babylon the great revealed
Revelation 17:18
And this woman you saw in your vision represents the great city that rules over the kings of the world.
For more than a century, the Governing Body of Jehovah's Witnesses has urged the international congregation in their care to perceive that most sacrilegious woman John saw drunk upon the blood of God's holy people as being nothing other than a symbolic representation of a world empire of false religion.
While what John was instructed to set down for posterity shows unequivocally that the city dubbed Babylon the Great must be some kind of world empire (for only an authority with a winning international jurisdiction could exercise dominion over the world's entire cadre of leaders), this world empire has been assigned the mantle of a religion only because religion is all that remains once the only two other kinds of world empire the Governing Body recognises - the political and the commercial - have been ruled out after examining the incontestable evidence presented in the Book of Revelation.
Having been forced into drawing the short straw as it were, religion being the bedrock of the great city under discussion here causes a contradiction that can only be resolved by exacerbating this case of mistaken identity: for how can this religion be anything other than a false one when it is depicted as being so irreligious that it actually finds delight in destroying not just ordinary people but even the holy ones of God.
Despite the Governing Body still believing after more than a century that there are indeed only three kinds of world empire present on the Earth today, there are yet two other kinds of world empire both of which go unrecognised by the Governing Body: one of these world empires - unlike even the supposed empire of false religion already noted - possesses the kind of sway necessary to destroy not just ordinary people but even the holy ones of God, while the other world empire possesses the kind of influence needed to deceive almost all the ungodly into believing that they need not turn a blind eye to all the mayhem wrought against the holy ones of God but that instead they should actually want to see the holy ones of God destroyed and should insist that such a thing actually happens.
Given that a non-religious world empire engaged in the destruction of even the holy ones of God actually exists, the really remarkable thing then about this world empire is this: everyone the world over knows exactly what this world empire is even if they themselves think they do not, for so sly is this world empire that it hides in plain sight of the entire world knowing very few of the world's inhabitants - those who toil for this world empire included - can see this world empire for what it actually is: the god of this world's global system of counterfeit justice.