Two Futures

This transcript has been automatically generated

Revelation 18:1-19. Be ready to stretch your imagination.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. 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; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds. Mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. And as she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see. For this reason her plagues will come in a single day— death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire, for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.

And the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, Alas, alas, you great city, you mighty city Babylon, For in a single hour your judgement has come. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore— cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves— that is, human souls.

The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendours are lost to you. Never to be found again. The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud. Alas, alas for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls! For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.

And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, what city was like that great city? And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out, alas, alas for the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in a single hour she has been laid waste. Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgement for you against her. Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence and will be found no more.

And the sound of harpers and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more. And the craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more. And the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more. And the light of a lamp will shine in you no more. And the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more.

No more! For your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all who have been slain on earth.

After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, and for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and has avenged on her the blood of his servants. Once more they cried out, Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever! And the 24 elders and the 4 living creatures fell down and worshipped God who was seated on the throne, saying, Amen!

Hallelujah! And from the throne came a voice saying, Praise our God, all you his servants, you who fear him, small and great! Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters, like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns! Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the angel said to me, write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God.

Thanks for reading, Winston. Thank you for praying for us. That was really kind and touching of you. And thank you for having us. We always benefit from a weekend with St Helen’s Friends and just really grateful for the model of a healthy spiritual environment that this is.

And that picture at the top of this one China Miéville. He writes urban fantasy fiction, The City in the City. I think the book is now on Netflix. And at one level it’s a murder mystery, but the thing that makes it spicy is it’s about 2 cities which occupy the same physical space. So the streets of one run next to the streets from the other, government buildings of one city right next to the others, and some locations are strictly boundaried to their population, but in other parts the residents of the 2 cities mix.

It’s kind of a dystopian thing. It’s a bit like actually Central London a couple of years ago when Scotland played England in the Euros. And we live right by the stations. Half of Scotland came down to Euston and King’s Cross and hung out around our area for the whole day before the match. Suddenly London and Glasgow occupied the same physical space.

And it was a very dystopian thing if you ran into any of my countrymen. Our area was heaving with all these lads in kilts drinking their cans of lager at 9 o’clock in the morning. Rory, our boy, was worryingly fascinated by them, went up to a group and said to them in his best English accent, I’m half Scottish, which they were not impressed by. Apparently half Scottish isn’t Scottish. Anyway, this book Sorry, that was a diversion.

This book, The City and the City, in that book, even when the 2 populations share the same physical space, they walk on different sides of the pavement, they speak different languages, and they’re trained so that if they drive past a car of a person from the other population, they, what they call, unsee them. And it all ends up being quite a complex tale of 2 cities. Well, this passage is a tale of 2 cities. 2 cultures, 2 people groups, 2 very different sets of loyalties and loves. And it can feel a bit like fantasy fiction reading Revelation, can’t it?

But we’ve seen just from our very brief dip in, it’s actually very practical and rooted in the real world. Jesus, where is he? Walks among his churches, understands every one of their temptations and pressures and fears, as he understands every single one of yours. And Jesus has a plan for your life. His plan is that you will endure as one of his faithful witnesses until the day when you gather with a great multitude round God’s throne in a victory chorus.

It will be a glorious day. But it’s hard to keep going as faithful witnesses. Jesus knows, and his medicine and revelation, it’s partly been show us himself and big Jesus. Show us what’s going on spiritually in the world right now, the heavenly view. And in Revelation, the first and the last who has written the future shows us the future.

Every circuit round the airport ends in the future. So chapter 7, chapter 11, chapter 15. And then what we get in the final section— we’ve come into this final section from 16 onwards— what you get is each of the big bad guys get finally finished off, as it were, before we arrive at the new creation. So we’re looking at the future for 2 cities, and the challenge in Revelation 18 and 19 is which city are you a loyal citizen of? Which city’s destiny are you going to be all wrapped up in?

Every human being, every powerful person, every family member of yours will be identified for all eternity as a citizen of one of these 2 cities. So shall we hear the tale of 2 cities? First, Babylon was a great city. At least 6 times in chapter 18 it’s called Babylon the Great. A global city, crossroads city, a city at the heart of a dominant world empire.

And they would bring the cargoes up the Euphrates River in the boats. It was a sight to behold. As they unloaded the gold, the marble, silk by the tonne. Wander up to the marketplace, it teems with exotic smells and tastes from every continent. The window fronts are laden with luxury, expensive linens, jewellery shops, row after row of them.

The wood was scented and expensive. You couldn’t even buy a basic bag of flour there without it being Waitrose standard. Only the finest for Babylon. The nations flocked there to study and earn a living. Young people married there.

