The Revelation of the 16th, 17th and 18th chapters of the Revelation In the 16th, 17th and 18th chapters of the Revelation, we read about the wrath of God being poured out on an evil and corrupt world. The name Babylon is given to all that stands in opposition to God, and this Babylon is described as extremely, even unbelievably cruel and evil. Listen to these lines from the 17th chapter of the Revelation. The angel said, I will show you the judgment of the great whore that sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman had a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman, drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wandered with great amazement." You get the idea that this woman is pretty bad, don't you? In fact, worse than anything anyone else could imagine. and yet this title has been applied to such reasonably good bodies as the Roman Catholic Church or the United States government. Surely, the description, no matter to whom it is applied, is an exaggeration. Apart from the martyrdom that the first Christians suffered under the Roman Empire persecution of Christians have been a relatively rare occurrence in the history of the Church. Now, I'm not trying to minimize the fact that many true Christians have had to die for their faith but I am suggesting that no government, or even no religion for that matter has been recognized as primarily promoting the execution of Christians or any of the debauchery or other religious abominations that seem to be associated with this harlot this prostitute, this whore from the revelation. And one reason for that discrepancy is because Babylon has not yet been revealed. Like the Bible says, it is still a relative mystery. We want to see Babylon as some isolated country or religion, while the rest of us are seen as not being a part of it. Oh, there have been excesses throughout history. There has been corruption. There have even been genocides. but singling out one country or one religion is not so easy. Was it Germany under Hitler? Russia under Stalin? Uganda under Idi Amin? Cambodia under Pol Pot? Or could it be a conglomeration of them all? And much more! You see, when you take the time to study the seven mountains that this abominable harlot sits on you start to realize that what is most mysterious about this term Babylon is that it applies to all the systems of man, at least as far back as the Babylonian Empire. In other passages of scriptures these seven mountains are described as seven heads or seven kings You can keep changing heads whether through revolutions or through elections but you will still get the same thing Babylon, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. So where is she? Who is she? How do we avoid her? The problem is that she is all around you...in the supermarket, in the office, in the classroom, in the government and even in your church. It's just that most of the time she wears a mask. And we like it that way. Imagine a world where parents will jostle one another for the privilege of training the sons and daughters to be killers and then send them out to kill other children, until they themselves are blown to pieces by their opponents. Imagine those same parents selling you groceries, teaching your children, or leading a Bible study at your church. Do you hear what I'm saying? I think most of you know what I'm getting at. Military history is just one small peek into just how abominably cruel our world and our own lives are. Oh, we tell ourselves that all of that killing is to save the world from something worse. But don't forget that the other side is saying the exact same thing to their children as they push them out the door and saying, ''Go and kill the bad guys, and if they kill you in the process, we'll call you a hero!'' Go on! Don't be a coward! Go kill for us and die for us! That is what the rest of us, those who have never killed anyone, say to those who do the killing. But it doesn't stop there. Cruelty goes on in other ways too, even if it is restrained at the moment. Jesus called his followers the salt of the earth because their goodness is the only thing that has salvaged anything of what God originally intended for the world. That extremely tiny minority of people who walk in all the light that they have, who do what is right in the eyes of God. That tiny band of believers is all that has given this abominable world any idea of what is right and good at all. And the rest? They do all they can to convince each other that they too are the salt of the earth. We dress up our selfishness, our greed, our hatred, our indifference to the sufferings of others in plastic smiles, in pious platitudes, and in saccharine niceties. but God sees straight through it. Now, there is a lot of bellyaching about a God who would let innocent people suffer. But hang on a second...did they say innocent? Do any of us have any idea of just how immeasurably cruel the human race really is? Take my illustration about war, for starters. How many of us would choose to die ourselves before we would inflict the cruelties on others that the military asks us to do in times of war. Have you ever wondered why the leaders themselves don't grab a gun and go out to face their supposedly evil opponent in order to save the world? No way! Every last one of them is far more prepared to lay down the lives of hundreds and thousands of others before they will lay down their own lives to eliminate the real or imaginary source of that evil in the leaders of the other country. and still we believe that these same leaders stand for something so good, so precious, so sacred that it is worth killing others, killing the little people, and not the evil leaders themselves, in order to protect it. God sees the truth about each of us, and he passes judgment. All the prayers and bless me sessions in the world are not going to hide from him the two selfish treachery lurking within each of us Punish the innocent My foot There are no innocents unfortunately And if there are, then I'm sure he will have something better for them one day. But to presume that God is going to reward the rest of us with eternal bliss just because we didn't kill