Response of the world Babylon’s offering…
The rulers of the world have gobbled up her self-gift. She has offered herself as a solution to all problems. Her materialism is of the finest caliber. The connectivity has been all too intimate the little tastes of which have beckoned for more and more. With each bite any inhibition which these other cities may have had fell further and further behind. Drunkenness settled in and the tab, the cost, of their misbehaviors climbed and climbed. The consequences have an eternal accrual.
Anybody else have whore status?
Don’t forget that often the scriptures describe worldliness in terms of sexual unfaithfulness. Jerusalem and Israel were designated as whores. Look at Ezekiel 16 if you want to see a particularly foul description of Jerusalem’s whoring.
Don’t forget that in James 4 verse 4 the Christian is admonished that friendship with the world is hatred toward God. James called people adulterous who were friends with the world. This does not mean willingness to talk and be friendly. It means willingness to cavort with the world, to carry on with their styles and hopes and desires.
Anytime we embrace our fondness for the world, express our affection for the ungodly things around us that is unfaithfulness to God.
Off to see a woman! The not so wonderful woman of Babylon
3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. (Revelation 17:3)
The angel and John went on a journey. They ended up in a wilderness. The point is not geographic. It is spiritual. Like immorality as an analogy of infidelity the wilderness is a fitting destination for wickedness.
Think back to God making the world. When he was making the world for us to live in it started off as a wild place. In Genesis 1 it is described as being formless and void. It was truly a wilderness. Little by little the wild world took shape and eventually God made a garden and in it put Adam and Eve. They were to care for the Garden and ultimately to care for God’s world making a beautiful place of it, but they sinned.
What happened then? Well, they were cast out of that perfect garden, the non-wilderness, and Eden was lost to them. Into the wilderness they went.
Well, God made a way back from that wilderness, but mankind has continued to love it. Like a scab on your child’s knee they want to pick at it even though it will bleed and scab over again. Or, maybe you can envision it better by thinking of a the near rabid meth addict wrecking lives chasing damaging highs. Those are ways humanity runs and runs in the wilderness. It is that kind of place where John is taken by the angel to see the woman, the city of Babylon.
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