Last 5 Days
To be Holy
1 After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. 2 And he called out with a mighty voice,
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. 3 For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.”
4 Then I heard another voice from heaven saying,
“Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; 5 for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. 6 Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. 7 As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, ‘I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’ 8 For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.”
This passage was a lament, where the language was one of mourning, considered in its culture, a creative way to communicate an impending judgement.
“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the great!”, a repeated phrase from Revelation 14:8, both of which reminds the readers of Isaiah 21:9. Isaiah had first used this phrase to prophesy the impossible fall of the super world power of his time. John had, in the same manner, predicted the fall of the great Roman empire, which was like a great prostitute who seduced the world. Here, the lament also included the kings of the earth and merchants of the earth (verse 3) referring to those whose rule and prosperity, respectively, depended on Rome. She had brought good to other people for her own personal gain – her luxurious living (verse 3 and 7) and for her own glory (verse 7) – but the nations were drunk and bewitched by her exploitive seduction.
Judgement was now coming upon Rome and its cities were going to be depopulated. But John’s audience will not lose sight of God’s sovereignty and they had been asked to take flight. They are asked to escape before the judgement arrives, and are asked to leave the eternal city as Rome had claimed itself to be, because they have the promise of a better city (Revelation 21:2-3). Those who stay in the same system that is elsewhere persecuting the people of God will, however, share in the same judgement that will befall Rom. This judgement, that is being withheld because of God’s mercy, will eventually be poured out in double portion.
Today, a lament like this will almost sound like giving an eulogy for a city. Can you imagine giving a eulogy for your own country, your own nation? What a scary thought, but yet, what a poignant point for reflection. Have we grown so powerful and rich that we have grown arrogant? Have we squandered resources or neglected the needs of others? If our hope is in the grandeur of today’s glory, then it will surely pass away, because no great city had continued to be eternally great. Instead, we should put our hope in the Holy City, the only city that has eternal glory.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are called to be holy, to be set apart. We are in this world but not of this world, but how do we set ourselves apart for God? We need to set in ourselves the values of God through immersing in God’s Word, otherwise the values that the social media is telling us becomes the values that we adopt. We need to be praying so that we can communicate and commune with God. We need to be the salt and light in our world, so that our faith may influence the world around us. May our Lord have mercy on us!