Mystery, Babylon The Great (2005) - Escape Babylon's Demons

CHAPTER 2
The women: Great nation at the time of the vision?
The next two questions to address in determining the mystery of who Babylon the
Great is concerns the timing of John’s vision.
Was the angel showing John a vision of the great Roman Empire that ruled over
the world at the time of the vision?
Or was the angel showing John a vision of a future great city or superpower
nation-state like the U.S.?
Revelation 17:18 says:
“And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”
The verb “is” used above in Greek is estin. Estin is a third person, present tense,
active voice, indicative mood parsing of the root verb eimi meaning “to be“. In other
words, the great city is reigning. Revelation 17:18 could be accurately paraphrased
as follows:
“And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which is reigning over the kings of the earth.”
For the following reasons one can conclude that the vision is of a future superpower
nation-state.
The whole vision is in the context of the future.
The angel is showing John a future vision. Verse 18 is part of that future vision. You
have to violate grammatical rules and remove verse 18 from it’s future context in
order to say that the verse is speaking about 1 st century Rome at the present time of
the vision.
“Is” mean equals in Revelation 17:18.
“And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.”
After all, we can say “6 + 6 equals 12” or “6 + 6 is 12“. The Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich &
Danker Greek Lexicon comments that one of the ways this word “is” is to be
considered is explanatory, a representation or an equivalent of after verbs of asking,