After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven… And he called out with a mighty voice, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living’. Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues…’
Revelation 14:9-12 & 18:1-4
I conclude this series of Advent Reflections with a ‘feature length’ issue and an invitation to continue to ‘watch this space’.
Picking up from yesterday’s closing thought, as governments have struggled to curb and control financial institutions, and financial institutions like Fitch and Standard & Poor have downgraded the credit worthiness of governments, the relationship seems to me not unlike Babylon riding the beast in Revelation.
Revelation goes on to illustrate the fall of Babylon in three ways: it is given ‘the cup of the wine of the fierceness of [God’s] wrath’ as judgment for its evil; an angel hurls it like a stone into the sea, symbolising the totality of its fall; ten kings turn on Babylon and 'make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire'. The third perspective seems to imply that national governments exploit Babylon to the point of destruction, although it becomes clear that this was an unintended consequence of their actions and they join the merchants in bewailing Babylon’s fall.
In Revelation 14, a procession of angels make four announcements: first the Gospel message, then the fall of Babylon, then warning against taking the Mark of the Beast and finally the end of the world. I think this indicates that the Mark is imposed on people after the fall of Babylon and it seems to me that if the world’s financial institutions collapsed, something like the Mark would be inevitable to regulate the use of money – especially as almost all the money in the world has no material reality in our materialist culture, other than like a novel (see Days 8 & 9).
The second image to consider from Revelation is, then, the Mark of the Beast (666), which is one of the most potent and controversial symbols in history. I have heard many theories about what the Mark might be: most common are a tattoo on the forehead or wrist or an electronic chip inserted just below the skin. I think it more likely that there will be no physical manifestation: in the Bible, the forehead and hand are symbolic of our thinking and doing. What I am sure of is that it will be readily obvious who has the Mark.
The passage quoted yesterday does say that we can ‘calculate the number’. I think that refers to the Genesis account of creation, where humankind was created on the sixth day, so that 666 is six multiplied by itself to represent what humans can amount to when they ignore God. While I do not think that the Mark (666) is mammon, the personification of money, money that lures and drives our behaviour, it includes mammon because, as we considered at the start of Advent, money has become what people rely on when they do not rely on God.
On Day 21, I asked if our relationship with money is more important that how we get and use it. I think the answer is both yes and no. Yes, because psychologists have found that people with ‘loose’ attitudes towards money tend to be happier than those who are more controlling, although they are no less likely to be materialists and no less prone to overspending and debt, and therefore just as vulnerable to the same mental and emotional problems. No, because the decisions that we make about how we use money are deeply interconnected with many other issues, such as how we feel about ourselves, who we fear and who we wish to please, and sometimes we can see that something is wrong and dissociate ourselves, whatever our feelings or fondness for it.
I therefore ask you to consider to what extent are you ‘marked’ by the ways you get and use money? Do newspaper reports of people spending tens of thousands of pounds, even hundreds of thousands, on food and drink in a single night impress you? Do you admire the celebrity culture? Are you intuitively influenced by the lifestyles you see portrayed in the media? Do you think your normal standards of integrity and honesty apply to business activity? Do you instinctively compare what you own to what others have? Do you feel that you have little choice but spend money to maintain a lifestyle that neighbours or work colleagues expect of you? Does advertising create in you a desire for possessions and experiences that feels almost irresistible? Does a shopping trip cheer you up or help you to relax?
The most remarkable thing about Babylon in Revelation is where God calls on his people to leave it. It was reading this about 15 years ago, at the start of a church prayer meeting, when I realised that what really troubled me was not that God’s people should be called on to leave Babylon but that they should even be in such a place to begin with! I asked the question, could we be involved in anything so obviously wicked but blind to its nature?
Thank you for joining me in these Reflections: I hope they have been thought-provoking and useful and leave you with something to think about during Christmas and into the New Year. The level of interest has been a most pleasant surprise and I am now planning to continue using this blog through 2013. I hope to produce short series reflections, lasting up to a week, once a month. If you wish to un-subscribe, I understand completely that the extension is not what you signed on for. But I hope you will stay with me to explore more about God and money.
And the angel said to [Mary]… ‘You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end’.
And Mary said to the angel, ‘How will this be, since I am a virgin?’
And the angel answered her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy – the Son of God’.
Luke 1:30-35
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here.
You are invited to put a link on your website to these Advent Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.
