Revelation 18:4-8 - Come out of her, my people

18:4,5

So the first three verses have shown us the ultimate destiny of the world system, we now get the instruction to God’s people. And the command is “Come out of her, my people”. This is a quote from Jeremiah 51:45. Now we need to look at things in balance, i.e. look at the whole of Biblical teaching. This does not mean we have nothing to do with the world, we do not become hermits. In Jer 29 God tells the exiles to settle in Babylon and to seek the well-being of the place. So we are to seek the well-being of the place where we live, but we do so knowing its ultimate destiny. And we do so without denying Christ. As evil increases there comes a point where the world demands that we deny God’s ways or even God Himself. We must not go down that road. So in the West for a lot of the time it was possible to be faithful to Christ and to work within the world. Now this is starting to become increasingly difficult. We must not “share in her sins”. There are parts of the church that think it is a good idea to go along with the world. This is both wrong and foolish. If we do so then we will share in the judgement as well. “Her sins are piled up to heaven” and God will remember her sins. This does not mean He hasn’t previously realised what was going on! Rather it means that the time for judgement has come.

18:6-8

These verses describe the judgement. The world will receive double for what she has done.  She will receive what she has sown. The defeat of Nazi Germany was a good example of this. She inflicted terrible violence on various peoples, but when the tide turned the Soviets inflicted at least equal violence upon Germany. The judgement was terrible. Nazi Germany’s “plagues overtook her”, she was consumed by fire.