Chapter 18: 21-24

“Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, ‘Thus with violence the great city Babylon shall be thrown down, and shall not be found anymore.  ²² The sound of harpists, musicians, flutists, and trumpeters shall not be heard in you anymore. No craftsman of any craft shall be found in you anymore, and the sound of a millstone shall not be heard in you anymore. ²³ The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived. ²⁴ And in her was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all who were slain on the earth.’”

I continue to get emails from you, and I will answer all of them as fast as I can. Thanks for taking the time to read the articles and to respond whether positively, negatively or just with a question or observation.

We have been talking about the fall of Babylon for some time now, and it may seem that this chapter is drawn out. Why did I not just go to the end last week? I try to go as I am being led, and I felt that this part was for this week. Other than the resurrection, I do not think any other day in church history will be like this day. I say history because, even if it has not happened as yet, since God says it will happen, it is as if it has been done already. This day will be a day of rejoicing, a day that will culminate more than 6 millennia of war between the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness.

There are still a few wars to come on the earth. We will see one in chapter 19 and then another in chapter 20 and then the final judgment. But this spiritual battle and this destruction of the system of Babylon will bring to a close a rebellion that began in Genesis 11. Satan will meet his doom in the next chapters. But this is the system that we are talking about – the system that Paul talks about in Ephesians 6:12,

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

A system that permeates every aspect of our world. Our schools, our NEWS, our media, our governments and even our churches. A system that promotes religion, all the while hating Jesus, and a system that preys on the God-given needs of men and women to worship something. A system that can’t be Jesus, but tries to copy Him. A system that calls for total allegiance and costs you everything. A system that trades grace for works and offers nothing in return. A system that allows a few into the inner circle, all the while creating a hierarchy amongst mere men. A system that costs men everything, even their eternities, and offers just smoke and mirrors.

Satan, the father of all lies, is the father of the system. We see this in John 8:44,

“You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”

This is the truth about the system of Babylon; it is built on lies and has been from its inception. The first and most important lie is that man is his own god and he alone can determine what is righteous and what is not. Man, as we are told often in the book of Judges, lives according to what is right in his own eyes.

We can follow the carnage left behind by the system of Babylon, not to mention the disillusioned billions that have entered Hell, a place they were told did not exist; but the truth came rushing at them too late, and the lies they swallowed were their demise. A system that leaves broken men and women in its wake; a system that has given people the tools to kill over 50,000,000 babies in the name of convenience over the past 40+ years; a system that has bankrupted and handicapped our youth and left us with a very uncertain future. Were it not that we had the rapture to look forward too, we would have almost no hope. So, let us look at the system of Babylon and why the world will be in such sorrow and such mourning.

Guilt, Shame and Conviction.

In John 16:8 we see these words: “When He comes, He will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment.”

The Holy Spirit is sent to convict us of sin, to show what is righteous, and then to remind us that there is a judgment. These three things are in direct opposition to the system of Babylon. We hear things like ‘live and let live,’ or ‘I am doing what is right for me,’ or ‘you have no right to judge me.’ But God claims the right as the Sovereign standard of right and wrong to be able to show us what is sin, what is right and then to judge us. Even the Lord’s churches have been infected with this mentality of ‘live and let live.’

I recently met a young lady who, as we were speaking, gave a testimony of her salvation, a clear one. Nonetheless, she was currently in a bad situation. She had been living with a man who was not her husband; and when I asked what she did for a living, she was an office secretary to one of the largest churches here in Southern Ontario. How is this possible? She is not married to the man she is living with and yet she is working in the church office. This may seem trivial but it is symptomatic of what is happening. I know of churches that have people serving in ministry that are not members. They have no authority over them, yet they allow them to minister to the people that they are responsible to God for.

We have supposed churches that have openly gay men as their pastors. I recently had a conversation with a man who claimed to have been saved and was even in ministry for some time, and yet he vehemently hates the Lord now. He always complains about the things that God asks us to do – like live right, attend church, serve each other and love one another. He is convinced that we don’t need God for that.

All around us, churches are no longer preaching the truth of the Bible so that the Holy Spirit will convict us of sin and purge us. There is not a lot of exegetical preaching that dives into the truths of the scriptures and shows us how sinful we are and how Holy God is. Very few churches, according to the feedback I get in emails, seem to broach the subject of prophecy or eschatology anymore. No, we hear pep talks about how good we are and that God owes us the ‘good-life.’ And since there is no truth, the Holy Spirit is disarmed, so to speak.

