What Does "Babylon the Great" Really Mean in Revelation 18?

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. And again, it's good to have everybody back for another taping session, and as I look over the group again, I know we're from various and sundry places throughout eastern Oklahoma. I'm not going to try and name them all, because the last time I did that, I forgot Hope's little town of Bixby, and she let me know that. But we've got several towns and cities represented here, and for those of you out in the television audience in the Oklahoma area, if you'd ever like to come in on a Wednesday afternoon, we realize that for working people that's not always possible, consequently most of us here are retired, or few have been able to get a day off. But if you're in the area of Tulsa, or if you happen to be in one of the other television viewing areas, and you come to Tulsa, check with us, and if you happen to be here for an afternoon, we'd love to have you come in and join us here in the studio. We start at one o'clock sharp, and we tape four half hour programs, all right in succession with just a coffee break in between. So if you sometimes wonder, well why have you got all the same people, and why is everything the same for a whole month, well that's the reason. We tape four programs right in succession, and we just have a good time. It's just a well spent afternoon, and that's why I'm always appreciative of everyone that drives in for this. Without them we just couldn't do it. Again we want to let the television audience know that all of our past programs are available on videotapes, and while I'm talking about videotapes I have my son and his wife and their little son, my little grandson with us this afternoon, and Jeanette here is the one who does all the dubbing. She has just about got a full time job dubbing, and she's meticulous, she monitors constantly, she doesn't just put them on a machine and then go her way. She monitors, and consequently of the hundreds and hundreds, and I think it's approaching almost 2 ,000 tapes that are now out. I think she's only had one that had a little something wrong with it, so I do appreciate what she does, and of course her husband, my son Greg, works with me every day on the ranching operation, and so I'm just real thrilled that they're with us this afternoon, and my little five year old, I don't know if he's going to make it through the afternoon or not, but grandma's going to have her hands full. Then again we want to remind folks that the first three six hour tapes have been transcribed now into printed form, we're mailing out book number three just left and right, and again we're just small potatoes, we're not a big organization. My wife Iris handles all of the mailing, she packages all the tapes and all the books along with her full-time nursing, so she stays fully employed, and I have to answer some questions that are coming in. Invariably people will call or ask if we don't need any financial help because we don't talk about money on the program. Well this program is no different than any other. We depend 100% on the gifts of God's people, and the reason I've always said I wouldn't beg for money, I feel that if we're in the Lord's business and He wants it to go on, then it'll go. But nevertheless we are dependent upon the gifts, the free will offerings and so forth. Now in that regard I always like to remind our folks that no one takes a dime out of the ministry, no person except our auditor and Jeanette of course for her taping. But there are no salaries, the lady that I call my business manager who takes care of all of the depositing of the checks, she pays the bills, she keeps everything running and brings out the monthly statement, she does it with no charge. She does it as a love for the Lord, and as I've mentioned before the gals that are transcribing the tapes that are printed page do it for nothing, and Nancy Carter back there she does all the footwork and she just almost works sometimes 24 hours a day, and we appreciate all these people. So consequently when you send $10 to this ministry, $9.95 goes strictly to my television time and produce the program. So much for announcements, I think I've covered most everything, and I'm just not much good at announcements. But anyway let's get into the book now, and those of you in the audience here in the studio I've had you turn to Revelation chapter 18. Again we always appreciate when people write and say that they just feel like they're part of the class. Well that's exactly what we want you to feel. This is informal, and the only difference between this class and our weekly night classes are in those two hour classes we let people just ask questions and we have discussions and we just have a ball. In the 30 minute time of a television program we just can't do it. But again for those of you in eastern Oklahoma and are able to drive a little ways, you call us and we'd love to have you in our nightly classes as well. Now in Revelation chapter 18, which was a chapter that we had skipped over previously because I was trying to chronologically bring out all the events that are taking place during this final seven years. Now you remember in our last program we were at the battle of Armageddon where all the armies of the world have gathered into the land of Israel, and Satan actually feels as though he can finally and once and for all get rid of