"Repent! Repent! For the end of the world is near!" How many of you have heard a sermon on this subject? How many of you have heard a joke on this subject? Every faith tradition has a different way of looking at end-times prophecy. Some ignore it. Some codify it. Some rationalize it. Some obsess about it. and some ridicule it. Mine did. In the Unitarian environment I was raised in, thundering proclamations of approaching doom had become a matter for joking; the wild-eyed fanatic on Skid Row marching up and down in a sandwich board
proclaiming the end of the world is a stock comedy figure. Even as I have spent last year learning and this year preaching from Revelation, my past rises up to caution me because the apocalyptic passages have been made a joke by the folly and disobedience of ill-informed Christians throughout the ages. Apocalyptic time-keepers have risen in virtually every generation since Jesus bade his disciples' farewell, saying, "It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority." [Acts 1:7]
What does it say to non-believers when dated predictions of the end of the world come and go without so much as a cosmic hiccup? What does it say to believers when their leaders so mislead them in the name of a God whom they are asked to trust with more then their lives? What license does it give to the enemies of the Gospel to point to madmen like David Koresh and say, "Look! That is what comes of taking the book of Revelation seriously!"
Let no one suppose that I am advocating letting the secular world view intimidate Christians into being ashamed of the cross, which “is foolishness to those who are perishing. [1 Cor 1:18 ], We are to glory, as Paul did, in the privilege of being a fool for Christ. But it is another thing altogether to claim for ourselves authority or insight superior to that of Jesus Christ, who told us that neither the angels nor the Son, but only the Father, know the day and the hour of his return. Thomas
Merton, the great 20th c mystic, writes of this snare:
"The Gospel looks to a future event that is still not fulfilled - the full revelation of the Glory and the Reign of Christ. He reigns already, but his reign is not yet manifest as it will be. Yet this brings with it another temptation: the false news of those who have too much of a message, too clear a message - "Lo, here is Christ, precisely here. and we are the ones who have found him for you." They have the date and the hour of his coming, and they are themselves the main point of the news. A very important point, indeed. The Second Coming is their news. Such news is not to be believed. The Gospel itself is much simpler. Now is the judgment of the world...
What was it that John saw, that has alarmed and inspired and confused so many generations of hearers? “...he saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority; and the earth was made bright with his splendor.. He called out with a mighty voice, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!” [v. 18:1-2a-]. When an alarm goes off, when we hear the siren, we want to know what it means. Where is Babylon? Is the angel talking to us? How are we to respond?
The angel's lament over Babylon is, in fact, a quote from the book of Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah was given visions to strengthen and comfort the Jews under Hezekiah. They were strengthened to endure the evil to come under King Manasseh, and they were comforted with the promise of the eventual restoration of Israel. John was commanded to write down his vision in order to strengthen and comfort the church in his time, just as Isaiah had done in his. The OT echo told John's people to harken back to God's earlier promise of judgment and redemption, which they had seen fulfilled. John was given his vision because of the desperate circumstances of the Christian community in the first century. The persecutions which had abated somewhat after Nero's death were about to return under the heavy hand of the emperor Domitian. Doubts were rising about the return of the Lord; Jerusalem had fallen and most of the eyewitnesses of
Jesus' death and resurrection had died.
Now remember that Rome was often called "Babylon" by the early church. So with this vision and the angel’s announcement, these early Christians were strengthened to endure the persecutions to come, and comforted with the promise of the return of Christ. No doubt many of John's contemporaries expected the imminent fall of Rome and the return of the Lord in precisely the manner described in the vision.
Remember also that prophetic writing has three levels of meaning: one for the hearers at the time of writing, one is to describe the end of history, and the part which is true for all believers at all times. That is one of the reasons it remains ambiguous, so that it can’t be lopped off and assigned to a single event and then forgotten for the rest of the time. So although John and Isaiah wrote to fortify and console the people of their own times, these visions are also written for us.
Isaiah prophesied the fall of Babylon, and it came. Babylon fell. Isaiah also prophesied the coming of the Messiah, but the Messiah delayed; and when he did come many failed to recognize him because it didn't fit their interpretation. Whose fall did John prophesy? What is Babylon? Was it Rome's fall John predicted, or is it some other great power? Rome fell, but Christ has not yet returned. Should we therefore say that John's readers were comforted with a false hope? I echo Paul, "may it never be!" Rom 6:2] For the angel who spoke to John was the messenger of God, and He who promises is faithful. It
is we who make mistakes, not God. If Babylon is not then, is it now?
If Babylon was not them, is it us?
How can America be the modern Babylon? Our Puritan ancestors intended us to be a city on a hill, a light to the nations, a witness to the faithfulness of God to an obedient people. And we Americans still have that view of ourselves, in many ways. We see our society as embodying particular ideals of freedom and equality which the world should admire and follow. This is not altogether surprising. Most peoples have a high view of their own culture. What is different about America is that people around the world do look to us for fulfillment of
dreams. America has been the promised land for countless millions of people. We are, as our politicians tell us, the only super-power left, and although we cannot be "the world's policeman"and we differ sometimes bitterly about where we should intervene, almost everyone agreed that we have an obligation to provide moral leadership for the world. I do not dispute this. We do.
