COME OUT OF HER NOW! ~ EXPOSING HYPOCRISY ~ Part 34
Who ‘in their right mind’ having a map to the greatest treasure that ever existed sitting on their living room shelf, would never dare to study it to find out where it leads? What absurdity would it be if the cure for the vilest life-threatening disease sat unopened on the side table of the patient’s deathbed? Imagine the treasure map or the cure for one’s grave illness had not gone unnoticed but had been pondered many times, even while remaining untouched. Each time they brought about conviction to act, they were refused with greater rebellion, inflexibility, and obstinacy. Only the man or woman with the reprobate mind would be so foolish to ignore and rebel against life’s greatest blessings.
Romans 1:28 talks about the time when God gives someone over to a reprobate or depraved mind. Only He knows when that will occur. Paul presents the case for God’s wrath on unrighteousness due to the understanding that everyone knows God exists, (whether they choose to acknowledge that truth or not). Man must do something with that knowledge. He either turns toward God or away from Him. He either acknowledges God by honoring Him as God (living to glorify Him) and is set upon a path that will lead him to heaven, or he abandons Him, dishonoring Him (living to glorify himself) and is set upon a downward spiral that will lead him to hell. Those who continue to abandon God, He will eventually abandon.
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper… The abandonment in the here and now is to lift His restraining hand from their lives, leaving them to their sin which will destroy them. Eventually, they will experience His divine judgment and punishment, experiencing separation from Him for all eternity. “God gave them over” is a judicial term used when a prisoner is handed over to his sentence. Romans 1:18 says that it is these upon whom God’s wrath rests. Depraved or reprobate is adokimos which means “unapproved, that is, rejected; by implication, worthless (literally or morally).”
In 2 Timothy 3:8, Paul talked about men like Jannes and Jambres (who opposed Moses) as those who “resist (or oppose) the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.” Titus 1:16 speaks of those who fall into this same category. “They profess to know God, but by their deeds they deny Him, being detestable and disobedient and worthless (reprobate) for any good deed.” Those with reprobate minds know something of God but live impure lives and have little desire to please God; they live, rather, to please themselves. As self-appointed ruling authorities over their own lives, they are a law unto themselves. Justifying their own sin, they deem their pleasures of choice “right for them” and accept others who do the same in the name of ‘tolerance’. Having rejected them, God leaves them to themselves. A genuine believer is a new creation who cannot have the mindset of one who practices sin or has a lifestyle represented by sin.
The Bible is the most printed, most sold nonfiction book in the world. Not including all the copies that are given away, Guinness World Records in 1995 said the total number sold was estimated at five billion Bibles. Today, it can be accessed online with a stroke of a few keys. Certainly, at the time in which we live, the Bible is undoubtedly the most accessible book on the planet.
When I was in prison, I was surrounded by many who ‘had been given over’ to their (earthly) judicial sentences. It didn’t take long to see that many had also been given over by God to a depraved mind. Although there was a Bible displayed on top of most lockers, and record numbers in attendance at all chapel events, the reprobate minds of those who proudly flaunted their ‘spirituality’ like a prostitute’s garment were just as evident. Immediately, I was convicted by the understanding that prison is a glimpse into what represents the whole world. In fact, the majority of those inside or outside of prison, free to pursue the desires of their flesh with abandon, are the most imprisoned of all. In reality, God has abandoned them to judgment. Their sins are piling up to heaven ripe for judgment. Believers, on the other hand, who have crucified the flesh and all its desires and lusts, are free to choose to righteousness, free to live as they were created to live—which is true freedom. They will never be abandoned by God.
“Come here, and I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed acts of immorality, and those who dwell on the earth were made drunk with the wine of her immorality.” (Revelation 17:1-2) In essence, Now, that I have shown you, “Come out of her, My people…” (Revelation 18:4) The Bible leads us to the truth. Humanity is without excuse.
