The big question is, What point in history does the action of the mighty angel (and his explanatory words) describe? The use of the future tense tempts us to think that this violent throwing is still to happen, and we automatically think of the Last Day. That is indeed the moment in history when all evil will finally and completely be swept off this earth. This does not mean, however, that no fulfillment of this prophecy has yet happened. By the confusion of language, the Tower of Babel was silenced (Genesis 11:8); more, today you cannot find the ruins of that tower of long ago. By the death of Belshazzar, the Babylonian Empire collapsed (Daniel 5:30); in short order, it was overrun by the Medes and Persians, eventually by the Greeks and Romans, so that its achievements disappeared and remain only as historical record (including museum artifacts as evidence). The Roman Empire, mighty as it was, fell…and disappeared. The Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan, the Aztec Empire of Montezuma, the Songhai Empire of King Muhammad I Askia, Hitler’s Third Reich, Pol Pot’s terror, etc, have all disappeared. Each in turn was an iteration of Babylon, a civilization or city or state that sought to build a paradise without God, and all experienced the righteous judgment of God Most High. Their ziggurats and coliseums and pyramids and concentration camps are museums, horrible (though perhaps majestic) reminders of how many people perished in their futile attempts to reconstruct paradise without the Lord God. On the Last Day even those museum pieces will be swept off this earth as the Lord finalizes his righteous judgment.
21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more;