Christians will never truly feel at home on this earth. We are like pilgrims traveling through to the celestial city. But more than that, we are like exiles living in Babylon. We are trying to follow Jesus with every part of us but following Jesus in Babylon is not as easy as it sounds. Often times we are persecuted for the good we do, and often times as well we start to become like the environment we find ourselves in.
Babylon is not our home. Thus the cry for the fall of Babylon rings true.
“Babylon Has Fallen”
John sees another angel(messenger) with “great authority(18:1) coming down illuminating earth . Along with the splendor of this angel highlighting the ground we walk on, comes the angels voice with a lament. A cry.
This cry will parallel with the celebration that is to come in chapter 19.
Often times in ancient writings we have funeral constrasted with weddings. The saddest moments of life side by side with arguably the happiest moments in life.
Here the angel starts off with a familiar echo:
It has fallen. Babylon the Great has fallen!(Revelation 18:2 CSB)
Isaiah about 200 years before the fall of Babylon had a similar cry:
Look here comes a man in a chariot with a team of horses. And he gives back the answer: ‘Babylon has fallen, has fallen! The images of its gods lie shattered on the ground!’”
The Medo Persian empire were the ones to eventually conquer Babylon, but it’s that last phrase that stands. “The images of its gods lie shattered on the ground.” Images of gods were all over the ancient world. Very different in a sense compared to our modern day western reality where religion is looked down upon and you will be in the minority if you openly express any kind of faith. In the ancient world though, everyone worshipped a god. The question would be more like: “which one?” And even that, the majority worshipped many gods.
The gods were viewed as protectors. Now many times the people needed protection from these gods as well but the gods did offer protection to the people who worshipped them at a cost.
Here we see this image of Babylon, ransacked, destroyed after a battle and what has happened to Babylon’s protectors? They too had met destruction. They fell. They were broken. They could not defend Babylon. Something mightier was at work.
The angel speaking to John echoes this in his cry. Babylon has fallen. A message to John and his listeners that would communicate: “the empire you suffer under will not last forever.”
In fact, she will be overcome.
She has become a home for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, and a haunt for every unclean and despicable beast.(18:2)
After the desolation of a city, there was no stopping creatures from wandering in. That’s the image we see here where Babylon has not only fallen, its power has been weakened and taken away, its protectors crushed, but now creatures of all kinds come in a make home where there is no more. It’s this image of that old house you found in the woods as kids, the house where trees grew up around it, you had to fight branches to get in and then came across a fair bit of raccoons and possums as you explored what once had been.
This is striking because Babylon was not merely on its own. Many profited off of Babylon’s success.
For all the nations have drunk the wine of her sexual immorality which brings wrath. The kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown wealthy from her sensuality and excess. (18:3)
As empires grow, they begin to take over the world, along with that other nations not only will profit off of the path paved by Babylon but they will also replicate what Babylon did to attain that success. And in Babylon’s case, Babylon was not an empire of moral good, it was an empire built on oppression, greed, gluttony. But the way this empire presents itself is enticing to people looking in. An empire that indulges in all of humanity’s greatest pleasures is an empire other empires want to become like. This is where pleasure, happiness, success; are not always what it seems from the outside. Sin is often present in the midst of mankind’s pursuit of happiness. As the old verse says: “the heart is decietful above all things.”
Then I heard another voice from heaven:
Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins or receive any of her plagues. For her sins are piled up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes. (18:4-5)
This is the call for God’s people to “be holy as I am holy.” Holy is this word that means to be set apart or distinct. God is calling His people to be distinct from Babylon. Do not carry the load of Babylon’s sins. Babylon’s sins have increased so much, she has become so drunk on her own unfaithfulness to God that God has removed himself from her, let her sins pile up, and now she will be punished in accordance with the sins she committed. In Jewish tradition, it was believed that God would deal with sin in accordance with the sin committed.
So an example of this would be with Israel when they became like the other nations and began oppressing the poor and the widows. God would then punish them by letting them be oppressed. It was in a way like our modern conception of karma in the since of you get what you dish out. (Karma in the traditional Hindu religion is different than how we often talk about it)
The point is, God is calling His people out of the ways of Babylon. She is in sin and she needs to pay the price for the destruction she has caused. Note, this call is also a call to God’s people not to fight back the way we would like. In this instance, Rome is persecuting Christians and it is only getting worse. God’s call for his people to be distinct from Babylon so that Babylon can be judged is a call also for God’s people not to follow the way of Babylon and oppress the oppressor.
In other words, do not fight to make “Babylon a christian nation” where you will then just rule like Babylon with Jesus’ name attached to it. That’s not the way of Jesus and it is missing the point in the type of Kingdom Jesus is building.
How Will Babylon Be Judged?
As much as she glorified herself and indulged in her sensual and excessive ways, give her that much torment and grief. For she says in her heart, “I sit as a queen; I am not a widow, and I will never see grief.”
The way in which God is going to judge Babylon is in the way she glorified herself when doing evil. Here we see Rome echoing the voice of Babylon from Isaiah.
You said, ‘I will be the queen forever.’ You did not take these things to heart or think about their outcome. “So now here this, lover of luxury, who sits securely, who says to herself, ‘I am, and there is no one else. I will never be a widow or know the loss of children.’ (Isaiah 47:7-8 CSB)
In Isaiah when Babylon says this, God in turn announces His judgement that she become the thing she said she would never be. Babylon would be the widow. She would be alone. She would know pain. Rome mirrors Babylon in this way. As the goddess Roma was exalted because Rome called for worship not of Yahweh, but of itself, so she too would become like Babylon. Two empires, calling for worship of self, falling because of the worship of self.