Guilt, shame and conviction are an essential part of the life of a Christian. Read Daniel 9, Ezra 9, and Nehemiah 9 and see the confessions of righteous men. 1 John 1 tells us that we are sinners and that confession is the key to fellowship with God.

In Luke 5:8 after being confronted with Jesus’ power, Simon Peter utters these words: “When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, ‘Go away from me, because I’m a sinful man, Lord!’

Adam, when he disobeyed God, hid from the Holiness of the Lord and tried to cover himself.

We are told in Luke 18:13 that the Publican (tax collector) did this: “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even raise his eyes to heaven but kept striking his chest and saying, ‘God, turn Your wrath from me—a sinner!’”

Do you see? Do you get it? When confronted with the Holiness of God, mere men should fall face down in guilt and shame, asking for the loving forgiveness of our Loving Lord.

But the system of Babylon has pre-empted that. There is no shame – men doing unmentionable things with other men. Worse, there is a growing push to make sexual relationships with children acceptable. No one is guilty of sin; they flaunt it on main streets, and the world cheers on at the defiance of God.

The world will mourn because they will realize that their beloved Babylon was a myth, a lie; it was not eternal, not strong and certainly no help to them in eternity. And oh yeah, there is a God that even Satan has to answer to. They will realize that the One who could destroy Babylon could also destroy them, and that judgement is coming on them as well. They have to come face to face with the God that the system told them did not exist. They will realize that all the promises that Babylon made to them are lies, and they have evaporated with the fall thereof.

They Chose the Wrong God

In Matthew 6:24 we are confronted with this verse: “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Notice that the option to not have a God is not included. Something or someone will be your god. We are designed to worship, and we will find something to worship – something that guides the way we think, something to frame our life and our goals with, something to live for – and we will find something to bow down to.

Satan lied to those in the system of Babylon and told them that either they can be their own god, or that there was no God, or that he was God. They made a choice to turn their backs on the truth of the living God and to put their trust in something else. They chose wrong. They, here in Revelation 18, are standing on their choice, and it is shifting sand. Their foundation is eroding away, and they have cast a lot that cannot be taken back. They took the mark of the Anti-Christ; they swallowed the lie “hook, line and sinker,” and now the lie is burning in front of them and they cannot put out the fire. But they also know that there is no going back.

If the system is going up in flames, so too will those who have chosen the system. Sadly, for them, the fire that will burn them will never go out.

The world around us is celebrating the open sinfulness of men; they revere those that are ‘strong’ enough to defy God and reward those that live without shame before the Holy Lord. But their celebrating will come to an end, their reverence for sinners will cease, and their rewards will tarnish while they mourn and weep over the fall and destruction and end of the system of Babylon.

Heaven Rejoices.

The saints of heaven will rejoice. Heaven will be jubilant over the fall of the system.

Revelation 18:20 “Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!”

This system will never kill another saint again. Right now the blood of the saints is found in her; but after this day, no more. I wonder if the jubilant shouts of heaven will drown out the mourning on the earth?

My brothers and sisters, hold the truth to be precious. It is all we have; it is the currency of the Lord’s churches. We are to guard it and teach it like our very future depends on it, and it does. Truth is the enemy of the System of Babylon. That is why the hatred for the Bible, the hatred for street preachers, the hatred for those that share the Gospel, the hatred for the Ten Commandments, and on and on the hatred goes. That is why they want to take the Bible out of everything and replace it with their own gospel.

We should be more diligent now, as we see the end coming at us like a freight train, to read more of the Scriptures, to study more of the Scriptures, and to seek God’s wisdom in the application of the Scriptures.

If you love the truth of God, the system will hate you. They hated Jesus; they will hate you. You will not fit in, and you will not be comfortable. Thank God when you are hated, thank God when you don’t fit in, and thank God that the Holy Spirit still convicts you of sin, righteousness and the judgment to come.

Rejoice in John 8:32, “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Revelation Chapter 18: 9-20

“The kings of the earth who committed fornication and lived luxuriously with her will weep and lament for her, when they see the smoke of her burning, ¹⁰ standing at a distance for fear of her torment, saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come.’

¹¹ And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, for no one buys their merchandise anymore: ¹² merchandise of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, every kind of citron wood, every kind of object of ivory, every kind of object of most precious wood, bronze, iron, and marble;  ¹³ and cinnamon and incense, fragrant oil and frankincense, wine and oil, fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and bodies and souls of men.

¹⁴ The fruit that your soul longed for has gone from you, and all the things which are rich and splendid have gone from you, and you shall find them no more at all. ¹⁵ The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, ¹⁶ and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city that was clothed in fine linen, purple, and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls! ¹⁷ For in one hour such great riches came to nothing.’ Every shipmaster, all who travel by ship, sailors, and as many as trade on the sea, stood at a distance ¹⁸ and cried out when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, ‘What is like this great city?’

