Category: End Times

Pay her back – Revelation 18:6-8

Previously: Come out of her, My people – Revelation 18:4-5

The scripture

Rev. 18:6 – Pay her back the way she also paid, and double it according to her works. In the cup in which she mixed, mix a double portion for her. 7 As much as she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, 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.” 8 For this reason her plagues will come in one day – death and grief and famine. She will be burned up with fire, because the Lord God who judges her is mighty. (HCSB)

Pay her back

JudgmentThe voice from heaven calls, “Pay her back the way she also paid, and double it according to her works. In the cup in which she mixed, mix a double portion for her” (v. 6). To whom is the Lord speaking? Perhaps His angels, who execute judgment, or perhaps the earth’s wicked who unwittingly carry out God’s justice, thinking they are conquering a vanquished foe.

Twice there is a reference to double payback. We have seen this before in scripture. The Lord speaks through Isaiah that Judah will be comforted after she has received from the Lord’s hand “double for all her sins” (Isa. 40:2). This is a way of saying that Judah’s sentence is fully satisfied before God. In a similar manner, the Israelites are promised in Isa. 61:7, “Because your shame was double, and they cried out, ‘Disgrace is their portion,’ therefore, they will possess double in their land, and eternal joy will be theirs.”
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Come out of her, My people – Revelation 18:4-5

Previously: The nations have drunk – Revelation 18:3

The scripture

Rev. 18:4 – 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. 5 For her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. (HCSB)

Come out of her, My people

There is “another voice from heaven” that speaks in verses 4-8. It may be the voice of the Lord, for He says, “Come out of her, My people” (v. 4). Yet the voice later speaks of “God” and “the Lord God” in the third person. It’s possible this is Jesus, speaking to distinguish Himself from God the Father. In any case, there is urgency in His voice and a command for God’s people to separate themselves from the earth’s wicked people because judgment is falling.

“Come out of her, My people,” the voice cries, “so that you will not share in her sins or receive any of her plagues” (v. 4). A few commentators understand the rapture of the church to take place at this time. If so, it is late in the tribulation period and precedes Christ’s return by a brief span. Futurists are divided as to whether the rapture takes place prior to, in the middle of, or at the end of the tribulation.

Another way to view this call, however, is as an ever-present urging for believers to separate themselves from the sinful ways of the world. Jesus reminds us that while we are in the world, we should not be of it. “If the world hates you, understand that it hated Me before it hated you,” He tells His disciples. “If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. However, because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you” (John 15:18-19). Later, in His high priestly prayer, Jesus tells the Father, “I am not praying that You take them out of the world but that You protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world as I am not of the world” (John 17:15-16). The apostle Paul exhorts us, “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2).
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The nations have drunk – Revelation 18:3

Previously: Babylon has fallen – Revelation 18:1-2

The scripture

Rev. 18:3 – 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 excessive luxury. (HCSB)

The angel spells out the reasons for the fall of Babylon the Great in verse 3: “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 excessive luxury.” The wickedness of the world system opposed to God has been exposed. Not only has Babylon the Great abandoned the one true and living God, but she has replaced Him with multiple false deities that lure the world’s inhabitants through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the sinful pride of one’s lifestyle (1 John 2:16).

How applicable is this indictment of Babylon on today’s society, which embraces “spiritualism” at the expense of true worship. As the apostle Paul warns, “But know this: Difficult times will come in the last days. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, without love for what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness but denying its power. Avoid these people” (2 Tim. 3:1-5).

When we boast that we are spiritual but not religious; when we lament the addition of a fish to the endangered species list but celebrate the right to end the life of an unborn child for any reason; when we abrogate the responsibility of individuals and families to work hard and care for their own by increasing our dependency on government entitlements; when we insist that ethics are situational and reject absolute truth as a vestige of less-enlightened times; when we say all forms of religious expression are fine as long as the name of Jesus is excluded; when a 50th wedding anniversary between a man and a woman is rare but gay marriage is normative; and when a theory of origins based on time and chance is called an indisputable fact but a theory that points to intelligent design is considered rank scientific heresy – we have become the people who drink the wine of Babylon the Great’s sexual – that is, spiritual – immorality. And we have invited the wrath of God.
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Babylon has fallen – Revelation 18:1-2

Previously: The waters and the woman – Revelation 17:15-18

The scripture

Rev. 18:1 – After this I saw another angel with great authority coming down from heaven, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. 2 He cried in a mighty voice: It has fallen, Babylon the great has fallen! She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, and a haunt for every unclean and despicable beast. (HCSB)

It has fallen

Light from heavenThe first eight verses of this chapter declare the fall of Babylon the Great. Verses 9-20 describe the earth’s response to her destruction, and verses 21-24 depict the finality of what transpires. The chapter begins with “another angel with great authority coming down from heaven” (v. 1). John writes that the earth is “illuminated by his splendor.” There is a heavenly radiance surrounding this angel that elsewhere is reserved only for the appearance of God (Ezek. 43:2-3), but we should not mistake this messenger for Yahweh. He comes brilliantly in the name of the Lord and represents His holiness. There also is a heavenly delight in the message he delivers as the cries of the righteous for judgment upon Babylon the Great are about to be answered.

Matthew Henry writes of this angel, “He had not only light in himself, to discern the truth of his own prediction, but to inform and enlighten the world about that great event; and not only light to discern it, but power to accomplish it” (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, Rev. 18:1–8).
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The waters and the woman – Revelation 17:15-18

Previously: The seven heads and 10 horns – Revelation 17:9-14

The scripture

TsunamiRev. 17:15 – He also said to me, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute was seated, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. 16 The 10 horns you saw, and the beast, will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, devour her flesh, and burn her up with fire. 17 For God has put it into their hearts to carry out His plan by having one purpose and to give their kingdom to the beast until God’s words are accomplished. 18 And the woman you saw is the great city that has an empire over the kings of the earth.” (HCSB)

The waters you saw

The angel tells John in verse 15, “The waters you saw, where the prostitute was seated, are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages.” This is in contrast to – perhaps even a parody of – Psalm 29, in which the voice of the Lord is “above the waters. The God of glory thunders – the Lord, above vast waters…. The Lord sat enthroned at the flood” (vv. 3, 10). Everything Satan does is a counterfeit, and we see this in full force throughout Revelation. The notorious prostitute who sits on many waters no doubt has a global impact. Her voice reaches around the world and draws many followers. Just as we see men and women “from every tribe and language and people and nation” in heaven (Rev. 5:9b), there are “peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages” responding to the siren song of Babylon the Great.

The imagery in this scene draws from Old Testament passages that compare nations and armies with floodwaters. In Isa. 8:7, for example, we are told that “the Lord will certainly bring against them [Jews of the southern kingdom] the mighty rushing waters of the Euphrates River – the king of Assyria and all his glory. It will overflow its channels and spill over all its banks.”
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