Revelation 18

     We continue to look at the fall of the great Harlot.

     18:1-3.  This angel has great authority and illumines the earth with his glory because he speaks of what God has already done, history illumined by the word of God.  The very word of God spoken by his prophets has been fulfilled to the letter in the fall of Babylon past.  (See these examples of such prophecy: Is. 21:9; 34:11, 13-15; Jer. 50:46; 51:6-10.)  The fall he proclaims was the final destruction of that great city.  It was never rebuilt.  The last man who had dreams of rebuilding the literal Babylon was the recently hanged Saddam Hussein.

     18:4-20.  Another voice issues a command to his people (4) to come out of the condemned city, that is, to not participate in the sins of a “city” about to receive the same final plagues as Babylon.  ” ‘Come out from their midst and be separate,’ says the Lord”  (2 Cor. 6:17).  It is a matter of where the heart and mind is.  “For the mind set on the flesh is death, but the mind set on the Spirit is life and peace” (Ro. 8:6; cf. 1 Pet. 1:14, 18-19).

     18:6.  This verse is very badly translated in the NASB.  As it stands (“…give back to her double according to her deeds…, mix twice as much for her.”), it violates the Lord’s own law of justice, which is “As you have done, it will be done to you” (Obad. 15; cf. Jer. 50:29).  There are a number of places the translators make this mistake with the word double (Is. 40:2 is an example).  The word as often used in Scripture apparently means an exact equivalent, a match, the same treatment dished out is doubled back upon the guilty.  The first part of v.6, and v.7, prove the point.  “Pay her back even as she has paid,….  To the degree that she glorified herself…, to the same degree give her torment.”

     More literally, v.6 might be translated, “Pay her back even as she has paid, and double to her [margin] according to her deeds; in the cup she has mixed, mix for her her double.”  V.7 then tells us exactly what is meant.  As she has done, it will be done to her to the same degree justice demands for her crimes, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.  Our salvation depends on exactly this economy of balanced justice.  While Christ’s one death redeemed all the elect, he had to really die that once to save even one.

     18:7.  I sit as a Queen.  See Is. 47:7-8; cf. Jer. 50:29.  She is no widow, because she has a vast number of “husbands”.

     18:8-19.  All those who were seduced by her wealth and luxury, and committed acts of immorality (fornication) and lived sensuously with her mourn her sudden fiery judgment.  Such a strong city!  No one saw it coming.  Not the kings who weep and lament over her, because they fear suffering her same torment (9-10).  Not the merchants of both land and sea trade, who supplied her with every fleshly indulgence, even to the bodies and souls of men (13 margin).  These weep and mourn the longest and loudest, for no one buys their cargos any more, nor do they become rich by her wealth (11, 19).  All is laid waste in one hour, like the worst market crash one can imagine.  So it is when death comes to those who have sold their souls for the temporary wealth and glitter of the world (cf. Lk. 12:19-21).  They “have fattened their hearts in a day of slaughter” (Jas. 5:5).

     18:20.  But heaven and all those who place their hope in heaven rejoice over her.  It is for their sakes that God has judged her with the same judgment with which she judged them (see margin; cf. Jer. 51:48-49).

     18:21-24.  (Cf. Ps. 137.)  We see here the final doom of the great harlot signified by a strong angel taking up a stone like a great millstone and casting it into the sea (cf. Mark 

9:42).  After making a big splash, she is gone without a trace.  No longer are the sounds of human activity heard in her, for she deceived the nations, and murdered God’s people.