Verse 11, parallel to the kings of the earth, are the merchants; so that is pride of life and concupiscence of the eyes. „And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her.‟ The merchants, in the literal sense, are those who are concupiscent, those who commit concupiscence of the eyes—worldlings, worldly people, businessmen. In the spiritual sense, the merchants are heretics and hypocrites who feign virtue to gain glory, not in heaven but on earth. They exhibit concupiscence of the eyes because they want worldly glory. So, in the literal sense, it is worldlings, and in the spiritual sense, it is heretics and hypocrites who pretend to be virtuous to get worldly glory, not heavenly glory.

The gold, then, is divine wisdom. The silver is inspired eloquence; you talk about somebody having a silver tongue. Chrysostom actually means „golden mouth‟— chrusos is gold, stoma is mouth. Saint John Chrysostom, Saint John of the golden mouth, was so eloquent. Silver is inspired eloquence. The precious stone is Christ. Pearl is the kingdom of heaven, obviously from the parable where a man sold all he had to get the pearl of great price. Linen is purity, used in a strainer. Purple is the desire of martyrdom. Silk is virginity. Scarlet is charity, presumably by the color of fire, the fire of charity.

Thyine wood—I don’t know what that is today—is one of those woods that doesn’t rot, so thyine wood is perseverance, which does not rot. Ivory is chastity. Brass, or bronze in some translations, is endurance. Iron is patience, becoming supple under heat; iron becomes malleable when heated. Patience has a certain right kind of give when under trial.

The latest Birch magazine has an article about Sir Thomas More, a review of a book on him. It’s not a bad review, probably not a bad book. Interestingly, it discusses St. Thomas More’s Utopia. Utopia is a strange book and often cast in St. Thomas More’s teeth. How could he write such a humanistic thing? This review suggests it was an academic joke, an exercise in fanciful thinking designed to amuse his fellow scholars, but certainly not St. Thomas More’s serious idea of how the world should be organized. That makes sense.

In other words, he was a very clever man, in the best sense. Usually, the word „clever‟ has bad connotations, but he was very clever, very honest, and devout. When he became Lord Chancellor, there was a big backlog of cases, and he dealt with them so rapidly that the backlog quickly disappeared. A very good lawyer, a very faithful Lord Chancellor, he rose to the top rank. But when Henry VIII married Anne Boleyn and „divorced‟ Catherine of Aragon, expecting everyone to agree, Thomas More did not. He didn’t say a word about it, as you may know. He retired, hoping that if he lay low, nobody would come after him. Of course, Henry VIII had to come after him because everyone knew what he thought, even without his having said a word. More said, „You can’t incriminate me with what I haven’t said.‟ Eventually, they cut his head off.

A point that raises a question mark for Thomas More is his friendship with Erasmus. Erasmus was a worldly character, a very worldly scholar, and had much to do with promoting the climate of opinion that encouraged Protestantism. So, Erasmus was rather doubtful company. But again, Erasmus was a very gifted man, and they must have been companion scholars. In any case, Utopia was a clever man’s exercise of the imagination. That makes sense to me. Does anyone here know much about Thomas More? That he would write it off as a kind of hobby, like some famous man writing a detective novel or science fiction, makes sense. Only Thomas More was a Latin and Greek scholar, so it was an exercise in that vein.

Utopia means „nowhere.‟ This same review in the Birch magazine—which has a picture of a Kosovo gunman on the front—has an interesting couple of pages by Father James Thornton on this book on Thomas More. He goes through other names in Utopia. For instance, Adimos, the capital city, means „no people‟ in Greek. There are several other names like that which indicate it’s just a fanciful exercise. Some of the ideas might seem subversive, but St. Thomas More, in his personal life, was the very opposite of subversive. He was a loyal servant of the crown, except when the crown went against the Church. Then he was still a loyal servant by not going with the crown. That’s real loyalty, just like Archbishop Lefebvre’s loyalty. So, he was certainly no subversive. The funny ideas in Utopia are not what Thomas More lived by, practiced, or preached by his practice. So, when people ask about Utopia, that is surely the answer: it was an intellectual game.

