Good evening, Zane.
Did you get some snow in Dallas? We had a dusting here—along with some icy roads. But we made if fine to church.
There’s a Scripture passage that should accompany the devotional message below: “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." (2 Cor 6:17-18, NIV) What do you think that means?
Have a good night. Love and prayers. Tua/Ray.
I make no claim of being a scholar relative to the technical interpretation and unraveling of this book of Revelation. But the question that arises within me as I read again Revelation 17 and 18 again is, “Why can’t ‘Babylon the Great’ be a prophetic description or representation of America?” I could get carried away with my impressions and reasoning. I might just suggest that America does indeed RULE THE WORLD—not so much politically or administratively—but America, by means of Hollywood movies and other forms of media, has profoundly impacted the entire world morally and ideologically way beyond any other nation in human history that I know of. By means of spectacular audio-video technology, that influence has worked like a “magic spell” (18:23). In that sense the description of Revelation 17:2 seems to fit—“With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” The same idea is repeated more than once within these two chapters (17:18: 18:3, 9). Consider too the speed of her destruction—a description that could not take place by means of ancient warfare. “One hour” (18:10, 17, 19) is now very feasible by means of modern nuclear technology.
In view of the total and horrific destruction promised concerning “Babylon the Great,” the most important practical warning is that the true people of God “come out of her.” The "her," if not America in particular, would at least be the corrupt world system in general. with her advancing anti-God orientation. That, I’m sure, does not require a physical evacuation as much as it call for a worldview and spiritual abandonment and separation. Complying with that order requires extreme caution against contamination, compromise, and neutralization so that we do not experience the fate of the boiled frog that was cooked to death so slow by gradual increases in heat that he didn’t even know what was happening.
It helps me to reduce things to their simplest form. So here are a couple of simple determinations that can serve as standards for successfully facing the future:
In real and practical terms, this is FAITH. And, “the just shall live by faith” (Galatians 3:11).