(4) The anthem of rejoicing over the fall of Apostate Jerusalem--18:20-24. It seems unnecessary to follow the order of line by line comments on these verses, which would involve so much repetition. This last section of the chapter, verses twenty to twenty-four, represented John’ s own rhapsody of rejoicing over the avenging judgment of God on Jerusalem, the once faithful city which had turned harlot. In contrast with the wailing of the associates in the harlotries of the city, John was joined in vision to the witnesses and apostles and saints who had been victims of Jerusalem’ s murderous wantonness--a united chorus in celebration of the end of the abominations of Jerusalem and the obstructions of Judaism. The Lord foretold this fulfillment in Matthew 23:29-38 : “ Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes: and some of them ye shall kill and crucify; and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city: That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation. 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you desolate.” This anticipated fulfillment of the Lord’ s predictions received and written by John in the Neronic period and represented the Lord’ s words, “ fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.” In the symbols of this chapter verse twenty-one, the angel casts a great millstone into the sea as a sign of irretrievable doom for Jerusalem. The same symbolism was adopted in Jeremiah 51:63-64 to signify the end of old Babylon: “ And it shall be, when thou hast made an end of reading this book, that thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the midst of Euphrates: And thou shalt say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her: and they shall be weary. Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.”