¹⁹’They threw dust on their heads and cried out, weeping and wailing, and saying, ‘Alas, alas, that great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate.’ ²⁰ ‘Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her!’’

First of all, once again thanks for your prayers and emails while I was recovering from surgery. I am back to preaching, back to work, and as you can see, back to Revelation. While I was away, the Lord gave me the strength to listen to an entire lecture series on Daniel. I was able to go through the book verse by verse over the course of a 20-hour lecture and learned a lot that I hope to incorporate into our final exploration into the book of Revelation.

We are on the cusp of the Rapture. I know that many have been saying that for decades, and yet we are still here. But so much has happened and is happening around us that we need to take note and be ready. Look up, the trumpet sound is near.

Babylon’s Merchandise Revelation 18:9-13

Babylon was a city (an idea really) that everyone was involved in commerce with, especially the rich and the governments of the world. I want to remind you that Babylon is a system and will one day be centered in a city again. But this system has lived since its rise in Genesis 11.

In the plains of Shinar, the people built a tower that would reach Heaven. They had no intention of worshipping the Lord. They were setting up a religion without God, in defiance of His place and power, in spite, knowing that He was not a God to be challenged, the Great Flood not being too far back in their History. This religion of Babylon has been around from that day.

As we know, God confused the languages of the people and separated them; but as we get closer and closer to the end, the world has become one again with English as the universal language. And as God said, nothing the people determine to do can be stopped except by an act of God (Genesis 11:6-7).

Notice that Babylon has riches (see Revelation 18:11-13) and that the merchandise includes the sale of slaves pictured in the last phrase, the “bodies and souls of men.”

Just a week or so ago, we saw first-hand the burning of Notre-Dame Cathedral. That ‘church’ building alone had billions of dollars of artifacts and treasures in it that had to be rescued, and this is only one building. That one historic site receives over 13,000,000 visitors per year; that would be almost the entire Province of Ontario visiting that facility each year. These visitors purchase artifacts, leave offerings and spend money that goes into coffers of the Catholic Church. Again, this is just one facility. No other religious organization traffics in gold, silver, precious stones and the like in the same way and to the same amount as the Catholic Church. As I have mentioned before, the church is a global entity that – while mentioning the name of Jesus often – is totally built on man’s traditions.

When we read the New Testament Gospels, we find the sects of the Pharisees and the Sadducees; these appear to be religious people and sects. They mention Moses’ law often and use it as battering ram to keep the people subdued. They add man’s traditions to the clearly spoken Word of God; and, eventually, the traditions of men take pre-eminence over the Word of God.

We see this in Mark 7:8-13:

“For laying aside the commandment of God, you hold the tradition of men —the washing of pitchers and cups, and many other such things you do.’ He said to them, ‘All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition. For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who curses father or mother, let him be put to death.’ But you say, ‘If a man says to his father or mother, ‘Whatever profit you might have received from me is Corban— (that is, a gift to God),’ then you no longer let him do anything for his father or his mother, making the word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down. And many such things you do.”

Babylon was and is about religion and money, and they know that most people know there is a God, so they make use of Him. They separate themselves from the masses, they project themselves to be holier than all around them, and promote a hierarchy that offers levels of riches and achievements. These Pharisees had taken over the priesthood by the time Jesus walked the earth; and they ran, rather subjugated the people of Israel rather than served them as was the whole purpose of the priesthood. These religious leaders hated Jesus as He was a man of the people and He loved sinners.

Make no mistake; the religion of Babylon is rampant in the world; it has permeated every government, every school, all the media and all of the systems around us.

The whole world is preparing for the anti-Christ, some with full knowledge, and some just going with the flow. The Islamic world, for instance, is waiting for the 12^th Imam, who is their savior; he is our Anti-Christ. I just saw this in a lecture by John MacArthur from some time ago. Islam is waiting for the Anti-Christ, and they are waiting for Jesus to return as well to be the ‘false prophet’ of the Anti-Christ and to tell the world that he is just a good man and not God.

As reported by the Washington Post in June 2014, the pope allowed Islamic prayers in the Vatican for the first time ever; then in February this year as reported in The Guardian, the pope and an imam signed a historic treaty of brotherhood. They want to promote peace, but this is just rhetoric; there is no peace in Islam, just conquering. They want peace in the Middle East, and we know according to Daniel 9:27,

“He will make a firm covenant with many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and offering. And the abomination of desolation will be on a wing of the temple until the decreed destruction is poured out on the desolator.”

