801. 18:24 "And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all those slain on the earth." This symbolically means that from the Roman Catholic religion, meant by the city of Babylon, comes the adulteration and profanation of all the truth of the Word and so of the church, and falsity has consequently emanated from it throughout the whole Christian world.

Blood symbolizes a falsification, adulteration and profanation of the Word (nos. 327, 379, 684). Prophets symbolize all who possess Divine truth from the Word, and abstractly, doctrinal truths drawn from the Word (nos. 8, 133). Saints, or holy ones, symbolize people who belong to the Lord's church, and abstractly, the church's sacred truths (nos. 173, 586, 666). Those slain symbolize people who have been slain spiritually, and those who are said to be slain spiritually are people who perish as a result of falsities (no. 325, and in a number of places elsewhere). Moreover, because the earth symbolizes the church, all those slain on the earth symbolize all in the Christian Church who have perished as a result of falsities, because the falsity they possess has emanated from the Roman Catholic religion.

Regarding Babylon we are told also in Jeremiah that the slain of all the earth are there (Jeremiah 51:49, 52), and in Isaiah that Lucifer, who in Isaiah is Babylon, has destroyed their land and slain its people (Isaiah 14:20).

That from the Roman Catholic religion have emanated many of the falsities in the Protestant Reformed churches may be seen in no. 751 above, where we explained the statement that "the woman whom you saw is the great city which holds sway over the kings of the earth" (Revelation 17:18).

684. And they became blood. This symbolizes the Word's truths falsified.

Blood in a good sense symbolizes Divine truth, and in an opposite sense that truth falsified, as may be seen in no. 379 above. Blood symbolizes Divine truth falsified and profaned because Jews shed the Lord's blood, which was Divine truth itself or the Word, and they did this because they had falsified and profaned all the Word's truths. (That the Lord suffered as an embodiment of the Word, or in other words, that the Jewish nation did the same violence to the Lord as they had done to the Word, may be seen in The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem Regarding the Lord, nos. 15-17.)

People caught up in faith alone falsify all the Word's truths, because the entire Word has to do with a life in accordance with the commandments in it, and with the Lord as being Jehovah and the only God; and people caught up in faith alone give no thought to a life in accordance with the commandments in the Word, nor do they approach the Lord.