in order to enter into the holes in the rocks and into the clefts of the crags, because of the dreadfulness of Jehovah and from his splendid superiority, when he rises up for the earth to suffer shocks.

Isaiah 2:10-22; compare Revelation 6:15-17.

13. (a) As indicated in that prophecy, how will they then treat things that pertain to religion? (b) Where will worldly-minded men seek refuge, and with what language did Isaiah foretell this?

¹³ On that day of Jehovah’s judgment against man’s old order, what will worldly-minded men do? Being faced with the deteriorating earth-wide conditions, they will lose faith in and turn away from religious things and will discard them as worthless, valueless. They will consider as being of no account the professional religionists, who are nothing more than men dependent upon the air they breathe in through their nostrils. Being now disillusioned about such ones, men will turn exclusively to materialistic things. Abandoning religion of all worldly kinds, they will seek refuge, protection and preservation in nonspiritual, earthly organizations that they hope will shield them like mountains and crags. They will trust no longer in religious men whom they once regarded as gods, as having connections with the superhuman spirit realm. One of the mountainlike organizations in which they will take refuge is the United Nations, the “Eighth” World Power, for that symbolic “wild beast” with its “ten horns” will destroy Babylon the Great.

14. Whose judgment really is it that is expressed in the destruction of Babylon the Great, and how does this serve as a vindication of him?

¹⁴ Although the devastating, denuding, consuming and burning of Babylon the Great may be the direct work of the symbolic “ten horns” of the scarlet-colored “wild beast,” it is nonetheless the execution of the judgment from Jehovah God. In line with that view of matters, it is written in Revelation 18:8 concerning the world empire of false religion: “That is why in one day her plagues will come, death and mourning and famine, and she will be completely burned with fire, because Jehovah God, who judged her, is strong.” So, to Jehovah God the Almighty goes the credit for liberating mankind from the reign of the religious “great harlot,” Babylon the Great. It will be a vindication of Him as not being the Author of the world empire of false Babylonish religion, not even of Christendom.