This Anti-Christ that the Christian world knows is an evil man and will eventually be the Devil incarnate, the Father of all lies, the savior that the Islamic world is longing for. It is with this religion and the religion of Catholicism that the kings and leaders of the world have committed their spiritual fornication. And in this last hour, the wrath and vengeance of God falls on her; and she is consumed.

The ten toes of Daniel’s statue in Daniel 2:41-43:

“And whereas thou sawest the feet and toes, part of potters’ clay, and part of iron, the kingdom shall be divided; but there shall be in it of the strength of the iron, forasmuch as thou sawest the iron mixed with miry clay. And as the toes of the feet were part of iron, and part of clay, so the kingdom shall be partly strong, and partly broken. And whereas thou sawest iron mixed with miry clay, they shall mingle themselves with the seed of men: but they shall not cleave one to another, even as iron is not mixed with clay.”

Catholicism and Islam do not seem to mix, but the remnants of the Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire will conspire together for a common cause to bring about the end; thus, we have the toes of clay and iron that are together. But theirs is not a strong union; it is one of convenience.

I want to touch on one last thing in this section – the phrase in verse 13, “the bodies and souls of men.” This is the currency of both the Kingdom of Light and the Kingdom of Darkness. In the Kingdom of Light, the Lord wants to redeem the bodies and the souls of men: we get new hearts; we get the Holy Spirit living in us; we get the new life in Jesus; we get new focuses and new purposes to live by; and one day soon, we will get new bodies from Jesus. But, the Kingdom of Darkness uses men; it takes advantage of their bodies and uses them up and discards them.

Just look at the decades of sexual abuse in the Catholic church that we seeing come to the surface. The priests from all over the world used the bodies of boys and girls for their sexual ‘pleasure,’ leaving their souls in jeopardy. Disillusioned children went to get life, but instead were given death to live with.

Today, Islam uses young men and women to commit heinous crimes, blowing themselves up and killing thousands over the years. Note that it is often the young men and women, not the leaders, who blow themselves up. They are just fodder for the religious leaders to abuse and use with the promise of some great gift in the Muslim paradise. I cannot imagine what happens on the other side when they awake in Hell.

These religions traffic in the bodies and the souls of men for the purpose of using them and discarding them. Satan, the god behind these two religions, is lying to the millions – well billions, really – and leading them on a path to Hell, called the ‘Broad Way’ in the Gospels.

The Whole World Mourns the Death of Babylon, Revelation 18:14-20

Again, we can use the recent burning of the Notre-Dame Cathedral as a precursor to what this event will be like. The whole world will mourn the burning of Babylon. The Notre-Dame Cathedral was a small microcosm of what this bigger event will be. The whole world will mourn; CNN will have its pundits on talking about how great Babylon was; we will have live footage and moment-by-moment commentary as the city burns. Now, I am not sure where that final city will be. It could be Rome; it could be the Vatican; it could be the EU Parliament in Brussels; it could in New York where the UN sits right now, though I think this the least likely as the Roman Empire never included the New World.

The people of the world will talk of how great the Whore of Babylon was, how she influenced the philosophies of the world, how she promoted this and that, how she championed this cause and that cause. But no one will tell the truth, that she, from her inception on the plains of Shinar in Genesis 11, preyed on the souls of men, her god and lord, Satan, using up people and discarding them as garbage for millennia as he advanced his kingdom in hopes one day of taking the place of God on the throne of Heaven. These people thought Satan loved them, but he lied to them; and in fact, he hated them. He can only love on person, himself. But his end is certain in the Lord.

Isaiah 14:12-14 “How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.”

In contrast to the mourning world, the saints of God will rejoice. God will avenge those that have died at the hands of the Whore of Babylon – those killed by Catholicism and Islam over the centuries. Men and women, the servants of the Highest who were gruesomely killed simply because they loved Jesus and refused to be a part of or condone sin and evil. Peaceful men and women like Daniel whose only fault was that they loved Jesus.

“Vengeance is Mine says the Lord; I will repay” (Romans 12:19).

As the curtain falls on the end of the church age, we are rejoicing that the real Jesus will come to get us, and then He will return to kill the Anti-Christ and subjugate Satan. The world is waiting for the Anti-Christ; they will accept him with open arms and love him. They will surrender to him and give him almost unbridled power before they realize that he is not who they thought; and it will be too late.

May God have mercy on the people here on this side, and may we be diligent to get the truth out. There are some who can still call on Jesus to be saved. Tell somebody about Jesus and what He did for you and them.

Acts 1:7-8 “And he said unto them, it is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”

Missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca