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GALACTIC NEWS FROM THREE ANGELS #16
“IS THAT YOUR FINAL ANSWER?”
They’re the hottest thing around, not just in Christian
fiction, but in general fiction. Authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins
have hit the mother lode with their series, “Left Behind.” The apocalyptic
adventures of Buck Williams and Rayford Steele in Assassins, number six
in the lineup, debuted in August of 1999 at Number Two on the New York
Times best-seller list, which doesn’t even count the Christian bookstores.
Number five, Apollyon, came in at #1 on Amazon.com. “That’s Grisham/Clancy
territory,” said Entertainment Weekly, in a gushing two-part series on
how Christian projects are invading the secular world.
Back in November of ‘99, Newsweek’s great religion writer, Kenneth Woodward,
had a cover story called “The Way the World Ends.” The Y2K deadline was
just about nine weeks away back then, so people were percolating with
great interest about millennial happenings, secret raptures, etc. He pointed
his readers to surveys which show that a whopping 40% of Americans do
believe that this old world is going to come to an end according to Revelation
scenarios, in some type of “Battle of Armageddon.”
Hal Lindsey’s apocalyptic bestseller, The Late Great Planet Earth, he
also pointed out, had sold something like 28 million copies since it came
out in the 1970s.
Of course, skeptics and scholars alike are quick to point out that many,
many of the predictions in Mr. Lindsey’s book have already failed over
the years. We’ve mentioned in this radio series some of the doomsday predictions
sincere Christians have made . . . which never came to fruition. In fact,
according to the research done by Kenneth Woodward for this story, many
contemporary Christian theologians figure that all these things John the
Revelator wrote about actually happened — in some interpretation or another
— during the trials of the first-century Christian church. “John was not
predicting a distant future,” he writes.
And you know, friend, as you and I study here in the year 2002 about the
prophecies of Revelation — particularly here in chapter 14 where we’ve
been for three weeks now — we face a distinct challenge. In a way, it’s
like the old children’s game of “Blind Man’s Buff.” Does that ring a bell
with any of you older listeners? You have a blindfold on . . . and now
you’ve got to try to grope in the darkness for someone or something to
hang onto. How can you know where your friends are? Or where all the bumps
in the road might be, the potholes and land mines?
It’s like that here, isn’t it? The book of Revelation warns us with fearsome
language about a spiritual organization called “Babylon.” But what is
it? Who is it? Is it here now? Is it coming up later? If “Babylon” happened
back in the first century A.D., then can we get on with life?
We’ve read here in chapter fourteen, in the message of the “Second Angel,”
that “Babylon is fallen.” Well, if that’s the case, we don’t want to be
IN Babylon. In fact, you can go over just four chapters, to Revelation
18, and read a parallel warning there:
“Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become
a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every
unclean and detestable bird.” And then this, which is almost word-for-word
what we’ve already read: “For all the nations have drunk the maddening
wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with
her.”
And again we ask: “Well, but what is Babylon? This
spiritual . . . force . . . isn’t listed in the Yellow Pages under that
name.” And friend, I’m not making light of our dilemma. Millions of Christians
are vitally interested in these symbols and their interpretations. Newsweek
Magazine, for this cover article, commissioned the Princeton Survey Research
Associates to run a statistical survey, and they found out that 19% of
Americans in general — and almost fifty percent of people who believe
in Bible prophecy — believe that the Antichrist, whatever or whoever that
is, is living on this earth right now. Maybe he’s named Nicolae Carpathia
— that’s the assigned name in LaHaye’s fictional tale — and maybe not,
but if he’s walking around in your town or mine right now, that would
be a good thing to know.
So friend, here’s where we are. We’re studying about Babylon . . . but
what is it? The Bible warns about an antichrist power . . . but who is
he? Or she? We’re supposed to be careful that we don’t get the Mark of
the Beast — in the forehead or in the hand, it says in Revelation 14:9
— but what is that Mark? Bar codes? The World Wide Web? How can we avoid
it if we don’t know what it is? We should watch out for a beast power
that has the mysterious number: 666. All right . . . but what does that
mean? You talk about “Blind Man’s Buff”!