Verse 14: „And the fruits of the desire of thy soul are departed from thee, and all fat and goodly things are perished from thee, and they shall find them no more at all.‟ That is what will happen to all materialists today, either before or after they die. People today are completely sunk in materialism; it’s all they believe in. This chapter very much applies to our world today. On the last day, all this trading for human glory is lost. In the literal sense, materialists will lose everything. In the spiritual sense, all this trading for human glory is wiped out.

„The merchants of these things, who were made rich, shall stand afar off from her for fear of her torments, weeping and mourning, and saying: Alas, alas! That great city, which was clothed with fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and was gilt with gold, and precious stones and pearls! For in one hour so great riches are come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all that sail into the lake, and mariners, and as many as work in the sea, stood afar off, and cried, seeing the place of her burning, saying: What city is like to this great city!‟ In verses 15 and 16, in the literal or spiritual sense, all is instantly lost.

Someone in the audience suggests a reference to Proverbs 31:6 for wine as compunction: „Give wine to those that are grieved in heart.‟ However, this is not quite compunction, more like „grieved in mind.‟ Further research into commentaries is needed to understand why wine might refer to compunction.

In any case, with the collapse of Babylon, everything is instantly lost. It is going to be something like that with New York. I don’t know how, where, or when. Verse 17: „For in one hour are so great riches come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all that sail into the lake, and mariners, and as many as work in the sea, stood afar off.‟ The shipmaster is literally the traveling merchant by sea. Spiritually, the shipmaster represents bad priests, prelates, and preachers who are meant to be fishers of men. „And cried, seeing the place of her burning, saying: What city is like to this great city?‟ The place of burning is hell. How could it happen to such a city?

Verse 19: „And they cast dust upon their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, saying: Alas, alas! That great city, wherein all were made rich that had ships at sea by reason of her prices; for in one hour she is made desolate.‟ They cast dust upon their heads; the ship merchants will do penance, but too late. The ship owners of verse 19 are the worldlings who staked everything on worldly wealth, like people today.

„Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath judged your judgment on her.‟ John exhorts the saints to rejoice over the destruction of materialism, its comeuppance. „Heaven‟ here means saints, where God dwells in their hearts. The apostles are all those who labored for the Gospel, and the prophets are all those who announced the kingdom to come.

„And the voice of harpers, and of musicians, and of them that play on the pipe, and on the trumpet, shall no more be heard at all in thee. And no craftsman of any art whatsoever shall be found any more at all in thee. And the sound of the mill shall be heard no more at all in thee. And the light of the lamp shall shine no more at all in thee. And the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for all nations have been deceived by thy enchantments. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.‟

This is the condemnation of materialism. In hell, there is no music except shrieks and yells. There will be no art or craft, no milling, none of the normal operations or normalcies of life; all swallowed up in fire. There will be no light and no married life down below. Why no light, no married life, no joy? Because your merchants were the princes of the earth; commerce was king. And the enchantments of materialism infected all men.

Today, the economy of the entire world is so interlocked. This is an interesting point made on a recent tape: no nation can step out, even if it wants to, because of credits. You must join the system, the banking system, to buy and sell; otherwise, all trade stops. The whole thing is completely locked up in the hands of the merchants of the earth, centered in New York, the center of world commerce. There’s a brave prime minister in Malaysia at the moment who has tried to denounce certain powers and stop them from wrecking his currency and country. He’s standing up to them, but there’s a strict limit to what one can do because they hold all the strings. One yank, and you’re throttled, especially a little country.

It’s tied up by our fault, by the fault of men. Men want the goodies, so they necessarily fall into the hands of the masters of goodies, the masters of money. If you’re a victim of those people, it’s most likely you’ve fallen for materialism yourself. The whole world today thinks only of economy, balance of payments, currencies, money, more goodies, more production, sales, etc. That’s all the world seems to think about, and the most serious men take this seriously. The rest is considered insignificant. It’s an incredible state of affairs, but that’s exactly Chapter 18. There’s going to come a moment when the whole thing will seize up, stop, get thrown into hell.

