6/27/2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Then a mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea, and said: ‘With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again.’” (Revelation 18.21)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

I recently watched a National Geographic special on the Hawaiian Islands. It is the most prominent of all archipelagos in the world. The chain of islands extends nearly 1500 miles. Perhaps, one day, they may extend a little farther as the tectonic plate they ride on continues to move to the west. As for now, the great island of Hawaii continues to grow as it sits over the vent of magma which spawned it. The others were spawned from it as well but have moved on in the journey across the face of the deep. We are able to watch as the magma flows from deep in the earth and having built up a mountain (from top to sea floor) that is greater in height than Mount Everest, flows out across the lava rock in its march to the sea. Fire, steam and smoke rise to the heavens in a steady pace consuming most anything and everything in its path. Its seem invincible until it comes to the water’s edge. Despite its heat of nearly 2200 degrees, the relentlessness of the ocean consumes it, silences it and cools it until it is as rock. The island grows and the ocean waves on. I use that image in my mind as I consider the fate of “Babylon,” whatever city it might be called in today’s day and age. Because of the voracious appetite for self-indulgence in the diet of evil (turning that which is good into something self-serving), Babylon will face the catastrophic judgment of God’s justice.

A conflagration resembling that which consumed Sodom and Gomorrah will fall upon Babylon. The fire is representative of a “passion.” It reduces a material into its essential matters. That which is pure continues to exist. That which is not becomes as ash. We have to look at the Day of Pentecost and see the awesomeness of the “fire from heaven” which descended on those in the Upper Room. They had gathered together to worship, pray and mutually support one another until the “day of their completion.” On that day, the Holy Spirit of God would come down. It would refine them and define them as not just disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, but as disciple makers. They were the ones first commissioned to be sent out into the world as movers and shakers of faith in the One True God. They knew of and would speak of the Only God who so loved the world He would send His Only Begotten Son into the world. What was the purpose of that Son? It was to fulfill all righteousness as God had defined it so that those who would call themselves “His People” would not perish but have everlasting life. They were reduced to their essential being. They, being filled with the spirit, were figuratively “on fire” for the gospel. They would begin their march across the “face of the deep” of the world which was sinking in sin and bring light and life to all. But, some would prefer the darkness. They would fall so in love with sin, their sin, that living in any other way was seemingly impossible. And even when the Temple leadership of Israel parenthetically attempted to throw “water on the fire” to cool it and turn them to stone in silence, it was insufficient to stem the tide.

But, not so with the stone which God would hurl into the waters which lapped at the hems of Babylon. The stone was so heavy, as heavy as a mill stone which would crush a grain of wheat into flour, that the torrent of water which covered over the ash heap of Babylon would be made as lifeless stone. Like the ocean which met the lava that flowed and turned it into motionless rock, so would the waters of life do the same for the once great Babylon. She was consumed with a fiery passion, a lust we can certainly call it, for her own life. She was not only consumed by it but was a consumer with it. She ate and drank life out of those who came to her, who were drawn to her and who were brought into her presence as prisoners of her “self-love.” It was the kind of passion which Paul mentions to the fellowship of faith in Corinth called “pornea.” He would urge those who had a burning passion for intimacy to marry or be strong to deny it but not to be consumed by it. Such consumption reduced people to objects and affections to derilections. We see it the same in today’s world with the sex and drug trafficking, with the gourging of hungry for power people and with those who promote a brand of faith which only speaks of faith in them and not in the One who is above all. Her fire is silenced. Her passion is sated in a way she never imagined: death. Her ashes become dust as the lava stone will become sand and soil. The idolatry of Babylon reflects the emptiness to which it belongs. And like Lot’s wife who turned to see “the fire from heaven” as was turned to stone, a pillar of salt which had lost its saltiness, there is nothing left to see today. So, too, will Babylon be no more. Those who trusted in her will be left to flounder in the sea of their despair and without hope. Woe to those who mimic Babylon of old and yet to come!

A PRAYER FOR TODAY:

You are our God and we shall be Your people in spirit and in truth. Continue to dwell among us. Let the revelation by Your Holy Spirit inspire us to greater service in a more refined identity. We do not live as ourselves for ourselves. Rather, we live in Christ as He lives in us. We declare it with all the elders and angels in Heaven, saying “Holy, holy, holy is He who was and is and is to come.” In Jesus’ name we live, serve and pray. AMEN.