“Come Out of Her, My People”
Revelation 18:4-8
“And I heard another voice from heaven saying, "Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render to her just as she rendered to you, and repay her double according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her. In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, 'I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.' Therefore her plagues will come in one day--death and mourning and famine. And she will be utterly burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her.”
In Revelation 17, ecclesiastical, religious Babylon is destroyed by the Antichrist and his ten kings after he uses her to rise to power in the first half of the seven-year Tribulation. After she is gone, the Antichrist sets up his one world, global economic and political system, also called Babylon, by which he is able to rule the world and demand that it worship him.
I don’t think we can begin to imagine the wicked and evil conditions of the world during this last three and a half years of the Tribulation. Remember Jesus said it would be like in the days of Noah where they were “buying and selling, eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (Matthew 24:37-39). It was a time of “corruption, violence and when every imagination of the hearts was evil continually” (Genesis 6:5-13).
Remember also that the most evil demons that ever existed are free to roam the earth during these last years of the Tribulation influencing people to do vile, wicked, and evil things. The money will be flowing, corruption will be rampage, men will live for sexual pleasure in any and whatever form they desire to indulge in, and it will be like one, great big, long party! Remember Jesus also said it would be like in the days of Lot: “Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed.” (Luke 17:28-30)
The world will have totally forgotten there is a God in heaven except to blaspheme Him and kill and slaughter anyone who becomes a believer from the preaching of the 144,000 protected Jews and refuses to take the mark of the beast. The world will be a place of total debauchery like it has never seen before! It is from this world system of total ungodliness that God still sends a voice to call out His saints to holiness and not “share in her sins” (v. 4).
This admonition by the “voice from heaven” to “come out of her, My people” (v. 4), parallels Jeremiah 50:8 and 51:6, 45. Remember Jeremiah was prophesying about the judgment of God that was about to fall on the literal kingdom of Babylon in his day. But many prophesies in the Old Testament have what we call a “double fulfillment. Where there is an immediate fulfillment of the prophecy, but then there is also a future fulfillment of it. It is almost like John is quoting from these passages in Jeremiah as he speaks of the coming judgment on the Antichrist’s Babylon, and is hearing the call for the believers to “come out”.
In all ages, God's true people have had to separate themselves from that which is worldly and anti-God. When God called Abraham, He ordered him to get out of his country (Gen. 12:1). God separated the Jewish nation from Egypt and warned the Israelites not to go back. The church today is commanded to separate itself from that which is ungodly (Rom. 16:17-18; 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1).
John offered several reasons for God's people separating themselves from the diabolical system. The first is that they might avoid pollution, by "sharing or partnering in her sins" (Rev. 18:4). Paul told Timothy to "Neither be partaker of other men's sins" (1 Tim. 5:22). The word means "joint fellowship or partnership." There is a good partnership in the Lord (Phil. 4:14), but there is also an evil partnership that we must avoid. “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness…” (Eph. 5:11). True unity of the Spirit exists among believers, but we must not compromise by joining forces with that which is opposed to Christ.
Jesus said that we, as believers, are in the world, but we are not to be a part of the world (John 17:11-18). But we are to be a witness to the world around us by living like Jesus. May the Lord help us to do this today!
God bless!
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