719. Saying to me, "Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters." This symbolizes a revelation about that religion as regards its profanations and adulterations of the Word's truths.

Saying and showing symbolize a revelation. The judgment symbolizes the state of the Roman Catholic religion at its end. The great harlot symbolizes a profanation of the sanctities of the Word and the church, and an adulteration of their goodness and truth. Many waters symbolize the Word's truths adulterated. To sit upon the waters means, symbolically, to possess them and live caught up in them.

To play the harlot, to whore, to behave licentiously and to commit adultery mean, symbolically, to falsify and adulterate the Word, as may be seen in nos. 134, 620, 632 above; and waters symbolize its truths, nos. 50, 563, 614, 685, here those truths adulterated and profaned, because a harlot is said to be on them.

It is apparent from this that "saying to me, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters," symbolizes a revelation about the aforesaid religion as regards its profanations and adulterations of the Word's truths.

[2] Something similar is said about Babel in Jeremiah:

...Jehovah will... do what He spoke against the inhabitants of Babel. You who dwell upon many waters, abundant in treasures, your end is coming, the measure of your material gain. (Jeremiah 51:12-13)

We say that Roman Catholics adulterated and profaned the Word's truths, because they used the Word's truths to gain dominion over the sanctities of the church and over heaven and to claim for themselves the Lord's Divine power; and to use the Word's truths to gain dominion over the sanctities of the church and heaven is to adulterate them, and to use them to claim for oneself the Lord's Divine power is to profane them.

People know that they use the Word to defend their dogmas. But read those dogmas attentively and you will see that they have used everything that they have taken from the Word to gain dominion over people's souls and to acquire for themselves a power, authority and majesty that is Divine.

It is for this reason that Babylon is named the Mother of the Whoredoms and Abominations of the Earth in verse 5.

563. So the serpent spewed water out of its mouth like a river after the woman, that it might cause her to be swept away by the river. (12:15) This symbolizes a multitude of reasonings flowing from falsities in order to destroy the church.

The serpent symbolizes, here as above, the dragon leading astray. The woman symbolizes the New Church (no. 533). Water symbolizes truths, and in an opposite sense, falsities (no. 50, 409). A river symbolizes truths in abundance, and in an opposite sense, falsities in abundance (no. 409). Coming out of the mouth of the serpent symbolizes reasonings. So then, its spewing out water like a river symbolizes a multitude of reasonings flowing from falsities.

The reasonings of people meant by the dragon all arise from misconceptions and appearances, and if they are defended, they seem superficially to be true, but inwardly they contain a multitude of falsities.

I can relate this fact, that people in the church who affirm faith alone in themselves cannot afterward turn away from it without serious repentance, because they unite themselves with followers of the dragon who are currently in the world of spirits and in a state of agitation, being driven by their hatred for the New Church to harass all whom they encounter there. Moreover, because they unite with people on earth, as we said, they do not allow those who have once been captivated by their reasonings to withdraw from them; for they hold them as though bound in chains, and then shut their eyes so that they are no longer capable of seeing any truth clearly.