Down She Goes

Series on Revelation

II The Viewpoint

E Cycle Five, Seven Messages of Judgment on Babylon

3 The Measure

Text: 18:1-8

Introduction

This chapter is modeled on the doom songs of Old Testament prophets over arrogant enemies of Israel. It reminisces and summarizes all the prophetic oracles on the doom of unrighteous peoples. The prophecies against Babylon appear frequently in the Old testament because Babylon was one of the great enemies and the only one that carried off the whole nation into captivity after looting and destroying Jerusalem and the temple. The Old Testament song about the ruin of Babylon is considerably longer than John’s description of the event in 17:12–18, but Revelation supplies a powerful climax to the story. In Jeremiah prophesied the end of the Babylonian captivity and in chapter 51 the people are counseled to flee from Babylon spiritually as they are here in our text. There are many other similarities in verses 6-9, Flee from Babylon! Run for your lives! Do not be destroyed because of her sins. It is time for the LORD’s vengeance; he will repay her what she deserves. Babylon was a gold cup in the LORD’s hand; she made the whole earth drunk. The nations drank her wine; therefore they have now gone mad. Babylon will suddenly fall and be broken. Wail over her! Get balm for her pain; perhaps she can be healed. “‘We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to our own land, for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the heavens.’ Isaiah also gives a picture of the seductive nature and destruction of Babylon in 47:1-3, Go down, sit in the dust, Virgin Daughter Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, queen city of the Babylonians. No more will you be called tender or delicate. Take millstones and grind flour; take off your veil. Lift up your skirts, bare your legs, and wade through the streams. Your nakedness will be exposed and your shame uncovered. I will take vengeance; I will spare no one. So, given the entrapment that threatens us, let us examine the character of the prostitute. She is demonic, drunk, dangerous and deceived.

I Demonic

In verses 1 and 2 we read, After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted: “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. I am reminded of Luther’s words from, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” In that hymn he says, “And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him.” We are in fact surrounded with principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this age. Here we are told that Babylon is a desert without inhabitants, except that it is left to the demons as Isaiah predicted in 13:21, But desert creatures will lie there, jackals will fill her houses; there the owls will dwell, and there the wild goats will leap about. If you look it up on the internet you will find that vultures like ruins and they certainly qualify as unclean and detestable birds. We see these but we don’t see the demons around us in Babylon where they will remain after the destruction. This is a supreme contrast between this desolation and the sumptuous city of the past renowned for one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens. they were described by the ancient Greek Historian, Philo, “The Hanging Garden has plants cultivated above ground level, and the roots of the trees are embedded in an upper terrace rather than in the earth. The whole mass is supported on stone columns… Streams of water emerging from elevated sources flow down sloping channels… These waters irrigate the whole garden saturating the roots of exotic plants and keeping the whole area moist. Hence the grass is permanently green and the leaves of trees grow firmly attached to supple branches… This is a work of art of royal luxury and its most striking feature is that the labor of cultivation is suspended above the heads of the spectators.” And now we see its true nature as a haunt for every filthy thing.

II Drunk

Not only is Babylon a habitat for demons, but it is also drunk with luxury and pleasure as we read in verse 3, For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries. We correctly associate drunkenness with alcohol and other intoxicating agents, but the truth is that anything can become a source of intoxication. Some people are drunk with power, and some are drunk with lust and sexual immorality. Others are drunk with gambling, or fame, or success, or even video games. One can even be addicted to running because of the high it brings. Addiction is not just substance abuse it can be a practice, a habit or an activity that edges beyond our voluntary control. It is deceptive and so is the world. John says to love not the world nor the things that are in the world. I mention these things because it is easy for us to identify the things we think of as “big” sins, but all of us can become intoxicated with the world and what it offers. We often take our power and privilege for granted until we see how the “other half” lives. Youth and short term mission trips to third world countries often remind people how much they are taking for granted and sometimes even clarify their view of the world system that beguiles so many.

III Dangerous

Notice that in verses 4-6 we are warned of the danger of living in Babylon, Then I heard another voice from heaven say: “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Run for your lives. Of course this does not mean literally that we should leave the world, for if we did how could we witness and evangelize for Jesus? It means that we should not become attached. We tend to accumulate stuff in the world and the more stuff we get the more we become attached to this world. One writer says, in this electronic age, “First, I have to figure out where to put the stuff… Stuff also needs to be figured out, decoded, programmed, booted or rebooted… New stuff invariably makes some old stuff obsolete, too… And stuff multiplies. It’s never just one item that satiates the consumer palate… More stuff, especially more complicated stuff, tends to require more expensive repairs… In the end, more stuff is often the chain that binds us to… chaos we’d like to escape. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘Objects are in the saddle and ride mankind,’” The big lie of the prostitute is that these things will make us happy. In 1893 while writing of missions, Edward Martin said, “It takes occasional contact with such people as the Patagonians to keep us in mind that civilization is the mere cultivation of our wants, and that the higher it is the more our necessities are multiplied, until, if we are rich enough, we get enervated by luxury, and the young men come in and carry us out. We want so many, many things, it seems a pity that those simple Patagonians could not send missionaries to us to show us how to do without. The comforts of life, at the rate they are increasing, bid fair to bury us soon, as Tarpeia was buried under the shields of her friends the Sabines. Mr. Hamerton, in speaking of the increase of comfort in England, groans at the ‘trying strain of expense to which our extremely high standard of living subjects all except the rich.’ It makes each individual of us very costly to keep, and constantly tempts people to concentrate on the maintenance of themselves.” We tend to invite betrayal without even knowing what we are doing. This is the danger.

IV Deceived

Finally, not only are we deceived by the world, but the harlot herself is deceived as we read in verses 7 and 8, Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, ‘I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.’ Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. Babylon was the apex of luxury. The temple of Bel-Nebo contained a statue of the idol seated on a golden throne next to a golden altar, and on this altar, once a year, a thousand pounds of incense were burned. Yet this city, because it was filled with depravity and debauchery, was eventually brought low and destroyed. In Isaiah 47:7 and 8 we read the harlot’s claim, You said, “I will continue forever—the eternal queen! … I am, and there is none besides me. I will never be a widow or suffer the loss of children.” The prostitute dies a fitting death, for she is burned with fire. It is not the civil, or political, or commercial, character of the city, but the spiritual harlotry that leads to her destruction. According to the law of Moses, in Leviticus 21:9, burning appears to have been the punishment of fornication only in the case of a priest’s daughter: And the daughter of any priest, if she profane herself by playing the harlot, she shall be burnt with fire. Thus the doom of Babylon the city of the world, the city of man, the great prostitute of false religion allied with the state. In verse 10 in the next portion, Babylon is addressed as the “city of power”which was undoubtedly her opinion of herself, but her might is no match for the “might of the Lord God who judges her.” Therefore take courage and resist her entrapments and allurements.