It is appropriate that the end of the symbolic Babylon, Jerusalem should be signified by the same imagery. The symbols meant the total disappearance of both the literal and the figurative Babylons. Verse twenty-three includes the symbols of the crafts of prosperity, of marriages and of merriment, all of which were to be no more; and verse twenty-four reverted to the sins of Jerusalem in the guiltiness of the blood of prophets, and of saints, and all that were slain upon the earth (Matthew 23:29-39). In the avenging judgment on Jerusalem the guilt of the blood of these slain ones found retribution. It is needless to go out of the Neronic period or away from Jerusalem to find the facts of history that meet all the demands of these apocalypses. They do not fit Rome, nor any other city than Jerusalem; where the prophets, apostles and saints were slain. The usual interpretation to bring the apocalypse down through the ages to stage again the historical pageantry of the Roman empire, in the effort to find a future fulfillment, takes all the force out of the words of Christ in Matthew 23:1-39; Matthew 24:1-51, and robs the apocalypse of its immediate message. The apostate Jerusalem was the object of the visions of Revelation, and all things else in the book were collateral to the implementation of the symbols. The readers should not fail to consider that all these visions were recorded before the events occurred, therefore bearing a pre-destruction of Jerusalem date; and Revelation takes its place alongside the Lord’ s own forecast of Mat 24:1-51, Mark 13:1-37, and Luke 21:1-38, some thirty-seven years before the siege of Jerusalem, the Revelation itself bearing the date of the early part of the Neronic reign, several years previous to A. D. 70, when Jerusalem was besieged and later desolated. It is evident that the visions of Revelation belong to the ten days period of Roman emperors from Nero to Diocletian, the period of the persecution of the church resulting from the destruction of Jerusalem. It is not a sane interpretation of the apocalyptic symbols to pass over the corresponding events of history then in process-the current events and the contemporary kings of Rome and Judah--in order to link the fulfillment of these symbols to future events which, if they should come to pass, could not provide a more perfect similitude between the symbol and the event that fulfills it than was present in the events of the history surrounding Jerusalem and Judah; and which followed in immediate rapid succession the fall of Jerusalem, Judaism and the Jewish state. The theories of futurism would revive kingdoms that have perished, and their kings who have turned to dust; and after several thousands of years in an ultra-special sort of resurrection stage a historical pageant to parade them all before the world again in order to meet the demands of a future fulfillment of Revelation. It is not compatible with the announced purpose of the book nor the character of its symbols, the fulfillment of which was accomplished in the corresponding events of that period, and in the experiences of the churches then living--events long ago committed to the annals of history and to the archives of earth’ s treasures. Jerusalem had filled up the measure of its sin of the slain prophets and servants of God and the rejection of the Son of God, the Saviour of man. It had therefore to expiate the guilt incurred by Israel and officially accepted by the officials of the nation: His blood be upon our heads and upon the heads of our children. With this vision the judgment on Jerusalem was completed and sealed.