Jeremiah 51:45
Jeremiah 51:4545Come out of her, My people! Save your lives, each of you, from the fierce anger of the LORD.
The most direct verbal parallel to 's "come out of her, my people" call. The Watchtower reads it as the prophetic template for the modern call to leave Christendom and join Jehovah's organisation, with the literal Babylon collapsed entirely into the symbolic Babylon the Great of Revelation.
is the literal historical referent the call quotes. The original meaning is plain: God's people are to flee a real city before its real destruction. When John reuses the language in Revelation 18, the angel has already told him in 17:18 that Babylon the Great is "the great city" with imperial kingdom — language pointing at first-century Rome. The "come out" call is about separating from a corrupt political-economic system, not selecting a religious organisation. Even in the Watchtower's own reading, refers to Rome as "Babylon"; that sets the precedent for Revelation's reuse of the same name.