Seeing the smoke of her fiery ordeal, they cry out, "Who is like the Great City?"  They threw dust on their heads and cried out weeping and mourning, "Woe, woe, the Great City, by which everyone who had ships on the sea prospered on account of her wealth, for in one hour it was laid waste."  Rev. 18:18, 19.
 
    Kings, merchants, and sailors all take their turns mourning the passing of Babylon.  Revelation 18:9-19 contains the longest extant list of products from the Roman period.  John adapts Ezekiel's list of more than 40 products that Tyre traded in his day (Eze. 27:2-24).  Ezekiel arranged his list geographically while John structured his topically--by type of cargo (see Rev. 18:12, 13).  The focus in Revelation is largely on luxury items, not trade in general. 
 
    Rome's newly rich in the first century flaunted their gold and silver.  The empire imported the metals from Spain, where it owned a number of mines, but the human cost was high.  Slaves who worked these mines rarely lived more than a few years.  Merchants brought in precious stones mostly from India, and divers retrieved pearls from the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
 
    Fine linen came from Spain, Asia Minor, and Egypt.  Purple and scarlet cloths served as symbols of affluence and luxury.  Silk had to travel from China, so only the ultrarich could afford it.  Citron wood, imported from North Africa, was rare enough that a table made with it could cost as much as a large estate.  Elephants became virtually extinct within the Roman Empire because of the ivory trade.
 
    Cinnamon originated from Somalia and southward in East Africa.  The voyage to there from Rome was a two-year round trip (that means expensive).  Other spices had their origin in India, and incense and perfumes came from Arabia and Somalia.  Sicily and Spain provided the best wine.  In John's day the empire experienced a grain shortage at the same time as it had a wine surplus (cf. Rev. 6:6), because the wine trade was more profitable than grain.  "Fine flour" was definitely a luxury item compared to coarse grain.  The best flour had to be shipped all the way from Africa.
 
    Even the rich rarely ate beef, since farmers used cattle more as work animals.  Herders butchered some sheep for mutton, but most were used to produce wool.  Italy did not have sufficient pasture for horses, so the promoters of chariot races brought horses from Africa and Spain in order to provide public entertainment.
 
    John concludes his list (Rev. 18:12, 13) with the "bodies and souls of men."  Since the empire was at peace, it had no steady supply of slaves from captives of war.  So slave traders rescued babies discarded by the poor.  Other slaves were "imported" from Asia.
 
Lord, help me understand the true cost of self-indulgence.  I want to develop a spirit of service instead.

  The merchants of these things, who had become rich because of her, were standing at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and grieving, saying, "Woe, Woe, the Great City, dressed in fine linen and purple and red garments, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls.  For in one hour so much wealth has been laid waste."  And every captain, and everyone who sets sail for any place, and sailors and whoever makes a living from the sea, they all stood at a distance.  Rev. 18:15-17.
 
    As we have seen, Babylon was not only wealthy, but fully self-absorbed in her prosperity (Rev. 18:7).  She was willing to do almost anything to preserve her wealth and position.  But the statement of Jesus "Give, and it will be given to you" (Luke 6:38, NIV) suggests the ironic principle that if you want to be truly wealthy, you have to give your riches away.
 
    It seems that the one who creates a family fortune finds meaning and purpose in assembling it.  But that kind of motivation will not work for later generations.  They will inherit more than they can ever use, and unless they have learned to serve a higher purpose with that wealth, they lose any sense of meaning and goal.  They will focus instead on the pursuit of social status and will be willing to spend enormous sums on self-gratification.  This leads to the dissipation of the family fortune.
 
    In contrast to the Vanderbilts (see October 26), the Rockefellers early sensed the need to give back to the society that made the family's wealth possible.  As his wealth began to skyrocket, founder and oil magnate John D. Rockefeller found himself besieged with requests for help.  Spurred on by his Baptist faith, he had been generous before he became wealthy.  Years before, while a dry-goods clerk in Cleveland, he had given funds to an African-American man to free his wife from slavery.  Rockefeller came to believe that God had given him his wealth because He knew that he would "turn around and give it back."  The more he gave, the more money seemed to come in.  With Standard Oil generating massive dividends, John D. donated more than $500 million in his lifetime, a sum larger than the Vanderbilt fortune (the world's biggest at the time) just 30 years before.
 
    John D. wisely included his children in helping him to evaluate and process requests for aid.  With John D's example to follow, five generations of Rockefellers have continued to devote their lives to charity.  And all this giving does not seem to have reduced the family's wealth.  The Rockefeller Foundation alone is worth more than $3 billion today.  And that is only the tip of the iceberg.
 