Culture thrived. The artists, the artisans. You could hear the machinery of industry purring day and night. The city that never sleeps, that was Babylon.

But something was rotten in the state of Babylon. See, Babylon gloried in herself, not her Maker. Babylon was arrogant and self-assured. The voices of the godly were silenced in Babylon, the vulnerable abused, and yet her progress just seemed unstoppable, inevitable, eternal. Till one day we got into cycling with the family during the first lockdown, and it was really something if you were going through town then.

And that first Christmas, we came out of lockdown, didn’t we? Then we went back into it, so the shops had had time to put all their lovely Christmas decorations up, and then we went back into lockdown. And we cycled around Regent Street one evening just before that Christmas. It all looked absolutely lovely, but it was all closed. Place looked like it had died.

It all fell in one day in Babylon— one hour, actually, it says. Think Twin Towers on a sunny morning, Titanic during a cheerful sail. The market just collapsed. The lights went out suddenly. Death.

Destruction. And the only noise now was the sound of weeping and mourning, lots of weeping and mourning. And not just from the establishment who ran the city, the ordinary people whose livelihoods depended on Babylon, they cried as the smoke rose. Verse 10, alas, alas, you great city, you mighty city Babylon, for in a single hour Your judgement has come. No more.

That was kind of palpable as Winston read, wasn’t it? No more. Did you hear it repeated? No more. Babylon fell, never to rise again.

The end.

But this is a tale of 2 cities, and the other one, point 2, is called the Bride. The Bride is a city, though she’s also a bride, because when John is shown the Bride in chapter 21, which you may be more familiar with, the angel shows him the city, and it’s a very different kind of city. It’s built on blood, the blood of the Lamb who was slain and the blood of his servants who followed him. This city didn’t look much at all at first, constructed in weakness, but it became a great, loud, global city too. Not a city that gloried in herself though.

In this city we give the praise to God. This is a confident city but based on His power to save for the Bride. It’s all about Him.

And in this city we are glad about what happened to the other city because it was God’s justice that brought down that system of corruption and abuse. In our city, we’re glad when God vindicates his suffering people. We’re glad to see an end to idolatry and lies that entice but do so much damage.

This city is also really into fine linen. There’s a point of connection with Babylon, but no uncleanness here. The bride’s garments are the radiant robes of righteousness. And in this city, the sound of bride and bridegroom will always be heard. The marriage supper will never end.

The rejoicing will only ramp up. This is not a city of mourning. It’s a place of tears wiped away.

In this city, the residents are secure, they’re provided for, and they’re godly. And in her brightness and purity, This city bride will shine forever. 19:6, hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his bride has made herself ready.

2 cities, 2 cultures, 2 people groups, 2 very different sets of loyalties and loves. And that’s really the big thing in this big final section in Revelation. 17:1 says, come, I will show you the judgement of the great prostitute. More famously, 21:9, come, I will show you the bride. So which city’s destiny do you want to be all wrapped up with?

I mean, it’s a stupid question, isn’t it, when you hear the storey played out like that? And that’s why the application is so loud and clear and obvious. It’s 18:4, the application: Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins. Come out of her. But where even is Babylon?

And so what would it mean for us to come out of her? Well, we should never wander far from those 7 churches as we apply the detail. Actual ancient Babylon had long gone up in smoke by the 1st century, but a great decadent idolatrous global militaristic seemingly eternal city? Rome, anyone? Yeah, for sure, but chapter 18 roots back not just to Babylon of Daniel’s day, the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis alluded to in 18:5.

Her sins are heaped up as high as heaven. The only thing reaching heaven here in Babylon Babylon is her piled-up sin. Babylon’s really a picture of all humanity making it on its own without reference to its Maker.

And that’s actually why— here’s another— it’s the kind of Old Testament stuff loaded in. The judgments and rebukes in chapter 18 copy language that God used earlier against Sodom and Tyre and Nineveh and Babylon. And Jerusalem, even to the extent that all those places express the basic human instinct to do it my way, trusting my chosen providers and me deciding what’s good and who’s God. Is London Babylon then? Yeah, another great global city, still the greatest according to a survey I was reading the other day as the capital of capitals London negotiates the uncharted terrain of a post-Brexit, post-pandemic world, but for now it still reigns atop the planet’s best cities.

Well done, ours. Well, great global cities are prone to arrogance and independence, but so are people in the Highlands and Islands to the extent that they share the same worldview. And it’s not just the great and the good who live on the boulevards mourning in Babylon, those far-off sailors of verse 17, that they’re like the truckers, I suppose. They are gutted when it all goes belly up because their providers are gone. Come out of her.