Then, in the seventh age, under the Antichrist, materialism will presumably be back in the saddle. The whole world will have gone materialistic once more, and again, materialists will answer for the terrible persecution of the Church under the Antichrist. Perhaps something like the persecution going on now, if not actually that. I don’t think we’re at the Antichrist yet; he’s a ways away, but not all that far. Either way, materialists will have to pay for their scorn of things spiritual, and for their scorn of prophets and saints, like Archbishop Lefebvre. Shortly before Archbishop Lefebvre died, LICRA (Ligue Internationale Contre le Racisme et l’Antisémitisme) was suing him for alleged racist remarks about Arabs. The Archbishop had ventured into politics, saying the quasi-invasion of France by Arabs was not good for France and that Arabs are not assimilable in France. It was carefully said, but it was too much for LICRA. They were going to drag him before the courts. Had he not died, they would have done their darndest. That’s Babylon destroying prophets and saints. They didn’t quite get his blood, but they would have if they could have. It’s a wicked world we live in.

Audience Member (Fox): Are you referring to Chapter 17, concerning the Protestant interpretation of the Scarlet Woman and the city of Babylon as Rome?

Bishop Williamson: Yes, Protestants above all use the comparison with Rome from Chapter 17, I believe. They may also use Babylon in Chapter 18, but primarily the Scarlet Woman because Chapter 17, verse 9, mentions her sitting on seven hills: „The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.‟ And Rome has seven hills: the Capitoline, Aquiline, Equiline, Palatine, Aventine, and two others like the Caelian and Viminal. Together, we could probably name them. On her forehead was „Babylon the Great, Mother of Fornications,‟ so the two are connected.

Audience Member (Schmidt): A couple of things. In verse 13, what is the meaning of frankincense? And concerning the harp players mentioned, would that be a flip side reference to penance, like an unappreciative penance?

Bishop Williamson: Frankincense means devotion. As for the harp players, yes, maybe. Harp playing can be beautiful spiritual music, music of penance. But in hell, there is no such music, only noise, horror, shrieks, and yells. So it might be that the absence of harpers signifies the absence of that beautiful music struck from penance.

So, Chapter 19: „After these things I heard as it were the voice of much people in heaven saying: Alleluia! Salvation, and glory, and power is to our God. For true and just are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornication and hath revenged the blood of his servants, at her hands. And again they said: Alleluia! And her smoke ascendeth for ever and ever. And the four and twenty ancients and the four living creatures fell down and adored God that sitteth upon the throne, saying: Amen; Alleluia!‟

Always this vision of the throne of God. „Alleluia‟ is an untranslatable word of rejoicing. Salvation comes from God alone, therefore glory is due to God alone. All salvation is His (comes from Him), all glory is His (goes to Him). The judgment of God upon the prostitute was doubly just: she corrupted the earth and slaughtered the saints. „Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints whose bones lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.‟ Does anybody know that quote? It’s Milton. The only trouble is he’s referring to Protestant saints.

Someone suggests that whatever is good in the art is from previous Catholicism; that’s basically true. But also, talent and the use you make of it are two different things. Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas say this regarding ars or art. One can be a marvelous craftsman and make it serve horrible purposes. Picasso is a classic example: very talented, a visual genius who could take visual elements to say what he wanted with striking originality, but he used it for trash. An astonishing talent serving trash purposes.

Conversely, you can have poor talent serving a very fine purpose: a very moral artist who just lacks talent. Talent and the purpose for which you use it are different. Great artists have both talent and a noble purpose, but they don’t always coincide. The amount of talent in each age is probably approximately the same; God distributes talents similarly across ages. But what those with talent choose to use them for is up to men’s free will. You must distinguish between the craft and the moral or immoral purpose of the craftsman. It’s an obvious distinction if you think about it.

Same with a politician. Clinton has enormous talents as a politician. If he chose to use those talents for good… could he? They are so welded to the purposes for which he does use them. He certainly has enormous talent, but the purpose for which he’s using it is miserable. The two are strictly separable.

What’s an example of someone very moral who didn’t have much talent? An example might be a composer of the Mass who wrote for the Church with all honesty and desire to do something for God, but the music just hasn’t got the same zing as their pagan music. It’s perfectly possible they’re just not as inspired when they want to do something good.