Lord, help me give all I can, not just because it is the smart thing to do, but because it makes me more like You.

     [Cargoes] of cinnamon, spice and incense, perfume and frankincense, wine and olive oil, wheat flour and wheat grains, pack animals and sheep, horses and carriages, and the bodies and souls of men.  Rev. 18:13.
 
    How do you buy and sell the souls of men, as Babylon did?  What is a soul anyway?  The Hebrew philosophy of the Bible makes no division between body and soul.  Unlike the ancient Greeks, who thought the soul could exist apart from the physical body, the Bible understands the human person to be a unified whole.  In Hebrew thinking you cannot separate a person's thoughts from the chemical reactions in the brain.  What happens to the body affects the mind, and what happens to the mind has an impact on the body.
 
    Phineas Gage was an efficient and capable construction foreman in 1848.  Then a premature explosion on the job drove an iron bar through the front of his brain and out the top of his head.  Amazingly enough, not only did he survive the terrible accident, but doctors declared him physically healthy two months later.  But he was not able to return to his job.  The accident had totally altered his personality.  His actions were fitful and completely unpredictable.  You never knew what he would do next.  The damage to the physical tissue of the brain had completely changed the kind of person he was.
 
    Such stories confirm the biblical view of soul.  The basic meaning of "soul" is actually the whole person: mind, body, emotions, and spirit.  As at the creation of Adam, Scripture calls the whole person a "living soul" (Gen. 2:7, KJV).  When the Bible contrasts soul with body, as in Revelation 18:13, the word particularly emphasizes the mental, emotional, and spiritual side of the whole person.  It is one thing to control human bodies, as occurred in the case of slavery.  Slavery commands a person's body, but cannot dominate the mind and heart.  But Babylon's power goes beyond slavery.  She rules the whole person.  So Babylon is even more dangerous than the slave trader--she can trade in the "souls of men."
 
    This is why Jesus said, "Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.  Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell" (Matt. 10:28, NIV).  The "One" Jesus spoke about is God.  In Revelation 18 Babylon takes on a Godlike role, part of the great end-time deception.  We don't, however, need to submit ourselves to any power but God Himself.  Oppressors may try to compel us, but we can refuse them our inner allegiance.  We are citizens of another kingdom, the one that wins in the end.
 
Lord, my daily life often seems completely out of control.  I choose to accept Your rulership over my life today, no matter how I feel.

   The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her also, because no one buys their cargoes anymore, cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones, of pearls, linen, purple, silk, and scarlet.  Every kind of scented wood and objects made of ivory, costly wood, brass, iron, and marble.  [Cargoes] of cinnamon, spice and incense, perfume and frankincense, wine and olive oil, wheat flour and wheat grains, pack animals and sheep, horses and carriages, and the bodies and souls of men.  "The fruit of your soul's desires have gone away from you, and everything that was luxurious or radiant has perished from you.  They will not find these things anymore."  Rev. 18:11-14.
 
    Though luxury means as much to people today as it did then, this list is largely strange to us.  When God revealed Himself to John, He spoke in the language of the prophet's time and place.
 
    Nearly two decades ago I received a package from a pastor (let's call him George) whom I respected a great deal.  It contained a letter asking me to read the accompanying notebook on a most difficult passage in the book of Revelation.  He wanted my feedback on his research.  A couple nights later I was tossing and turning, completely unable to sleep.  So I decided I might as well get up, go to the other end of the house, and look at George's notebook.
 
    The clarity and passion of his presentation fascinated me.  Yet for some reason he saw something in each symbol and in each verse that my research indicated was not possible.  It appeared to me that he was stringing a series of zeros together, believing that it added up to something.  I thought it would not be difficult to set him straight.
 
    Correspondence revealed that we didn't agree on a thing in this text!  Finally it dawned on me what was happening.  I was reading the book of Revelation as if written around A.D. 90.  He was reading it as if composed around A.D. 1990!  George wrote as if John were familiar with the words of modern religious authors.  He viewed the book of Revelation as of John were alive today and through it speaking directly to the issues that drive certain Christians in today's world.
 
    But the reality is that John did not compose the book of Revelation today or during even the past century.  He wrote it during the first century, and it spoke powerfully to that time and place.  It is true that it has a message for us at the close of the cosmic conflict, but to read the Apocalypse from one's own point of view is to end up where you begin--with ideas of your own making.  God's message for us today is best discerned when we first pay attention to His message to John.
 
