Come Out Of Her!

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Reading revelation Chapter 18 the other day I saw something I had not noticed in my reading before. I have read these few chapters about the wickedness of Babylon several times and studied it at church. I grasped that Baylon was being described as a harlot who lured men into her iniquity. This time in reading it, something in particular struck me. It is Chapter 18, verse 4.

"I heard another voice from heaven, saying, "Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues;"

COME OUT OF HER! I think in my other translations it said "come away from her" or something not quite so posing. This time the extreme sexual nature of these chapters was standing out to me. God was not just saying to His people to get on their camel and come home. He was saying for them to take their "male part" out of her and quit making her wickedness fertile with their seed. Come out of her! These people, God's people, Us were/are having grotesque sexual relations with the woman who has been with everyone. This is not Hosea's prostitute. She makes Gomer look like Mother Teresa. This woman was not merely defiled. She is the great defiler. She is not simply under God's wrath. She is the embodiment of everything that incites it. We choose to take the most intimate parts of ourselves and place it in the darkness of everything God hates for our momentary pleasure. Come out of her so that you will not participate in her sins and receive her plagues. All of this for you to ask yourself this:

In what way are you allowing yourself to intimately engage with wickedness?

from Galatians 5
immorality, impurity, sensuality,idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these

© Stephanie Cherry 2006

  • Revelation 18

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