It is tempting to cast the words of Revelation 18:2–3 into the future, as promises of what will happen when Christ comes back, and to explain the past tense of the verb John uses as communicating the certainty that Babylon will fall. What makes that proposition tempting is the fact that we see so much darkness in our world and so much continuing evidence of an ongoing and powerful alliance between the prostitute and the beast and kings and bullies. Then the encouragement Christians receive from this text is the promise that one day in the future Christ will overcome this alliance and good will triumph over evil—but it is future. The difficulty with that perspective is that Christ is already Lord of lords and King of kings
(Revelation 17:14; see also Revelation 1:5; Revelation 5:5, Revelation 5:12; Revelation 6:1; etc.). In that light, the very clearly past tense content of the words fallen, fallen
must be understood as completed action, and thus descriptive of present reality. All whose eyes the Spirit has opened see this reality because they walk in the light. In time to come all will see it.
This is not to say that the prostitute and the beast and the kings and the bullies have been cleaned off this earth or today are harmless. The great battle has been won but skirmishes will remain till the day of Christ’s return in glory. As theologians like to say, the kingdom of heaven is already
here and at the same time there’s a not yet
dimension to it. The comparison with D-day (victorious allied landing at Normandy on June 6, 1944) and V-day (fall of Berlin on May 2, 1945) provides a fitting analogy.
2 And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.