Mystery Babylon is the great city that sheds the blood of the saints — identified with the persecuting covenant center, not a vague label for every empire.
Babylon the Great is drunk with the blood of the saints and of the witnesses of Jesus (Revelation 17:6). In her was found the blood of prophets and of saints (18:24). She is the great city that rules over the kings of the land in the vision’s imagery, and she falls in a sudden, celebrated judgment.
Revelation 11:8 names the great city “spiritually Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified.” That clause is a geographic and theological anchor. The city of the crucifixion is Jerusalem. Prophetic renaming (Sodom, Egypt, Babylon) is how Scripture indicts a covenant people who have become the oppressor.
Rome is the beastly instrument of power in the period. Babylon is the city-system whose religious and persecuting identity is in view when prophets and saints are murdered “in the city.” Jesus already located the killing of prophets in Jerusalem (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:33–34). Revelation continues that lawsuit.
Where the Lord was crucified. Blood of prophets and saints.
Identity follows the text’s own markers before it follows later speculation.
If Babylon is only ever a future capital still unbuilt, the nearness language of Revelation and the experience of the seven churches are sidelined. If Babylon is the first-century persecuting center under judgment, then “come out of her” and the rejoicing at her fall fit the AD 70 horizon.
The people of God are not defined by that city. Her fall vindicates the martyrs. Rebuilding spiritual identity on a judged system is the opposite of the call to come out.