But what kind of moral leadership are we providing? Michael Eisner, the CEO of Disney Corp, said in an interview some years ago that it is America's entertainment industry that is changing the world. The images that are transforming societies from Paris to Pakistan, from Moscow to Malaysia, are of Micky Mouse, Michael Jackson, and Madonna. Once we dreamed of "alabaster cities, undimmed by human tears." They have turned into crumbling and filthy nightmares. The decadence of American culture forms part of the stated reasons for militant Islam’s hostility to us.
Are we Babylon?
In his classic study of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon gave five basic reasons for her collapse:
1. The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis for human society.
2. Higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace.
3. The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral.
4. The building of great armaments when the real enemy was within, the decay of individual responsibility.
5. The decay of religion; faith fading into mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people.
The late J. Vernon McGee noted that "we can already see these five things at work in our contemporary culture in this country." Most of us here would not dispute him. How are we to take these similarities to the Rome of 2,000 years ago? And if we are like Rome, are we not like Babylon as well? “For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her, and the merchants of the
earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality.”[v. 3]
John lays to Rome's charge the responsibility of the corruption of the whole earth. Rome made the nations drunk. The nations of the earth were intoxicated. But what does that mean, to be intoxicated? In English, the word intoxication comes from toxic, or poison. Persons/systems/nations which are intoxicated are poisoned, poisoned in such a way as to impair their ability to make reasoned or moral decisions. Persons/systems/nations which are intoxicated are unable
to forgo present indulgence for the sake of future gain. Persons/systems/nations which are intoxicated are likely to stumble and fall, which is particularly interesting because there is a textual variant which substitutes the word πεπώτικεν, or "have fallen," for the word πέπωκαν, translated "have drunk." Have we used our extraordinary freedoms to cause our brothers and sisters to stumble?
What were the Babylonians intoxicated on? What were they stumbling over? The word John uses is πορνείας, whose dictionary definition denotes sexual immorality; but just as we nowadays may refer to the "obscene profits" of oil and other companies, so did writers of John's day use terms describing the ugliness of sexual sin for many other kinds of sin as well.
What is the sin to which John's vision is referring? Who are the kings of the earth? What acts of immorality have they committed with this country?
The "kings of the earth" are the wielders of secular political power, heads of state. How many third world dictators has America helped make rich? During the Cold War we helped prop up Haiti's Papa Doc, Nicaragua's Somoza, Panama's Manuel Noriega, and many others whose only virtue was anti-communism; even this decade's chief monster Saddam Hussein reaped millions from America's coffers. Others who have not received payoffs directly from Uncle Sam have
grown rich off of the corruption of the American people. We all know about the cocaine traffic from Colombia and the heroin from Afghanistan We know less about the prostitution. While Imelda Marcos was trying on shoes in Manila, American sailors in Subic Bay were buying teenage girls for sex. You could buy a brand new 14-year-old girl, family-direct, for between $30 and $50, keep her till you were shipped back to the states, and then just leave her behind to earn a
living for herself and her children (whose children?) the old fashioned way. The children of these unions were not allowed to immigrate to the United States unless their fathers claimed them. Few did; most were forgotten, discarded like the rest of the worn out military equipment. It’s one of the reasons our troops got kicked out of the Philippines.
The merchants of the earth John talks about are the ones who buy and sell and transport the goods that others make. Now, there is nothing wrong with commerce as such. But let me draw your attention to just one issue out of dozens that have contributed to the riots at World Trade Organization meetings in the last few years: “Over two hundred million children around the world, some as young as four and five years old, are slaves. A majority of the children work in Asia,
especially in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Indonesia - slaving away to make goods for us to buy in K-Mart and Wal-Mart... “Child slave labor [is] used to produce chocolate in the Ivory Coast. It produces 43% of the world's cocoa beans ... harvested and processed by captive children between the ages of 12 and 14, and sometimes younger.” [Immaculata High School Child Slave Labor News. ] These are not acceptable ways for"the merchants of the earth [to] become rich..."
Are we Babylon? Maybe. And maybe not. The Reformers thought that the Roman Catholic church was Babylon. The Kingdom of France under Louis XIV was more corrupt then we are; the British Empire in the 19th century worshiped commerce far more openly then we do. And at the same time we list America's iniquities we can also look at her virtues, which are great. No great power on earth has ever been as generous to her fallen enemies as America has been, and our troops went to Somalia because we could not look on starving children
unmoved. There is much good here. America has elements of Babylon - but it also has elements of Zion, the city of God. We cannot know who will be the last Babylon.
"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of not the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” Mt 24:42-44
When I was a child in Rio de Janeiro something happened on a regular basis that I don't think anyone here has ever witnessed. Every two or three months an apartment building would fall down. Police would cordon off the area, and people would gather beyond the perimeter to watch. The cracks would slowly widen, a wall would buckle outward, the corner of the roof would begin to sag, and all of a sudden the building would simply crumble and collapse, sending up great clouds
of dust and debris. No wrecking crews were involved. No cranes swung giant balls to clear an area marked for redevelopment. These buildings collapsed simply because they weren’t built to last. Perhaps contractors mixed the concrete with too much sand, or the supporting beams were too few or too weak. Whatever the reason, they fell. But I never heard of anyone bring injured when they did, because by that time everyone had moved out. The cracks would have appeared long before, and people knew what it meant. So they found another
apartment, or moved in with friends.