Verse 9 of Revelation 17 refers to the mind which has wisdom. Wisdom, that comes from God’s Spirit alone, is needed to understand the next portion of the mystery from verses 9-18. The word mountains can refer to hills. Many commentators over the centuries have considered this passage to refer to the Roman Catholic Church; in ancient times the city of Rome was known as “the city on seven hills” because of the seven prominent hills that surround the city. While I have no problem believing that the RCC is involved in this end-time scenario, I don’t believe this ‘whore of Babylon’ exclusively refers to Rome. The very fact that it was common knowledge Rome was the city on seven hills makes it highly unlikely special wisdom was required to understand the revelation. Also, Babylon is the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth. She is the source and the origin of harlotry (spiritual idolatry) and abominations. She arose long before Rome became a major empire. While Rome may be one of the Harlot’s most influential daughter harlots of history, she is not Babylon as a whole.
Verses 10-14 talk about eight and then ten kings who will be affiliated in some way with the beast. At some point, this whore of Babylon will have control over these kings. Later, they will turn on her and destroy her (v. 16).
What can be deduced from Scripture is that this whore of Babylon is an evil world system, controlled by Antichrist, during the last days before Jesus’ return. The whore signifies that there are religious connotations. She is engaged in spiritual adultery with the beast in an end-times religious system. But she is more than that. She is represented as a city.
Revelation 17:15-17—And he said to me, “The waters which you saw where the harlot sits, are peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues. And the ten horns which you saw, and the beast, these will hate the harlot and will make her desolate and naked and will eat her flesh and will burn her up with fire. For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled.
The harlot of Babylon will have vast worldwide influence over people and nations. Just like imagery of a prostitute who is used, then thrown out or tossed aside as worthless (because that is what she is—reprobate), antichrist will use the influence of the mother of all harlots (part of which is this false religious system) to bring together all world kingdoms in order to gain control over them and to gain world-wide worship when he sets himself up as god.
Everyone today talks about this longing deep in our souls for unity. Unity is a good thing. It is of God. Jesus, in John 17, is in prayer prior to making His way to the cross. He is praying that the Father would keep those He gave Him. “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are.” In verse 21 of that same Chapter, He prays for all believers who would one day yet come to Him, that they, too, would be united in Him. Verse 22: The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. To clarify, unity in the same spiritual life around the truth that saves is true unity. Everything else is disunity. The world will never have biblical (true and lasting) unity outside of Jesus Christ.
Once antichrist has gotten all he wanted from her, he will discard the harlot. He will turn on her, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh, and burn her up with fire. Whether he just chooses not to support her any longer, or he sees her as a threat to the worship he believes he alone is entitled to, Scripture doesn’t say exactly why he is finished with her.
Antichrist and his followers will:
make her desolate = laid waste, ruined, stripped of
her treasures, despoiled.
make her naked = unclad, unclothed, laid bare.
eat her flesh
and
burn her up with fire.
She WAS the GREAT harlot. She will be brought to nothing. She WAS clothed (arrayed, to veil, to throw all around, invest) in fine linen and purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. Revelation 18:17 says that in one hour her great wealth was laid waste. Stripped of all her alluring attributes that have attracted others to her glittering sensualities down through the ages, she will be naked and exposed.
We have seen that apostate Israel was caught up in spiritual adultery engaging in all sorts of abominations related to the mystery religions which began at Babel. Influenced by her surrounding neighbors, Judah was obsessed with idolatry. For this, God continually pictured her as a vile prostitute of the grossest sort. In Ezekiel 16, God, through His prophet, continues to denounce her lewd behavior. In verses 35-39, we see God promising to expose her nakedness. According to John MacArthur, public exposure of profligate women and the stoning of them was a well-known custom in ancient Israel that made them a shameful spectacle. Ezekiel 16:30-40
Often Scripture describes the harm done by an enemy as ‘eating the flesh’ of its victim. It is finally D-Day for BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. Ages and ages of stored up judgment are poured out upon her when she is forced to drink from the cup of God’s wrath against her…all the way down to the dregs. All her past lovers will despoil her, defrock her, devour her, and detonate her with fire. Total devastation and annihilation—a fitting abode for demons.