the Jewish problem. I think that's the main reason that he calls all the armies to the Middle East, not realizing of course that it's going to turn into that final battle between himself and the Almighty God. And then as we saw in our last program, God destroys all of these accumulated armies there in the land of Israel with a tremendous hailstorm of a hundred pound hailstones. Now we covered all that, and the analogy of course in Scripture that it's like bringing the grapes into a wine vat. And you remember the verses we looked at last program were from Isaiah as well as from Revelation that his garments were sprinkled with red, and he gave the analogy then that as the person who walks in the wine vat gets splattered with the grape juice, so also he'll bring all the nations armies to the Middle East, pack them in primarily to the valley of Megiddo, and it will be likened then to a wine vat. And they will be destroyed there with that final bold judgment of hundred pound hailstones, and then of course the accompanying river of blood and water that will run as deep as the bridles and the horses bits. Now then as we come into chapter 18, this chapter just gives us the full view of how the whole world system as we know it, will finally come to its end. And we'll just go a few verses here, and then we have to go back to the Old Testament again. Revelation chapter 18, beginning at verse 1. So after these things, in other words after all the cataclysmic events that have been taking place, including of course the demise of the Antichrist, and all the armies of the world, I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power, and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily, with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, and is become the habitation of demons, and the abiding place of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. Now a lot of people try to make you think that this Babylon spoken of here in Revelation is the ancient city of Babylon rebuilt. And they've gone to great lengths, I've read books on how they feel that the ancient city of Babylon will be rebuilt, and it will become a great trade center, and a great cultural center in order to be the Babylon of the book of Revelation. Well I beg to differ on the basis of Scripture, and now I'm going to have you in the class as well as those of you joining us in television, turn back with me to Isaiah chapter 13. Now this Babylon in Revelation is not speaking of any one city in particular, but as we have been witnessing in the last 10, 15, 20 years especially, the world is just getting smaller and smaller isn't it? With our vast communication systems, and with the speed of transportation and what have you, the world is so small. Anything that happens in Tokyo is front page news in America within a matter of hours. And the same way with any place on the planet, anything that takes place is all of a sudden a world wide news event, and so it is with commerce and politics, we're talking about one world government lately, and the great new age. Well this is all because it's coming down to the place where indeed the whole thing can come to its end in just one very short period of time. So whenever you see that word Babylon in Revelation, always think of the whole global picture. Whether it's religion, in fact I guess I could put these three on the board. Babylon in Revelation is going to be comprised of the world's religions, the world's politics, and the world's economics. Now those three areas of activity comprise the whole social fabric of the world tonight, and it's all intertwined. The mayhem that's taking place in what they call now former Yugoslavia, what's the crux of the problem? Do you all know? Religion! It's strictly religion. But religion gets entwined with politics, and when you've got religion and politics it's going to get entwined with the economics, and that's the world's system. You see since the world is getting so small, and it's getting there so fast, the Bible can rightfully call that whole system now one word, Babylon. Now the other word for Babylon, or what we normally think of as Babel, is confusion. As the world gets smaller and smaller, and all of this becomes more intricately involved, what is rising proportionately? Confusion. Jesus said in Luke chapter 21, "...the perplexity of the nations." And isn't that where we're coming? They are just filled with perplexity. They don't know where to go next. Within our own nation we have perplexity, but that's nothing compared to the perplexity of the whole world. So now if you go to Isaiah chapter 3, here is the basis for my saying that the city of Babylon is not going to be rebuilt, it is not going to become a center of commerce and politics and religion again, because Scripture says so distinctly in Isaiah 13, and Babylon says, "...the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." Now this Babylon back in Isaiah is talking about the ancient city of Babylon, the capital of Nebuchadnezzar's empire. This city Babylon shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelled in from generation to generation, neither shall the Arabian pitch his tent there, neither shall the shepherds make their fold there, but wild beasts of the desert shall lie there, their houses shall be full of doleful creatures, and owls shall dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there, and the wild beasts