The Kingdom of God is not about building one nation up over the other. The Kingdom of God is not about turning our Roman Empire’s of the day into Christian nations. Christianity cannot have walls put around it. And there is no predestined plan of God for one nation to be the nation by which God will save the world.
To be more clear, America is not a special part of God’s plan and may I also say Israel is not either. We miss the point in God choosing the nation of ISrael when we prop her up to have no flaws, no idalrity isssues and we keep trying to go back to the “motherland” so to speak as if Jesus was trying to build His Kingdom literally in ISrael.
We have greatly misunderstood large swaths of the Bible when we have people literally trying to build temples in Israel in order for the timeline to work for the second coming of Jesus.
Jesus himself said “destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days”(John 2:19 CSB). His temple is not made of hands. The temple is as Pauls says: “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have with God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body”(1 Corinthians 6:19-20 CSB).
The place where God dwells is not in a temple, and it never was supposed to be. In Genesis we see the blueprint, the goal was for God to dwell on earth with man, to walk in the garden together in the cool of the day. The point of salvation, of restoration brought to us by the work of Jesus is for God to dwell with us again. And right now we have a taste of that by the fact that the Spirit of God dwells inside of us. We are walking, living temples of God not set in stone on solid ground in one specific destination rather we are all over. That’s the beauty of the gospel. That the Gospel does not strictly belong to just Jews or just Greeks, Jesus sent us all out to all nations, stepping over boundary lines in the sand that were man made in order for God’s kingdom to be established here on earth in a way no human kingdom can dare compete with.
Who Will Cry?
We are given two groups of people who will mourn over the fall of Babylon.
1.) The Kings of the earth:
The Kings of the earth who have committed sexual immorality and shared her sensual ways will weep and mourn over her when they see the smoke from her burning. (Revelation 18:9-10 CSB)
The Kings of the earth mourn because they too have lost their power. Their power came from Babylon but with Babylon no more, they have lost the wind in their sails. What is a King with no kingdom to lord over?
2.) The Merchants of the earth:
The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargo any longer.(18:11)
The merchants of these things, who became rich from her, will stand far off in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning.(18:15)
And ever shipmaster, seafarer, the sailors, and all who do business by sea, stood far off, as they watched the smoke from her burning and kept crying out, “Who was like the great city?”(18:17-18)
From Revelation 18:11-20 we are given a rather lengthy in comparison to the kings, series of woes and mourning by those who profited off of Babylon’s power and authority. Because Babylon was the titan, people were able to make so much money. Greed became a characteristic of the land, because people cared more about keeping the business going, than they did about how they were able to keep the business going.
In verses 11-13 we are given a list that undoubtedly points to Rome being Babylon again, and is a list that included all of Rome’s top imports. The merchants and people working the sea would mourn the fall of Rome because this is how not only they survived but got rich. The merchants represent a class of people who care more about comfort, luxury, status than they do the ethics of the Kingdom of God.
Ethics that, let’s be more specific, limit you from allowing wealth to consume you. In America where we are pitched a dream of living life to our devices, fulfilling all our leisure’s and making as much money regardless of how, the christian ethic confronts that. This is why so many in church history lived in poverty, it was not because they were not hard workers, rather the opposite, they worked hard, they also gave generously. Money was a tool to use in the Kingdom of God to bless others not bless ourselves.
The very issue these merchants are facing with falling in love wealth is the very reason Jesus tells one potential disciple “go sell all you have and give it to the poor.” Money is not bad in and of itself, but like that old verse says: “our heart is decietful above all things.” The ancient Christian’s knew this and thus created practices and disciplines that restricted the actions of their heart in an effort to turn their hearts more towards Jesus.
The Final Blow to Babylon(Rome)
At the very end of the of mournings of the merchants at the fall of Babylon we see in verse 20:
Rejoice over her, heaven, and you saints, apostles, and prophets, because God has pronounced on her the judgement she passed on you.(CSB)
When the people who profited both in power and wealth off of Babylon cried over the fall of Babylon; the people of God rejoiced.
Then a mighty angel picked up a stone like a large millstone and threw it into the sea, saying,
In this way, Babylon the great city will be thrown down violently and never be found again.(Revelation 18:21 CSB)
This echoes Jeremiah 51:63-64 where throwing a millstone represented Babylon’s fall. What we find in verse 21 is an amplified version of the fall of Babylon with the fall of Rome. Jesus word’s in Mark 9:42 also come to mind where he judges those who lead the little one astray. Babylon has a culture, an environment that cultivates in the daily lives of those inhabiting it to chase after worldly pleasures which lead to destruction.
The sound of harpists, musicians, flutists, and trumpeters will never be heard in you again; no craftsman of any trade will ever be found in you again; the sound of a mill will never be heard in you again; the light of a lamp will never shine in you again; and the voice of a groom and bride will never be heard in you again.(18:22-23 CSB)
This imagery here is reminiscent of Judah’s judgement where the city became deserted, there was no lamps lit, no one was home, and the joy of a wedding was no where to be found. The joy and happiness of Babylon has been stripped. Again we see the imagery of creatures of all kinds entering into what once was the greatest kingdom on earth.
In her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and all those slaughtered on the earth.(18:24 CSB)
In Jeremiah 51:37 we see Babylon originally fall because of the killing of God’s people. Likewise Rome will fall.
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