The third effect of the great earthquake (Revelation 16:18) concerns “Babylon the great” arising in God’s memory. This title for the city had appeared earlier in Revelation 14:8. “Babylon” was the ancient capital city of the Babylonian Empire (long gone in John’s day), notorious for its celebration of human ability (think of “Babel,” Genesis 11:1–9) and so rejection of any sense of dependence on God Almighty. So the term “Babylon” came to stand for any city or civilization or culture focusing on human achievement in contrast to glorying in God. The adjective “great” underlined the extent of her influence among peoples both within and beyond her boundaries. We are not to think of any particular city, but instead of any/every city that celebrates its independence on God (and so its allegiance to the god of this age).
19 The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.