I think those that ruin the earth could also be greedy industrialists , corrupt governments and religionists that oppose christianity such as in the middle east . I don't think that revelations was written about rome but about future events that would take place before the end of the world as we know it .
Again, the internal evidence of Revelation and Leviticus points to excessive sin as what "ruins the earth" and Rev. 19:2 in fact says it explicitly. As far as Babylon the Great being Rome, there is hardly any doubt about this. Remember what it was like after A.D. 70. Rome had just destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, exactly what Babylon did in 587 B.C. The typological parallel between Rome and Babylon was very much in the minds of early Christians. The prophecies of Revelation were written to give comfort to Christians living during that hard time, just as Ezekiel was written in sixth century B.C. At that time, John the Presbyter was a modern-day Ezekiel and Jeramiah, bringing potent warnings about the immediate divine judgment of Rome and its coming destruction, just as Jeramiah had prophesied the fall of Babylon and Ezekiel the fall of Tyre. Just read Rev. 17-18 side by side with Jeremiah 50 and Ezekiel 26-28 and the literary connection is clear.
The details in Rev. 17 quite transparently apply to the Roman empire and the Neronian persection. The seven heads are Rome's seven hills, v. 9, and the horns are ten subject kings, v. 16. The beast, v. 8, is Nero himself, the number of the beast in 13:18 according to traditional gematria renders the name NERO CAESER. The worship of the beast in 13:15 refers to the Caeser cult which everyone was required to worship the king as a god so that "whom all the kings of the earth," that is, all the kings subject to the Empire, had to worship (17:2). The beast's killing of the saints (v. 6) is a reference to Nero's persecution of Christians. Verse 10 makes the identification with Nero quite plain: "The seven heads are also seven emperors. Five of them have already gone, one is here now, and one is yet to come." The five preceding emperors were JULIUS, AUGUSTUS, TIBERIUS, CALIGULA, and CLAUDIUS and the "one [that] is here now" would therefore be NERO. The seventh would be VESPASIAN, who was responsible under General Titus for the destruction of Jerusalem. And then in v. 11 we read: "The beast who once was and now is not, is at the same time the eighth and one of the seven, and he is going to his destruction." The eighth emperor is probably a reference to DOMITIAN (Titus had a brief reign and was closely associated with Vespasian), who was believed by many to be Nero resurrected. This Nero redivivus legend is also mentioned in ch. 13 where the beast had "worldwide authority" (v. 2) and then received a fatal wound "but that this fatal injury had healed" (v. 3). According to the legend, the resurrected Nero would head a Parthian army (the Parthians were a vassal of Rome) and attack the city once more (as Nero had previously attacked the city with his fire). This is stated in 17:16 where "the time will come when the ten horns [the vassal kings of the Roman Empire, cf. v. 12] and the beast [Nero] will turn against the prostitute [Rome], and strip off her clohtes and leave her naked, then they will eat her flesh and burn the remains in the fire."
Bear in mind also that the understanding that Babylon referred to Rome was near universal in early Christianity and is the very source of the Watchtower claim that Babylon the Great in Revelation refers to "the empire of false religion". During the Reformation, the Protestant reformers adopted the traditional view that Babylon referred to Rome, but since Rome in their day was the headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, they adjusted the interpretation to refer to Roman Catholicism. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Protestants commonly understood Babylon the Great as symbolizing Catholicism, and Pastor Russell inherited this understanding and broadened it to Christendom in general. Then later on, the Watchtower broadened it even further to include all other religions in its "Religion is a Snare and a Racket" days. But always at the very root of all this was the original understanding that Babylon referred to Rome.
The same understanding of Babylon as Rome and the same Nero redivivus legend appears in Book 5 of the Sibylline Oracles, a Jewish prophecy written between A.D. 80 and 110. In this version, Nero did not really die but went into hiding with the Parthians. Let me quote some excerpts of it:
The poets will bewail thrice-wretched Greece when a great king of great Rome, a godlike man from Italy, will cut the ridge of the isthmus. Him, they say, Zeus himself begot and lady Hera. Playing at theatricals with honey-sweet songs rendered with melodious voice, he will destroy many men, and his wretched mother [obviously referring to Nero]. He will flee from Babylon [clearly referring to Rome], a terrible and shameless prince whom all mortals and noble men despise. For he destroyed many men and laid hands on the womb...He will come to the Medes and the kings of the Persians, those whom he first desired and to whom he gave glory, lurking with these evil ones against a true people. He seized the divinely built Temple and burned the citizens and peoples who went into it [Nero did not of course capture Jerusalem but the war began in his reign]....
But when the fourth year a great star shines which alone will destroy the whole earth [cf. Revelation 8:10, about the huge star falling from the sky to the sea], because of the honor which they first gave to Poseidon of the sea, a great star will come from heaven to the wondrous sea and will burn the deep sea and Babylon itself and the land of Italy [Babylon being in the land of Italy], because of which many holy faithful Hebrews and a true people perished....With you are found adulteries and illicit intercourse with boys [cf. the fornication and sin of Rome in Rev. 19:2 that pollutes the land]. Effeminate and unjust, evil city, ill-fated above all. Alas, city of the Latin land, unclean in all things, as a widow you will sit by the banks [cf. Isaiah 47:2, 8-9, where Babylon the "voluptuous woman" is now a widow at the riverbank], and the river Tiber will weep for you [cf. the weeping for Babylon in Rev. 18:9-23 by the "seafaring men and sailors" on Babylon's rivers], its consort....
There will come to pass in the last time about the waning of the moon a war which will throw the world into confusion and be deceptive in guile [cf. the great battle in Rev. 19:19, where the "beast" leads the great war]. A man who is a matricide [obviously referring to Nero] will come from the ends of the earth in flight and devising penetrating schemes in his mind. He will destroy every land and conquer all and consider all things more wisely than all men [cf. the wisdom and miracles of the Beast in Rev. 13:13-15]....Woe to you, Babylon, of golden throne and golden sandal. For many years you were the sole kingdom ruling over the world. You who were formerly great and universal, you will no longer lie on golden mountains and streams of the Euphrates [in parallel with Rome on the River Tiber]. You will be spread out flat by the turmoil of an earthquake [Rev. 16:18-19]. Terrible Parthians make you shake all over [referring to the return of Nero with the Parthian army; cf. also Rev. 9:14-19 and 16:12 which discusses the Parthian kings and army]...You will pay a bitter reckoning to your enemies in return for your crooked words. In the last time, the sea will be dry [cf. Rev. 21:1] and ships will then no longer sail to Italy.
The oracle then extends to a universal war involving the heavenly hosts and the conflaguration of the earth (cf. Seneca's Consolatio ad Marciam 26.6). The connection with the prophecy in Revelation is very clear and shows that Jews as well had similar visions and used the same language to refer to Nero and Rome, even more explicitly than in Revelation. The expectation of Domitian's rule culminating into universal Armageddon pretty much dates this prophecy to that time. Book 8 of the Sibylline Oracles dates to later in the second century A.D. and incorporates the same Nero redivivus myth, but updates it to the time of Marcus Aurelius and similarly expects the destruction of Rome and universal conflaguration during Aurelius' time.
Leolaia