Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead… [who] said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water’.Another angel, a second, followed, saying, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great…’And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God's wrath… and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image…
The Revelation of Jesus to John
The last book in the Bible is, ‘The revelation of Jesus Christ’, a series of visions given to John revealing the true nature of things in the world and how they will climax. I’ve written about some of this in ‘Babylon and the Beast’ and ‘Sooner or Later’ but in this Reflection I want to briefly consider three elements: Babylon, the Beast that it’s riding and the Mark of the Beast.
Babylon is a global financial system that’s mentioned a few times in Revelation (including the above excerpt from chapter 14) before an angel invites John to take a close look, which he describes in chapters 17:1-19:5. Babylon started as Babel, a settlement on the River Euphrates, where people tried to make a name for themselves by building a great tower that would reach as high as heaven (Genesis 11). God halted that ambition but Babel prospered and grew into Babylon. Although it never quite achieved the distinction its founders hoped, Babylon came to symbolise humankind’s desire for material wealth.
It was from Ur, a city in Babylonia, that God called Abraham to the land that would become Israel and it was back to this area that the Israelites were taken in captivity centuries later. Isaiah foresaw the fall of Babylon in such detail that many scholars refuse to believe it was written before the event (Isaiah 13-14). Jeremiah also foresaw Babylon’s destruction: his prophecy was read by the Israeli captives and then sunk in the river to symbolise the completeness of the city’s annihilation (Jeremiah 50-51). Babylon was in decline when Alexander the Great arrived there in BC 331, intending to make it the capital of both Asia and Europe, but his plan died with him. So complete was Babylon’s eventual ruin that for centuries nobody could tell where it had been. Today Babylon is a museum city south of Baghdad.
Ancient Babylon was a difficult place to leave. When Abraham began his journey, he got only so far as Haran, a settlement on the edge of Babylonia named after Abraham's deceased brother. It wasn’t until Abraham's father, Terah, died that Abraham left Babylonia entirely. I infer from Genesis 11:27-12:3 that the opportunity to settle and trade in Haran interrupted Abraham's obedience to God's call.
Generations later, when the Israelites captives were allowed to leave Babylon and return home, only a small minority did. They hadn’t abandoned their religion but were content in Babylon. In Babylon they had prospered and I expect they thought that they had too much to lose by leaving. When Ezra led a second group of exiles home (Ezra 8), at first no Levites wanted to go. In Babylon, they had prospered like everyone else; in Israel, they would have to devote themselves to the Temple
The Babylon we read about in Revelation is a global trading empire that buys and sells not just in luxury goods but also in the bodies and souls of people (Revelation 18:11-13). Scholars used to think this was a reference to the slave trade but today we can see how psychology has empowered marketing to enslave people’s souls, not just their physical bodies, the ‘real’ person inside. Babylon moulds people's personalities, character, values and choices. This Babylon is, not surprisingly, a haven for terrible evil, ‘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’ (Revelation 18:2).
Revelation illustrates the fall of this Babylon in three ways: it’s given ‘the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath’ as judgment for its evil (chapter 16:19); an angel hurls it like a stone into the sea, symbolising the totality of its fall (18:21); ten kings ‘make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire’ (17:16-17). The third perspective implies imply that national governments exploit Babylon to the point of destruction, although later it becomes clear that this was an unintended consequence of their actions and they join the merchants in bewailing Babylon’s fall (18:9-10).
John hears God calling his people out of Revelation’s Babylon before it falls. ‘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; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities…”’ (Revelation 18:4-5). But even more surprising than God’s warning is that his people need to hear it! How could they tolerate being in such a wicked place?
I think that so many generations of Christians have grown up in a capitalist, consumer society that we fail to see it as it really is. We fail to see the evil that decisions based on money, not people, can cause and therefore have everything to lose. Abraham would have lost everything by staying at Haran on the edgeof Babylonia. The Israelites who stayed in ancient Babylon would have lost everything during its decline and fall. In Revelation, God’s people who remain in Babylon lose everything when it falls. Then something even worse awaits them!
If human government were to bring about the fall of the global trading system, perhaps in their efforts to curb the worst excesses of avarice and coveteousness, so that market forces are no longer sovereign, something like the Mark of the Beast would be necessary to regulate the use of money. When I was young, many thought the Mark would be a tattoo on a person’s forehead or wrist; as I got older, they thought it would be a microchip planted beneath a person’s skin. I don’t know what it will be but, whatever the Mark is, it will be clear who has it because without it nobody - small or great, rich or poor, slave or free - will be able to buy or sell.
The final part of the third angel’s warning is chilling: the people who take the Mark, ‘have no rest, day or night’. This the persistent restlessness of the people caught up in a materialist, capitalist, consumer society where nothing can stay the same, where contentment and satisfaction are constantly undermined to provoke us into buying what we neither need nor previously wanted.
By contrast, Jesus offers us rest. Rest for our souls. Next weekend, I will draw to a close this series on what Jesus taught about money with the first of two Reflections on his invitation to rest.
© All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2014.
Please feel free to copy, print and share these Reflections on a non-profit basis.
