Revelation 18:5

for her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

For her sins have reached even unto heaven ... There is something resembling the quality of "glue" in the metaphor here. As Beckwith said, "The thought is not that the sins cleave to the skies, but that they cleave to each other, forming a mass reaching to heaven."[29] Moffatt saw it as a "gluing together of the leaves comprising a roll";[30] Rome's sins would make a roll reaching all the way to heaven! No catalogue of these could be complete.

And God hath remembered her iniquities ... God remembers all sins, unless they are forgiven, in which case they are forgotten. This indicates that the harlot church was not only powerless to forgive the sins of her followers, but that she was also utterly unable to procure forgiveness even for her own sins. As Spurgeon once admonished his church:

Therefore, if some shaveling priest shall lift his hand to absolve thee, even upon thy deathbed, lift thy bony hand and absolve him; thou hast the same right!

[29] Isbon T. Beckwith, op. cit., p. 714.

[30] James Moffatt, Expositor's Greek New Testament, Vol. V (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1967), p. 457.