There are cracks in the walls of our society. Should we move out? Survivalist movements have proliferated since the end of WWII and the beginning of the atomic age. Some are openly apocalyptic, pointing to the books of Daniel and Revelation. Some are not. But all have this in common: in expectation of the end of a world which they see as ripe for destruction, they are stockpiling food and weapons and moving to places in the mountains of Oregon and Idaho and Montana to wait out the coming of Armageddon. Is this what we should do?
“And I heard another voice from heaven, saying: "Come out of her, my people, that you may not participate in hr sins and that you may not receive of her plagues; for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. [V. 18:4-5]
This echoes Jeremiah's lament for Babylon: “Flee from Babylon! Run for your lives! Do not be destroyed because of her sins! It is time for the Lord's vengeance; he will pay her what she deserves.” [Jer 51:6] But when Jeremiah wrote, there were 70 years of captivity yet to endure, and elsewhere he tells the people to settle down in Babylon and raise families. What is going on here?
I believe that we are bring commanded to spiritual separation, not to physical separation. Paul told us not to be "conformed to the pattern of the world, but to be transformed...." [Rom 12:2] Peter said, "Do not fear what they fear...but in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord." [1 Pe 3:14-15] Jesus prayed for his followers "...not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil
one." [John 17:15] We have work to do. We do the work commanded by Jesus Christ in the world, as his hands and feet and voice. We are not free to flee to safety. not yet. Jesus told his disciples, “ Watch out that you are not deceived, for many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am he,' and ' the time is near.' Do not follow them. When you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.” [Lk 21:8-9]
Jesus sends us into the world to transform it. Remember back to his departing words in Acts 1:7, commanding his followers not to be concerned about dates and times, but to be his witnesses. He has charged us to change our allegiance, not our address.
Why did John write this warning if we're not supposed to act on it? We already know about the great commission. There's got to be something more. What is it?
James Clavell, the best-selling author of Shogun, Tai-pan, and Noble House, wrote another book, less well-known, about a Japanese POW camp. The book was called King Rat, and it was about one prisoner, a pathetic loser before the war, who became the most powerful man in the camp by trading with the enemy and exploiting the misery of his fellows. He used to try to pressure the other prisoners to join him, calling them fools for holding onto their ideals in the midst
of the corruption which had become the way of life for the surrounding peoples. When the Japanese surrendered and the American troops liberated the camps, the prisoners streamed out into the first freedom and safety they had known for years, a freedom and safety that they had feared was gone forever, a freedom and safety which many had died without seeing. and even as they rejoiced, this man - the King Rat - sat alone in the center of the deserted camp and wept, because his power and influence were gone forever.
"And the kings of the earth who committed acts of immorality with her and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of hr burning ... and the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more--... the merchants of these things, who became rich from her, will stand at a distance because of the fear of hr torment, weeping and mourning ... and every shipmaster and every passenger and sailor, and as many as make their living by the sea, stood at a distance and were crying out as they saw the smoke of her burning..." [v. 9-18:9]
Who was it who wept over the destruction of Babylon? With whom do we identify? In what ways have we collaborated, and with whom? Do we still believe, and long for, the Lord's return? Do we still obey?
"Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. [Lk 12:45-46].
Imagine being a prisoner of war in Germany in 1944. How have you lived? You talk with your fellow prisoners about the days you remember, and the days you long for. Red cross packages and letters remind you that home is still there. and when the Allied planes fly overhead, and the fuel dump or munitions factory in the nearby village blows up, how do you feel? How do you react? Does it give you
hope? Events like these give “proof through the night that our flag [is] still there."
Jeremiah told the Jews who were going into exile in Babylon how to behave while they were there: “This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all
those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: "Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper. [Jer 29:4-7]
This advice works for us as well. The Babylon we live in is not all that different from the Babylon they lived in. We are still exiles. We still wait for our deliverance. We are to live, as Peter tells us, as "aliens and strangers in the world" [1 Pet 2:11]. Even as the exiles in Babylon were mocked, their captors demanding that they "sing one of the songs of Zion," we too are often called fools. But we too "can sing the Lord's song in a foreign land," [Ps 137] just as they could. The return we long for is no less glorious than the return they longed
for. The redemption we look for is no less certain than the redemption they looked for. The signs we see remind us of the promise. Jesus tells us that "nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of
birth pains." These are signs that the end is near. [Mt 24:7-8]
It is indeed near - but not necessarily chronologically. Christians are to live in daily expectation of the Lord's return, on the brink of Judgment Day itself. Because Babylon is already judged. Babylon is, in fact, already fallen. Judgment is always now, as redemption is always now. Judgment is not deferred to some future day. Judgment is now - even though not fully manifest, even as redemption is now, even though not yet fulfilled. And when it does, if we have been faithful, we will be ready, and we will indeed rejoice.