And the spiritual ante climbs even one step higher as we sense how these
mysterious Bible symbols invade our own lives. If the book of Daniel describes
four beasts, and they represent four long-defunct world empires — ancient
Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome — that’s sterile and safe. But
here in Revelation, the angel of God cries out in our direction: “Fear
God! Give glory to Him!” And then the third Angel: “Don’t worship the
beast. Don’t worship the image of this Babylon beast . . . or you’ll feel
the wrath of God.”
Over in chapter 18, which we just looked at, is a verse that comes right
in my direction and in yours. After telling us that Babylon the Great
has fallen, fallen, we hear a great voice from heaven, and it says this:
“Come out of her, My people, so that you will not share
in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues, for her
sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.”
And maybe as you fumble with the blindfold that’s wrapped
so tightly, blocking your vision, you want to cry out: “God, what are
You talking about? What is Babylon? I can’t come out if I don’t know if
I’m IN! I can’t come out if I don’t know what to come out OF.”
Well, I’m here to encourage you on this Monday as we keep on studying.
Obviously, here at The Voice of Prophecy, we think it is worthwhile to
study these ancient Bible prophecies, or we wouldn’t be into a fourth
week just here in Revelation 14. We think these warnings and promises
are valid for the 21st century, not just the first century, or we’d have
moved on by now. We think Babylon IS a last-day entity, not just an ancient
empire where Daniel and his three friends hung out.
But I want to tell you something else, and it’s this: WE DON’T NEED TO
WORRY. Let me say that again: Friend, we don’t need to worry. Because
the book of Revelation is a book offering us “The Revelation of JESUS
CHRIST.” Those are the first five words of this book; did you know that?
And what that means is this: no matter how these prophecies play themselves
out, no matter how their fulfillments come to pass, and in what generation,
those who have Jesus Christ as their Savior are in perfect safety. Friend,
I believe that with all of my heart. In the very thick of chapter 13,
which is about as scary as you can get, with death decrees and 1260 years
of persecution for God’s people, it then says quietly in verse 10:
“This calls for patient endurance and faithfulness
on the part of the saints.”
Don’t you like that? “Patient endurance.” Here in chapter
14, which is equally thunderous in its warnings, the same thing again:
“This calls for patient endurance on the part of the
saints who obey God’s commandments and remain faithful to Jesus.”
Our friend Daniel, along with Shadrach, Meshach, and
Abednego, lived in the first Babylon. It was a place of corruption. It
was fallen. It promoted false worship. It tried to coerce worship and
had its own death decree. But Daniel and his friends stayed close to God,
and they were all right. Here in the end-time, with the return of Babylon
— spiritual Babylon this time — we’re going to see those same things.
Babylon will want our worship. You can read that in chapter 13. It will
be a fallen spiritual power. It will try to coerce worship, to demand
religious obedience. Right down the line, Babylon #2 will follow the lead
of Babylon #1. But those who remain in the hand of God . . . will be safe.
Those who follow the Lamb “whithersoever He goeth,” will someday stand
on the Sea of Glass.
And here’s one more thing before we leave the beasts and the brimstone.
Friend, God isn’t going to calculate your salvation, your destiny, on
the basis of prophetic correctness. Revelation isn’t a puzzle where only
the lucky few with the best slide rules are going to get into heaven.
We get a picture sometimes of that hard, hard final question, #15, on
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You’ve already used up your lifelines;
you’ve polled the audience, wasted your 50-50, and burned up your “Phone
a Friend.” And now Regis Philbin leans in: “Is that your final answer?
Your life depends on guessing right, young man. Final answer?” Listen,
friend, if you and I are saved in God’s kingdom it will be because Jesus
died for us on the Cross of Calvary, and because we accepted His death
for us on the Cross of Calvary. Not because we outsmarted Kenneth Woodward
and Tim LaHaye and guessed right about 666.
It’s all right to study “666" and the fallen kingdom of Babylon and
the Three Angels’ Messages here in Revelation. We’ve still got a ways
to go here in chapter 14. But all the way through, friend, always, keep
a marker back at John 3:16.
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