Lord, help me to be patient as I wrestle with the message You gave to John.  Help me not to assume that the first thing I see in the text is the very thing You intended for me.

 The kings of the earth, who committed fornication with her and lived luxuriously, will weep and mourn over her when they see the smoke of her fiery ordeal.  They stand at a distance, for fear of her torment, saying, "Woe, woe is Babylon, the great city, the strong city, because in one hour your judgment has come."  Rev. 18:9, 10.
 
    The situation of end-time Babylon would have rung a bell with people in first-century Asia Minor.  They probably would have seen the "kings of the earth" here as the client kings (such as Herod in Palestine) that ruled in Rome's behalf in the provinces.  Such rulers would keep their distance from the destruction out of self-preservation.  Both then and now, love of "Babylon" is a self-interested thing and not self-sacrificing love.
 
    In the first century Rome was the engine that drove the prosperity of the empire.  Rulers in the provinces profited greatly from Roman rule.  Many would not have risen to power and status were it not for the emperor's patronage.  Rome provided security and prosperity for its friends.  And Asia, where John was located, was the richest of the provinces.
 
    But one reason Rome was so prosperous was that its luxury came at the expense of many.  Four hundred thousand tons of grain came annually to the capital from Egypt, North Africa, and the Black Sea region.  While provincials paid inflated prices for grain and sometimes had none, 200,000 families in Rome received a regular dole of free grain from the government.
 
    Rome's appetite for luxury and wealth lured many wealthy provincials to invest in products they could export to Italy rather than what the locals needed.  Landowners in Asia Minor used so much land for export items such as wine that Asia's cities had to import grain from Egypt and other areas.  So the landowners profited from their relationship with Rome, but the common people had to pay high prices for their basic food needs (see Rev. 6:5, 6).
 
    Roman commercial interests also propagated its religion, so people who wanted to buy and sell to the empire had to worship in exchange for the privilege.  John no doubt enjoyed the irony of this vision.  It is no wonder that the merchants and rulers in the provinces lament.  They had sold their soul to the system that pampered them, and now that system had collapsed!
 
    Jews were exempt from the religion of Rome, so they were able to buy and sell around the system.  But Christians of the first century who were kicked out of the synagogue would have to choose between participating in pagan worship or losing their access to income.  In the last days, similar challenges will take place in the world.
 
Lord, help me to see the degree to which wealth and power, rather than faithfulness to You, motivate my actions.

  Just as she has glorified herself and lived luxuriously, so give to her torment and pain.  Because in her heart she says, "I sit as a queen, I am not a widow, and I will never know pain."  For this reason, in one day her plagues will come: death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned with fire, for strong is the Lord God who has judged her.  Rev. 18:7, 8.
 
    It is clear from our text that Babylon is not only wealthy--she is fully self-absorbed in her wealth.  Her full attention is on her own pleasure, and she will defend that position at all costs.  She has ignored the teaching of Jesus: "Give, and it will be given to you" (Luke 6:38, NIV).  This suggests that if you want to be wealthy you have to give your riches away.  To hoard them will cause you to lose them.
 
    The fate of the Vanderbilt fortune illustrates the principle.  The Vanderbilts differed with their wealthy peers in two respects.  First, they had more money.  William H. Vanderbilt, president of the New York Central Railroad, left his heirs $200 million upon his death in 1885.  That sum had made him the wealthiest person on earth.  Second, the family seemed beset with a great reluctance to share any of its wealth with those less fortunate.  Shortly before his death the Commodore, as people referred to William H., responded to a Chicago Tribune reporter's question about social conscience with the expletive "The public be _____." 
 
    William Vanderbilt was not a total skinflint.  He did give $1 million for the founding of Vanderbilt University and once allowed his wife to persuade him to donate $50,000 for the building of a church, as long as it was specified that the gift was a secular gesture, not a religious one.
 
    The example of the Commodore seems to have been passed on to his descendants.  What gifts they made to charity tended to be one-shot affairs, often after death.  As was the case with the Commodore's church donation, they had no personal involvement in the few projects that they supported.  Compared to the monumental contributions of the Morgans, the Fords, and the Rockefellers, the bequests of he Vanderbilt family were relatively small.  Yet in spite of this careful hoarding of wealth, the Commodore's fortune is essentially gone today.
 
    It seems that giving provides the sense of purpose that families need to keep the spirit and vigor of the founder alive for later generations.  Where wealthy families have no such sense of purpose, they tend to dissipate their wealth in the pursuit of social and self-gratification, leading to the dissipation of the family fortune.  To paraphrase Jesus again: "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35, NIV).
 
