Verses 14 and 15 continue, "Assemble all of yourselves together and hear!/Who among them has declared these things?/Jehovah loves him; he will do His pleasure/On Babylon, and His arm will be upon the Chaldeans./I, even I, have spoken; indeed, I have called him;/I have brought him, and his way will prosper." The him in these verses refers to Cyrus in 44:28 and 45:1, typifying Christ as the Servant of Jehovah (Matt. 3:17). Cyrus will do Jehovah's pleasure on Babylon, which symbolizes the Roman Catholic Church. It was a matter of love for God to use a Gentile king to subdue Babylon and to release the captives of Israel.
Isaiah 48:16b says, "Now the Lord Jehovah/Has sent me and His Spirit." Here me refers to the prophet Isaiah, typifying Christ.
In chapter forty-eight we also have a word about Jehovah's leading of Israel to come out of Babylon. As we have pointed out, Babylon symbolizes the Roman Catholic Church. Verses 20 and 21 say, "Come out from Babylon;/Flee from the Chaldeans;/With a voice of singing declare;/Let them hear this, / Send it out unto the end of the earth;/Say, Jehovah has redeemed/His servant Jacob./And they did not thirst/When He led them through the dry places;/He caused water to flow/From the rock for them;/And He split the rock,/And the waters gushed out." Verse 22 concludes the chapter by saying that there is no peace for the wicked. Here the word wicked probably refers to the Babylonians.
In the Bible, Babylon denotes not only a nation but also a religion. Thus, in Revelation 17 and 18 we have Babylon in two aspects: the religious aspect, signifying the Roman Catholic Church, and the material, physical aspect, signifying the city of Rome, the capital of Antichrist's kingdom.
According to history, Rome took over Israel politically and militarily in approximately 40 B.C. In the eyes of God, Rome was the real Babylon, frustrating God from accomplishing His economy. It was Rome that put Christ on the cross. However, in His resurrection Christ overcame that frustration, and the church was produced. By the third century the church had become quite prevailing in the resurrection power. Then in the fourth century Constantine the Great took advantage of the dissension that existed among the church leaders at that time, and in A.D. 325 he presided over the Council of Nicaea. That council issued the Nicene Creed, which is used by Catholicism and many of the leading denominations. What was done by Constantine the Great opened the way for the formation of Romanism, which is a mingling of politics and religion. Romanism is therefore the product of the invasion of religion by politics and of the "marriage" of religion to politics in a sinful way. Eventually, the Roman Church became a harlot (Rev. 17:5), the Roman Catholic Church. By A.D. 590 the papal system was fully established, and Babylon was completely formed and consummated in both the political and religious aspects.
When Israel came out of Babylon at the time of Ezra, they came out of political Babylon but not out of religious Babylon, for at that time there was no religious Babylon. Israel's captivity in Babylon typifies the captivity of today's Christians in the Babylonian religion. Religiously speaking, most Christians are captives in Babylon. In the Babylonian religion, the most striking thing is the worship of idols. This is especially true in Catholicism. Today, for us to be God's people, we need to come out of Babylon in its two aspects.