In Revelation 17:17, we see where the false unity of a reprobate mind leads. For God has put it in their hearts to execute His purpose by having a common purpose, and by giving their kingdom to the beast, until the words of God will be fulfilled. God is Sovereign over all—even those who reject Him. His purposes and will cannot be thwarted.
Revelation 17:18—"The woman whom you saw is the great city, which reigns over the kings of the earth.” Just as the New Jerusalem is one of the women who plays a key role in the Book of Revelation, so too is Babylon. (See the chart at the end of this blog. One city is of man and the other city is of God.)
Revelation 18:1-3—After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illumined with his glory. And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird. For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality.”
While Babylon “fell” many times at the hands of various attackers, she never experienced total destruction…until this time in the final days of history. Isaiah, Jeremiah, and even John foretold her ultimate and permanent demise. (See Isaiah 13:19-20; 21:9-10; 47:11; Jeremiah 50:13, 26, 39-40; 51:26, 29, 43, 58, 61-62; Revelation 17:16; 18:2, 8-10, 17-19, 21; 19:3.) None of these prophecies have been fulfilled in toto. As Tony Garland has said, “It is impossible, unscriptural, and irreverent to believe that such an extensive portion of God’s Word is to be spiritualized or taken as hyperbole.”
No person will ever be able to inhabit Babylon again. She has become, however, a dwelling place of demons. Dwelling place is an abode, or a habitation. The only other place this word is used in the New Testament is in Ephesians 2:22 to refer to the corporate church as a dwelling place of God, a holy temple. Ephesians 2:19-22–So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.
She is also a prison of every unclean spirit (spirits of demons) and of every unclean and hateful bird. Prison is ‘a place of guarding or a cage’. It is a place of involuntary confinement. The same word describes the place from which Satan is released at the end of the Millennial Kingdom in Revelation 20:7. Satan will have been bound in the abyss, where he is unable to escape. So, too, it appears that demon spirits will be confined to Babylon during the time of the 1,000-year reign of Christ during the Millennial Kingdom.
Revelation 18:4-5—I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.
Separation. I wrote a lot about this in my book, Living Beneath the Tapestry and Within the Veil which you can purchase here: My Website
It is the story of God’s saving grace and mercy in my own life with the Gospel woven throughout its pages. It is how He kept me close in times of intense personal suffering when my daughter died and later when I was imprisoned.
God’s people are to be separate, set apart, sanctified…holy. God called Moses and Aaron to separate themselves from among the congregation that had participated in Korah’s rebellion in Numbers 16 before He consumed them. Lot was given warning to flee Sodom before its destruction. God will call the saints of the Tribulation to get out of Babylon before her final judgment. ‘Choose you this day whom you will serve’ is an ever-urgent imperative for finite beings who know not when they will draw their last breath. ‘Come out of her’ is as relevant for people living today as it will be then. We continue to hear its echoes from the past.
In Isaiah 48:20, God called Israel out of Babylon. In Isaiah 52:11, He called: “Depart, depart, go out from there, touch nothing unclean; go out of the midst of her, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the LORD.” Jeremiah 50:8 does the same. Jeremiah 51:6-9 shows the immediate fall of Babylon and the destruction of final Babylon in Revelation 18—Flee from the midst of Babylon and each of you save his life! Do not be destroyed in her punishment, for this is the LORD’s time of vengeance; He is going to render recompense to her. Babylon has been a golden cup in the hand of the LORD, intoxicating all the earth. The nations have drunk of her wine; therefore, the nations are going mad. Suddenly Babylon has fallen and been broken; wail over her! Bring balm for her pain; perhaps she may be healed. We applied healing to Babylon, but she was not healed; forsake her and let us each go to his own country, for her judgment has reached to heaven and towers up to the very skies. Verse 45 says: “Come forth from her midst, My people, and each of you save yourselves from the fierce anger of the LORD.”