And that for us, I think, can feel even more complex than that scenario I described in the dystopian novel from the start, because it’s not leave town and withdraw to a monastery. Actually, in Revelation, if you’re going to stop mixing with anyone physically, Make it be those compromised teachings and teachers that were such a menace to the churches. When we live in Babylon, we need teachers who keep the black and white things black and white. So yeah, come out from people who try to turn God’s clear commands grey, but don’t leave town as the application. Babylon might have become a dwelling place of demons, But Jesus wants his churches shining right in among the people.

Remember where Satan dwells? As Daniel shone back in actual Babylon way back. But verse 4, if you don’t want to share in the plagues of her destruction later, don’t take part in her sins now. And some of that’s just screamingly obvious. The reference to human souls in verse 13, your footnote might tell you that’s about slavery.

That’s actually describing the horrors of human trafficking. But lots of the detail will be harder for us to disassociate from because we need jobs and money and stuff. You might think some of the luxuries described in this chapter are a bit crude. You might not. You know, when I was a trainee solicitor, in my first week in the city, they took us up to the top of the Lloyd’s building, which many of you will be familiar with.

It’s right across the road from St Andrews, got these amazing dining rooms at the top because when they built the modern Lloyd’s building, they loved their dining rooms from the old building so much that they took them apart brick by brick and put them at the top of the new build across from St Andrews there. And so they took us trainee solicitors up to have a look at this, and they didn’t quite say, oh, this could one day be yours. But why do you take a bunch of 23-year-olds up there in their first week in the city if that— of course that was the point. If you do really well in London, children.

I think the sexual imagery in this passage helps nail the point. Who are you in bed with? For provision, affirmation, that must-have relationship, job, pension. However much of my godliness or the truth I have to compromise to get it, whoever’s altar I have to worship at. And one of the 7 churches, Laodicea, they were so compromised that they’d even stopped praying because who needs to?

We’re rich, I’ve prospered, I need nothing. Very Babylon.

Faithful witness, it’s just such a good test of our true loyalties because it costs. Faithful witness costs lives. We’ve seen that in Revelation, as we see around the world today. But it also costs money when you give to support faithful witness. It costs earning potential and career progression when you make it clear that the company’s not your king.

It costs relationships and reputation when you’re known as one of the faithful witnesses of Jesus. And when you say yes or no to the friendship group based on your loyalty to him.

I was just thinking, it’s so easy for us to feel sorry for ourselves in this phase, isn’t it? While we feel the cost of faithful witness— poor me compared to those other people, this extra load I carry trying to be faithful to Jesus. And I so quickly forget that we’re the bride of Christ. He loves us. Remember, Jesus sacrificed everything to make sure it works out well for you and me in the end.

And so weak, wearied, worried, wobbly, tempted to be worldly— well, it will be worth the patient endurance in the end. It will be so worth it.

And you know, I quickly forget that all the stuff that entices me and intimidates me in London will one day just crumble, as surely as the remnants of actual Babylon. Do you know where they are? They’re in a glass box around the corner from Euston Church in the British Museum. It’s quite a thought, isn’t it? Bank of England, the BBC, the magic circle firms— they seem so permanent, don’t they?

1 hour. It was all laid waste in a single hour in Babylon. And yeah, this is picture language, but it’s a picture of something very real. So who should be feeling sorry for who?

You know, the pictures of judgement unfold at the end of Revelation. They get more painful and personal when we think of people we love who have no interest in Jesus. But the thing I have to remind myself about chapters like this is we don’t live in this picture of judgement yet. Babylon’s ultimate downfall is still future. And so believing this stuff about judgement is not some sort of badge of doctrinal correctness.

It’s a call to witness, to call others out of Babylon while there’s still time.

I think the real test here is at the end of days, will you be one of the ones mourning when Babylon turns out to have been in vain? Will you be part of the tragic storey of having invested so much, gained so much of what turned out to be fleeting pleasures?

Or maybe it’s worth thinking about this the other way around. If you got to the end of your life and it turned out the bride was a pipe dream and that Babylon actually was all there really was, imagine it turned out there was no future with Jesus. Would you be more like the Christians in Smyrna church? And they’d be devastated if there was no future with Jesus, gutted, because we sacrificed everything for that crown of life. Or would we be more like that rich church in Laodicea, not that bothered really if the new creation didn’t come because we didn’t miss out on anything that Rome offered actually.

We were rich.

The angel said to me, write this: blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, these are the true words of God. These are the true words of God, people. Amen.