‘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; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has
remembered her iniquities…’
Revelation 18:2-5
I ended
last weekend by asking what we should make of God calling his people out of
Babylon when it was characterised by drunkenness, prostitution and wickedness.
How could God’s people ever be there at all? Why do they share in the
drunkenness? Why do they not see the wickedness? Why are they not alert to the
presence of demons? Why do they not just flee, escape to somewhere or something
better?
I think
part of the answer is that when situations deteriorate gradually, we often fail
to see what is happening and know when a line has been crossed. It is said that
if you put a live frog into a pot of water and gradually heat it up, the frog
will not realise what is happening and die before the water boils. Fortunately,
I have heard of only one person who tried that and, in that case at least, the
frog jumped out soon enough!
So many
generations of Christians have grown up in a capitalist, consumer society and
as people’s values have changed, and their behaviour become more self-centred,
so that what is ‘normal’ becomes more and more remote from what is ‘Christian’,
it can be hard to see the drift. We fail to see that we are being lured into
dangerous waters. When the navigation beacons have been extinguished, the pilot
of a ship knows that something is wrong, but when they have been moved, he may
not realise what is happening until the ship flounders on the rocks and is
boarded by wreckers.
It
could be that many of God’s people are not as wise as the frog I mentioned! But
I believe there is more to it than that – a worse danger than people simply not
recognising what is happening around them. It is that they – themselves, their
souls – are goods that Babylon trades!
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
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