2 Corinthians 6:17—"COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE,” SAYS THE LORD. “AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; and I will welcome you. True believers cannot worship, evangelize or minister with those who pervert or reject the truth of the Word of God. This is why believers MUST leave those ‘churches’ or religions that pervert the Gospel such as Roman Catholicism.
This is not a call to physically separate from all who practice sin, as some have taken it to mean. We know from 1 Corinthians 5:9-11 this is not the case.
“Come out of her”—not only so as not to receive the wrath of God, but also so that you will not participate in her sins. True believers do not want to sin. It is their heart’s desire to please God and honor Him with lives that glorify Him alone. The Ephesian church was instructed by Paul not to have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness in Ephesians 5:11.
At a certain time, when her sins have piled up as high as heaven, God will remember the iniquities of Babylon. While God knows every evil deed, Scripture supports the fact that there is a time when sins reach such a magnitude that God is forced, because of His righteous character, to administer divine intervention. (See Genesis 4:10; 18:20-21; 19:13; Jonah 1:2; 2 Chronicles 28:9; and Ezra 9:6.)
This passage should make us remember Babel. There, the people failed in their attempt to make a name for themselves by building a tower that would reach heaven. We spent a great deal of time understanding Genesis 11. Instead of reaching their goal, God dispersed them abroad confusing their languages. While the physical tower stood unfinished, the tower of sin and rebellion continued to be built down through the ages. This is the tower which God will cut down once and for all, never to be rebuilt again. Oh, glorious day! Babylon, you thought no one could see your deception. You were wrong. You were warned.
If you have been with me on this journey over the last 34 blog posts, please take some time and read slowly through Isaiah 47 as you, like John, ponder the judgment of Mystery Babylon which is past and still to come.
Isaiah 47—“Come down and sit in the dust, O virgin daughter of Babylon; sit on the ground without a throne, O daughter of the Chaldeans! For you shall no longer be called tender and delicate. Take the millstones and grind meal. Remove your veil, strip off the skirt, uncover the leg, cross the rivers. Your nakedness will be uncovered, your shame also will be exposed; I will take vengeance and will not spare a man.” Our Redeemer, the LORD of armies is His name, the Holy One of Israel. “Sit silently, and go into darkness, daughter of Chaldeans; for you will no longer be called the queen of Kingdoms. I was angry with My people, I profaned My heritage and handed them over to you. You did not show mercy to them, on the aged you made your yoke very heavy. Yet you said, ‘I will be a queen forever.’ These things you did not consider nor remember the outcome of them. Now, then, hear this, you luxuriant one, who lives securely, who says in her heart, ‘I am and there is no one besides me. I will not sit as a widow, nor know the loss of children.’ But these two things will come on you suddenly in one day: Loss of children and widowhood. They will come on you in full measure in spite of your many sorceries, in spite of the great power of your spells. You felt secure in your wickedness and said, ‘No one sees me,’ Your wisdom and your knowledge, they have led you astray; for you have said in your heart, ‘I am, and there is no one besides me.’ But evil will come on you which you will not know how to charm away; and disaster will fall on you for which you cannot atone; and destruction about which you do not know will come on you suddenly. Persist now in your spells and in your many sorceries with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you will be able to benefit, perhaps you may cause trembling. You are wearied with your many counsels; let now the astrologers, those who prophesy by the stars, those who predict by the new moons, stand up and save you from what will come upon you. Behold, they have become like stubble, fire burns them; they cannot save themselves from the power of the flame; there will be no coal to warm by nor a fire to sit before! So have those become to you with whom you have labored, those who have done business with you from your youth; each has wandered in his own way; there is no one to save you.
Chart from Tony Garland’s commentary on Revelation
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