Lord, touch my heart and the hearts of my children with the joy of giving.

   Just as she has glorified herself and lived luxuriously, so give to her torment and pain.  Because in her heart she says, "I sit as a queen, I am not a widow, and I will never know pain."  Rev. 18:7.
 
    The book of Revelation portrays Babylon as a queen dressed in fine garments and decked with jewels (Rev. 17:4, 5).  Her wealth is also the commercial engine that prospers the merchants of the entire world (Rev. 18:9-19).  She gained her wealth and standing, however, at the expense of others (Rev. 17:6; 18:2, 5).  So this text contains a call for reversal.  In contrast to her luxurious life, she now stands condemned to the kind of torment and pain she inflicted on others.  Scripture even lists her luxury as one of the grounds for her condemnation (Rev. 18:3).
 
    Is a luxurious life a sin against God, then?  If so, how luxurious?  Is the mere possession of riches cause for censure?  And if that is so, would not most of us stand condemned in today's world?  After all, what ancient person would not have been awed at the wealth of a "poor" person today, many of whom own aging but self-propelled vehicles, live in apartments with central heat, and own electronic boxes that bring news and entertainment from afar!  All of these would have been unimaginable luxuries in the Roman world.  Is wealth a sin?  And if so, how much wealth?
 
    The answer lies in the first part of Revelation 18:7.  It is not just that Babylon has lived luxuriously--it is that she has "glorified herself" in her possessions.  The possessions themselves do not condemn her, but rather it is her selfishness in the use of them that is the crucial thing.  Her goal in gathering possessions was not for the benefit of others or even humanity as a whole, but to glorify herself and make her own life comfortable and secure.
 
    I suspect that God is less concerned with the size of your house than with your hospitality or lack of it.  He is less worried about he kind of car you drive and more as to whether or not you use it to transport people who don't have a car.  The size of your social circle does not bother Him so much as how many people consider you a friend.  And He has less interest in the neighborhood you live in than He has with the way you treat your neighbors?
 
    I suspect that God doesn't mind if you have a high salary as long as you didn't compromise your character to obtain it.  God will not condemn you for working overtime, but He will want to know if you did it for your own sake or for the sake of others.  It doesn't bother the Lord if you gained advancements on the job, as long as you worked equally hard to promote others.  And He is less concerned with the quantity of your possessions than He is with the degree to which they rule your life.  Babylon thus isn't about what you have, but about how you live.
 
Lord, open my eyes to the Babylon within me.  Forgive my blindness to the needs of others and help me to see others through Your eyes.

 And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out from her, my people, in order that you might not participate in her sins and in order that you might not receive any of her plagues.  Because her sins have accumulated up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes.  Treat her the way she treated others.  Pay her double according to her works.  Mix double for her in the very cup in which she mixed."  Rev. 18:4-6.
 
    It is easy to look at the residents of Babylon and say, "What's the matter with them?  Why are they supporting the evil city with their presence?  Don't they see what she is doing?"  But the reality is that it is hard to recognize the corporate sins of an organization when you are a part of it.  Since groups of people tend to share the same blind spots, it is easier to see corporate sin from the outside rather than from the inside.
 
    God's end-time people will need a great deal of discernment to recognize clearly the deceptive webs of Babylon when the end comes.  To avoid getting sucked into Babylon's deceptions, we need to develop a prayerful knowledge of God's Word.  And we will want to combine that study and prayer with a healthy dose of self-distrust, so that we can discover our personal blind spots as we approach the end.  One way to discover blind spots is to study the Bible in groups and do a lot of listening to others.  Safety rests in many counselors.
 
    I express my self-distrust with the following prayer from time to time: "Lord, I want the truth, no matter what the cost--even the truth about myself."  Such truth can be costly.  One Christian prayed two hours a day, telling God passionately that he loved Him so much that nothing else mattered.  It was not until his wife died suddenly that he truly understood what it was that he had been praying about.
 
    When we see corporate abuse and exploitation, we need to speak out against it.  But eventually a society becomes too corrupt to listen.  At such times God tells us to withdraw from it before it self-destructs or gets destroyed from the outside.  We hear echoes of Sodom and Lot in the call of Revelation 18:4.  When Sodom's time for destruction came, Lot had to leave Sodom or perish with it.
 
    It is easy to condemn anyone belonging to an organization that operates contrary to Scripture.  Our text, however, shows that many connected with "Babylon" are not doomed until the very end.  God has His saints in every place and in every organization today.  In a world with many shades of gray, it takes discernment to know right from wrong.
 
Lord, I see the need to study, stretch, grow, and learn.  I invite You to be my constant guide and support along the way.

