Why a great stone?
Well, have you ever been near a lake with young boys and girls? What do they do? They find rocks and start throwing them into the lake. Sometimes they will skip them. Other times they will see how far they can throw them. OR….they will see what will make the biggest splash. I can almost even hear those large rocks landing in the water. They have a distinct sound. It is called a kerplunk: a deep, low sounding thud. They also have a distinctly larger splash. Then the water closes back over the top of rock and it is no more. You see it disappear.
When our kids were small we would join the neighborhood pool and go to things like the Fourth of July celebrations with the neighbors there. One event was the largest splash. The dads, especially the big ones, would throw themselves off of the diving board and come crashing down into the water. Across the pool would sit 3 judges who would hold up cards for 8, 9, 10, (or 1?!) for how they rated the splash and audience response.
That kind of human response is why a great stone. That large rock makes a great splash. The water is violently disrupted. At the lake, by the neighborhood pool and in John’s vision a large splash evokes a great cheer.
So…now we are starting to be able to see what John the Apostle was trying to relate. Now we are getting away from availability bias. This is the violent part of the violent disappearance.
“Will be found no more…”
At the neighborhood pool when the splash of the jumping dads ebbs it is expected that the dads will arrive at the pools edge. They will grab hold of the ladder and climb out to a variety of yells and cheers. The dads are found again.
By the lake, though, the rocks don’t come back up. We don’t expect them to. Rocks in lake sink, it’s what they do1.
That is the other part of what the large stone being thrown into the sea is to imply. It will never return to what it had before. It is forever gone.
As the word forever was rolling around in my thoughts another marketing phrase came to mind. It is about diamonds. I bet you can recall the phrase too: “A diamond is forever.” When De Beers linked eternal love to diamonds by the slogan “A Diamond is Forever” it was really just marketing. There is a story behind that and I have put a link to it at the end of this lesson, but don’t run their just yet. That is not a helpful rabbit trail just now.
People are forever. Babylon was made up of people who were going to experience a violent disappearance; a forever disappearance.
Why? God’s intention for people was eternal life and eternal life has no place for sin. The command not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was placed to offer a relationship of trust. Would we as humans trust God’s decisions about right and wrong or would we choose to set our own rules. We chose this later, this eternal death, pathway. Sin or rebellion is the word we label those behaviors and they will not be in God’s house, a.k.a heaven. Those styles will be discarded, thrown out. A violent disappearing act will be performed on Babylon’s ways. She and those who follow her will sink from view and forever leave the sphere of influence on God’s earth.
Leave a Reply