of the island shall cry in their desolate houses, and so on and so forth. Now that's explicitly clear that the ancient city of Babylon with all of its beautiful hanging gardens and what have you, once it was destroyed, God had put such a curse upon that ancient city that it would never be rebuilt. Now it's just interesting how many things are said in Scripture that regardless of what man may try to do, it can't be done. One of them is the Golden Gate, we call it the Eastern Gate. If you ever see a picture of the Eastern Wall of Jerusalem, always be mindful right in the center of that wall, what do you always see? The Eastern Gate. Open or shut? It's shut. And Scripture said that when God mandated it to be shut, it would never again be opened until Christ returns. Now you know it's amazing, you go back through history, how many emperors and kings have said that they were going to go to Jerusalem and open that Eastern Gate. They never succeeded. They either died of unknown causes before it happened, or they were defeated by military power, but the Eastern Gate is closed to this very day. Why? Because Scripture said it would be. And so it is with Babylon. The Scripture says it will never be rebuilt, and consequently I can stand here and say unequivocally, it won't be. So the Babylon of the book of Revelation is, I'll repeat myself for emphasis, it's the whole global system. You know as I sometimes talk with corporation people, the bigwigs, the vice presidents and once in a while a president, and so on and so forth in some consulting work that I do, invariably they'll come up with this term where we have a global market. That word global is beginning to mean the same thing to everybody, politically, economically and religiously, and that is this whole world system is getting so intertwined that the Scripture is absolutely true by just calling it one word, and speaking of it as one city as Babylon. But it's all the great commercial and cultural centers of the world that are included in that one word. Now let's come on down to verse 3 of Revelation chapter 18. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, her gross immorality. The kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. Now as I was thinking on this verse during the week, and I make no apology even to the television audience that I'm a full time rancher, I've spent a lot of time out in those hot hay fields the last few days, and it's been hot in Oklahoma I'll tell you what. But I couldn't help as I was driving along bouncing of this verse, the word delicacies. You know the program on television, I don't watch it much, but I've seen maybe a few minutes of it here and there throughout the year, and it's that television program, The Lifestyle of the Rich and the Famous. Have you ever seen that? All right, that's exactly what I think of when I think on this verse. And that's not just in isolated areas of maybe America and so forth, that's worldwide. Even the communists, the apparatchiks I think is what they call them, what have they got outside the major cities of Russia? Well I think it's called the Dachau or something like that. And what is it? It's just a sumptuous place where they can live head and shoulders above the common man. And so it is all around the globe tonight, the rich and the famous with all of their high incomes, boy they live it up. Now if I were a stockholder of some of these major corporations, I would do like some of them are doing. I would just raise the roof over the tremendous salaries that these corporation presidents and vice presidents are taking home, a million, two million, three million dollars a year. Now I just can't envision any one man being worth that much every twelve months. But you see this is exactly where the world is coming to. Read it again. They have enveloped themselves in all the immoralities that money can buy, they have no moral component, now I'm not going to generalize and say all of them. There's always that few of course that are not part and parcel of it. But for the most part, these wealthy people are living a lifestyle that is sumptuous, immoral for the most part, and all they do is just feast on their riches and on their abundance of delicacies, with all the beautiful furnishings and their fabulous clothes. You know what Solomon would have called it? Vanity. Vanity. All is what? Vanity. But this is what the world is coming to, more and more. I remember a few years ago Greg went up to Chicago to see a Cubs baseball game, he's a Cubs fan. When he came home he wasn't as excited to tell me about the Cubs ball game as he was the tremendous wealth that people must have. They are big yachts and big boats sitting out there on Lake Michigan, and the wealth that people have just to play with. Well this is where the world is tonight, and where does that leave most of us as believers? I know the Lord has seen fit to bless a few believers with an abundance, but for the most part I dare say most of us of the Christian community are of very limited means. Verse 4. I heard another voice from heaven saying, Mark it closely, "...come out of her." Now this doesn't just mean in those last final hours of the Tribulation, this is speaking to you and I who are even living before the Tribulation has begun. Here is the admonition to believers who may have some kind of a desire to be a part and parcel of that lifestyle of the rich and famous. I hope I don't