anyone because we kept up a good show to the neighbors and even flaunted a few hours of volunteer work or some token gift to charity, to presume that is to insult the far greater intelligence of our Creator. Yes, He is a loving God. He made us because He loves us. And He does have eternal bliss for some of us. But only when we are able to recognize just how totally unworthy we are. Don't tell me about your good deeds. Tell God about the bad deeds, the ones that you have done and even the ones that you avoided only through convenient circumstances. Fall on your knees before him and beg for his forgiveness for what many of us excuse by calling it just being human. Plead for his mercy. Blame him for making you weak to begin with, if you like, But it's not going to save you if you don't lay all that weakness before God and ask him to change you, to make you into what we can only become by turning away from our fallen nature, as the theologians call it. The Bible says, There is none righteous. No, not one. We sing the praises of our religious leaders as though they really are righteous. But what all of us need to be made shockingly aware of is just how depraved and abominable we still are. Or as the apostle Paul said, O wretched man that I am! I am of all men the chiefest among sinners. Yes, let us hide our faces, and point people only to Christ lest they be tempted to use our fornications and blasphemies and drunkenness as an excuse to do the same things themselves. Okay, so we can produce respectable individuals who don't drink, who have never been caught in a sexual affair, and who have never blasphemed God. But have any of us never favored ourselves over others? Have any of us never lusted after forbidden fruit? Have any of us never indulged in favors for our own flesh? And how much worse would we be if only we could get away with it, without anyone knowing? You see, until we stop trying to put the Babylon label on the other guys and start seeing that God has used it to refer to all the hypocrisy and deception of religious respectability that merely whitewashes the rotten corruption of which we are capable, we will be judged along with Babylon. Come out of her, my people! God pleads with us. Jesus asked his followers to totally leave all the systems of man our jobs, our possessions, our families, our plans, our reputations, so that we could follow him and learn from him about a whole new world called the Kingdom of Heaven. Until we do, we are still trapped in Babylon, and we will be punished with her. And that includes leaving that evil chain that is the religious system. I'm not talking just about Roman Catholicism. I'm talking about Protestantism, Pentecostalism, Hebrew roots, flat earth and every other counterfeit that the wicked evil mind of man could possibly come up with to avoid having to confront the teachings of Jesus Christ. There are even people associated with this channel who are doing the same thing hiding behind others to avoid having to deal with their own spiritual depravity You see that why people join religions of all shapes and sizes to hide the real blasphemy that lurks within their own dark, lost souls. Come out of all of this, people! If you want to be part of God's forever family... We are at a point in history when the masks are starting to fall. The absolute evil of the entire world is coming to the surface in what will result in the greatest persecution of people of real faith and real love and real hunger for the truth that has ever happened in all of history. The devil himself is throwing down the gauntlet. Choose now while you still have the time. Choose to follow Christ with everything you have. Don't say, in four months I will change. Today, if you hear his voice, respond in humble obedience. Now is the accepted time. And stop letting yourself be limited by geography. Go into all the worlds, looking for others who are also hearing God's call and seeking to follow him. God is leading us out of the system, out into a spiritual and literal wilderness away from the props and deceptions of the system. This is not a matter of finding some safe countries or safe churches anymore. It will be the whole world, and that includes all the countries and all the churches of the world against those few, scattered individuals who will put their faith entirely in God to take care of their needs. I'm sick of hearing people diss the Catholic Church as though any of the Protestant churches is doing anything better in terms of teaching obedience to Jesus. It's everywhere, friends! Willful rebellion against God's Son, and indifference to all that Jesus taught. Now, America has been Babylon for some time in terms of setting the pace for greed, the root of all evil. It has been going on for a couple of centuries now, but the mantle is already falling from her shoulders as an ever more evil, yet less hypocritical force grows a manifestation of the mystery of Babylon, which will amaze the world. By the time Jesus gets here, there will be no room for anyone to complain about him being too harsh in his judgments. The entire population of the earth will have been made aware of just how unbelievably cruel and evil we really are. Only the mighty grace of God can keep us from becoming a part of it ourselves. And to find that grace, we are going to need to hunger and thirst after it with our whole hearts. Yes, Babylon is a mystery, in that mankind's evil has been dressed up in respectability for the greater part of human history. But all of that is coming to an end. and the truths about who is the real leader of this world that we now live in will be made manifest. The covers are coming off, brothers and sisters, and I for one beg God to help me stay faithful to him in the face of what lies ahead. Will you join with me in taking a stand in these last days? Please write to the address on screen, but more than anything else, open your Bibles and read the four Gospels. Ask God to help you to be a disciple like those first followers of Jesus who are ready to drop it all and reach out to the world with the good news of Christ's coming kingdom. Amen.
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