Drinking

DEVOTION

THE REVELATION

DRINKING

Rev 14:8

8 A second angel followed and said, "Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great, which made all the nations drink the maddening wine of her adulteries."

NIV

Here again many of the learned men of the past would ascribe this Babylon the Great to the city of Rome, either the great Roman Empire which certainly made conquests throughout much of the world around it, and forced its rule upon the people, or the Papal Rome which has certainly given its rituals to many nations, without given the truth of the gospel message. Yet once again we are left with past events or past happenings except of course this idea of the Papal Rome. It is true in some sense that it spreads its traditions far more then it spreads the actual message of Jesus Christ being the one and only mediator between God and man, as their Savior. But this is not exclusive to Papal Rome. The Great Babylon can be seen as many things. It can be any system of religious or political nature. It could be an ideology or an economic system. It could be the church universal. It could a great nation such as ours. It could be humanism. The point this angel, this messenger, is saying that whatever it is, it had a great influence in all the nations. It is unlikely it is a political system, as no nation has ever had that much influence over all the other nations. It was not the Roman Empire, nor was it Russia, Germany, or any other country bent on conquest of the world. Could it be the so called United Nations, a force of power over all those nations which belong? Does it cause them to drink its wine, an intoxicating ideology? Maybe someday this will fall. But maybe it is the ideology of humanism itself which infects many nations, leaving out God from any of its standards or conduct of living. This humanism creates its own deity and that is the deity of man himself. Perhaps someday this ideology will fall and man will see God for who he is. All these events, these calamities that have been brought forth by the hand of God are for that very purpose. There are to show, to demonstrate to the humanistic man that God is real, and they need to repent and turn to him. But maybe this great Babylon is the church universal. The whole of Christianity, which includes many diverse denominations which claim their worship of God, whoever they see God as. We would have to admit there are many supposed Christian churches that are not much more than a human organization. Many of them do not teach the need to repent and accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, that in order to gain access to the kingdom of God a person needs to be born again. Many of them have given way to tradition rather than truth. Perhaps this system of traditions is going to give way to the truth. Has this economic system of the great passion for wealth caused many to drink of this intoxicating potion? Could it have been communism or socialism or capitalism which brings so many under its power and influence? Any of those systems could fall at any time and give way to the truth of scripture seeing what real wealth, real worth is about. This also can apply to us personally. Have we drank the wine of any of these four powerful potions? Have we succumb to any of these, allowing them to influence our behavior, our thinking, our faith? Do we look to man for our provisions? Do we look to a government for our economic solutions? Do we look to traditions for security? Do we look to mankind to fix any problems? There is but one we need to look at for everything we need. God is our source of everything. Yes we need to work, to be employed. As he told Adam at the very beginning, he would need to toil all the days of his life, that the ground was cursed because of his disobedience, because he listened to his wife. He told him that through painful toil he would eat from the ground. Adam was never to retire. We need to labor to supply our food, just as Adam had to. But our source is still God. Whenever we look to our own efforts as our source we are mistaken. Jesus told us that if we ask the Father for anything in his name, he will provide it. By faith we have our home, by faith we have our job, by faith we have our food, clothing, cars and most of all, by faith we have eternal life. We cannot afford to drink from the maddening wine of any system or anyone else other than the wine that represents the blood of Jesus. We need to be aware of what we are drinking.