a harlot, metropolis of whoredom, "the mother of harlots;" whereas the Evangelical Protestant Church is, in her principle, a chaste woman: the Reformation was the woman's protest against the harlot. The spirit of pagan Rome had, before the Reformation, changed the Church in the West into a Church-State, Rome; and in the East, into a State-Church, fettered by the world-power, having its center in Byzantium. The Roman and Greek churches have thus fallen from the spiritual essence of the Gospel into the elements of the world (Auberlen). Compare the woman "wickedness" or 'lawlessness,' 'iniquity' (Zechariah 5:7-8; Zechariah 5:11), carried to Babylon: cf. "the mystery of iniquity," 'the man of sin,' 'that wicked one,' literally, 'the lawless one' (2 Thessalonians 2:7-8; also Matthew 24:12).