Read with Me
Revelation 18:4-8 (HCSB)
Then I heard another voice from heaven:
Come out of her, My people,
so that you will not share in her sins
or receive any of her plagues.
5 For her sins are piled up to heaven,
and God has remembered her crimes.
6 Pay her back the way she also paid,
and double it according to her works.
In the cup in which she mixed,
mix a double portion for her.
7 As much as she glorified herself and lived luxuriously,
give her that much torment and grief,
for she says in her heart,
“I sit as a queen;
I am not a widow,
and I will never see grief.”
8 For this reason her plagues will come in one day —
death and grief and famine.
She will be burned up with fire,
because the Lord God who judges her is mighty.
Listen with Me
After hearing the proclamation of the fall of Babylon the Great, which was due to happen in the near future, and the list of her sins and corruptions, John hears a second voice from heaven. That voice specifically addressed and warned the people of the kingdom who lived throughout the Roman Empire.
The warning is against compromising with the corruption of the empire and its system of worship, a corruption that caused the Roman leaders to persecute any who refused to enter into it. But to do so, to either enter in with the intention of enjoying the financial and lifestyle benefits given to those who are part of the system, or to avoid persecution, is to take the mark of the beast, and to place themselves outside God’s kingdom and directly in the line of His wrath.
The voice also calls for the great prostitute to be repaid double the pain and suffering that she caused for God’s people. She was indeed drunk on the blood of the saints (17:6), and held a cup filled with immorality in all kinds of detestable things (17:4). Now the call is for the consequences of those horrific sins to be visited on her in double measure.
The leadership of Rome had grown to believe themselves invincible and their empire immortal. This pride and arrogance had led them to flaunt their sin before God, much like the people who had built the Tower of Babel, believing that they could brazenly defy God’s will simply because they had a will to, and had achieved some success. But just as God suddenly confused them, disunited them, and scattered them, leaving only an incomplete hulk of the tower standing as a symbol of God’s power and man’s weakness, so the voice called for the sudden destruction of Rome’s might.
The words “in one day” in apocalyptic and prophetic literature was symbolic of disaster that fell over a short time, not necessarily in a single 24-hour day. The fall of Rome and all that it stood for would start slowly but quickly cascade into a catastrophe that left those in power vainly struggling to hold on to the shredded remnants of their power and prestige and the glory that once was.
Pray with Me
Father, the old saying that pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall (Proverbs 16:18) was definitely proved accurate here, just as it had in the case of every civilization that had risen before and had turned away from You and Your righteous requirements. And the call, now as then, is for us, Your people, to not become part of that pride and corruption, so that we don’t fall victim to Your judgment as it falls. Help us, Lord, to always align ourselves with You, no matter how much we might love our country. And help us to never fall into the trap of desiring comfort more than obedience and possessions more than holiness. Amen.