have to have some kind of a permit to use that. But anyway, how many may feel, Oh I wish I could be a part of that. Hey I don't. I wouldn't want any part of that kind of a lifestyle. I've often said I'd like to have enough so that if I needed a new car I could go and pay for it with a check and some of those things, but to have that kind of wealth, no. I don't want it. But anyway, verse 4 again, "...and I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her." That is out of this world system. Come out of this system of wealth and immoral type living and so forth. Come out of her, what are the next two words? My people. God doesn't expect the unsaved world to drop that lifestyle, but He expects His own to shun it. So come out of her, My people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, in other words again her lifestyle, and that ye receive not of her plagues. Oh listen, God is patient tonight, and I've said it on this program before. When you look around you today, I don't care where you are, whether you're in our sheltered Midwest, or if you're on the coast, or if you happen to be someplace else in the world. Which reminds me, we got an order the other day from South Korea for one of our tapes, so I can now talk globally too. But anyway, regardless of where we are on the world tonight, we have these things right before our eyes. But the Lord's admonition is, Come out of her, My people, that ye don't partake of her sins. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. As you look at some of these things that are going on around the world and in our beloved America, don't you wonder how long God is going to put up with it? Sure you do, but it's His grace, it's His mercy. It takes me back, just before the flood came, and the ark was ready, and everything was in it. What did God do for seven days? He left the door open, and the gangplank down, and anyone of that generation could have come into the ark of safety. But did they? Not a one. Now it's the same way today. One of these days, and I think we're getting closer and closer, God's grace is going to come to an end. He's going to drop the curtain, and in will come His awful wrath and vexation. I've only got a few moments left again. Now come back with me. Come out of her, My people. Keep that up here in your mind, and come back with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 6. 2 Corinthians chapter 6. This whole concept of separating ourselves from this ungodly, wicked world. I think you've all heard it said, we are in the world, but we're not of it. We're here, and Jesus through the apostle Paul said that there's no way you can avoid dealing with, rubbing elbows with, even the grossest of immoral people, because that's what the world is. And so we have to realize that they're all around us. We're not isolated, but we are to not be of it. You've got 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 17, almost the same language as John used here in Revelation. 2 Corinthians chapter 6 verse 17, and then God says, I will receive you. Now that isn't that He's putting a condition on our salvation, but as a believer now, and always maintain that under grace God never says you will or else. It's always that I beseech you brethren, and yield not, and it's still left up to us. But here again the invitation is to come out from among that ungodly set of circumstances, and be separated. I Corinthians chapter 6, because I'm afraid this is being lost sight of even in some of our more fundamental Bible teaching and preaching churches, is this whole matter of separation. We have gotten to the place where the world can't tell a Christian when they see one, Christians can't tell a Christian when they see one, and it's simply because we have lost this whole concept of separation. We are to be different. Now that doesn't mean we put our nose in the air, and like I said have no dealings with the world. We're in the world, but we're not to be of them. Now you have I Corinthians chapter 6, verse 19 where again Paul is writing to the Gentile congregation of Corinth, and he says, I Corinthians 6. Know you not that your body, this one in which we're living, don't you know that your body is the temple, or the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, who is in you? You see that? The Spirit is a person who is indwelling our person, and He is of God, in other words God imparted it to us at our salvation, and you're not your own. See we as believers have to understand that we've been bought with a price. We're something special in God's eyes and in His program, and He can't use us if we're amalgamated with the world. Verse 20. For you are bought with a price. Therefore glorify God with your body, and in your spirit, both of which of course are God's. Now we have one minute left, and we have to go back quickly to I Corinthians chapter 3. We have that same thought. I Corinthians chapter 3, verse 16, and again the question is almost identical. What? Know you not that you are the temple, the dwelling place of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? Now don't stop there, take quickly the next verse. So if any man defiles the temple of God, his body, God is going to deal with it. For the temple of God is holy, and that's the kind of a temple that you and I are. Whatever you do to the body, you're doing to the temple of God. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.