    After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority.  The earth was illuminated with his glory.  He cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Babylon the great has fallen!  It has fallen!  It has become a dwelling place for demons, and a cage for every kind of unclean spirit and every king of unclean and hateful bird.  For every nation has drunk from the wine of the wrath of her fornication.  The kings of the earth have committed fornication with her and the merchants of the earth have become rich because of her large capacity for luxury.  Rev. 18:1-3.
 
    This passage will be directly fulfilled just before the second coming of Jesus.  But the principle of Babylon can be found at many times and in many places.  Babylon is more than just a dangerous outfit in another time and place.  So we're glad that we are with the good guys!  But at the risk of seeming unpatriotic, let me explore a few considerations that may bring this passage a little closer to home for Americans.
 
    The United States today is not an evil empire in the sense of a totalitarian or repressive state such as Assyria or Nazi Germany.  Such nations automatically invite judgment unless they repent.  But this text seems to apply to America in other ways.  We live in a world today in which the dominant trading partner of most countries in the world is the United States of America.  And while many of the goods traded are fairly neutral in a spiritual sense, much of American trade contributes greatly to the evil in the world.
 
    America has become one of the primary exporters of immorality.  One of the most widely watched television programs in the world for years was Baywatch.  Is it any wonder that some Muslim nations, who try to guard against public exposure of he human body, have regarded the United States as the "Great Satan"?  After all, American priorities in the Middle East seem quite clear.  When the Saudi government demanded that the U. S. embassy close down worship services and nightclubs for American citizens, the embassy compromised.  If they could keep the nightclubs open, they would terminate worship services.
 
    The export of American-style democracy seems like an improvement over oppression, but often a dramatic rise in Mafia-style crime accompanies it.  Popular songs in newly minted democracies glorify drugs and rape, courtesy of the American entertainment industry.  Alarmed by a younger generation that is getting its values from Hollywood and MTV, Chinese officials have sought stricter controls on public morality.
 
    If John were alive today, would he apply the term Babylon to the United States?
 
Lord, give me eyesalve to see clearly the sin that lies in my own backyard.  Help me to clear the beams in my own eyes before I criticize the specks in the eyes of others.

After these things I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority.  The earth was illuminated with his glory.   He cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Babylon the great has fallen!  It has fallen!  It has become a dwelling place for demons, and a cage for every kind of unclean spirit and every kind of unclean and hateful bird.  Rev. 18:1, 2.
 
    Babylon is more than just an end-time power.  As the "great city" it symbolizes all the evil powers that have ever dominated the earth.  In the Greek of Revelation 17:18 Babylon "is" the great city that "has rulership" over the kings of the earth.  This combination of a present tense verb with a present participle ("has rulership") is one of he most continuous expressions possible in the Greek.  It means that Babylon rules constantly and ceaselessly over the kings of the earth.  The principles of Babylon lie behind all the powers in earth's history that try to coerce and exploit people.
 
    Babylon can rear its ugly head in surprising places.  Israelite law required slaveholders to provide freed slaves with resources so they could build their own lives (Deut. 15:13, 14).  But freed slaves in America never received the promised "forty acres and a mule."  While the Northern states ended slavery through the Civil War, the freed slaves themselves lacked the land to become self-sufficient in the agricultural South.  Many freed slaves became virtual debt slaves on the same estates on which they had once worked in bondage.
 
    In the early twentieth century millions of rural Southern Blacks moved to Northern cities, hoping to find employment and to escape segregation.  What they met instead was a new kind of segregation known as "White flight."  As the Whites left the inner city they took their money with them, resulting in today's urban ghettoes.  While slavery ended nearly 150 years ago, those born into the ghetto have automatic educational and economic disadvantages.  Such disadvantages stem from conscious choices made by our ancestors on economic rather than ethical grounds.
 
    Am I responsible for the sins and injustices of my ancestors?  The Bible seems to answer yes (Rev. 18:4-7; Matt. 23:29-36).  To ignore these disparities because "I had nothing to do with it" is like a baseball team cheating into the ninth inning and then saying, "OK, we'll play fair for the rest of the game!"  Christians must be willing to do something but what is it?
 
    Race-based reparations may not be the answer.  As John Perkins (an African-American preacher) jokes: "Many poor people would immediately buy an expensive car, and the rich people would have their money back!"  But we can invest our time and money in needy communities.  We can fined ways to empower the poor to build their own lives.
 
Lord, give me a heart to see the need of another the way You view it.  Fill me with the courage and the sacrificial willingness to do something about it.