We are looking at the fall of Babylon the great which is the economic and political powers that the antichrist is leading, and Satan of course is behind. In Revelation 18 there are four announcements. There is the announcement of judgment that we saw yesterday in Revelation 18:1-3 which we covered last time.
We pick up the second announcement, a call to separation for the people of God, beginning in Revelation 18:4, “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.’” God is now calling to His people. This is consistent with Scripture as God calls for His people to come out from among them and be separate in 2 Corinthians 6. That doesn’t mean that we don’t interact with and have unbelieving friends and neighbors and coworkers and so forth. It means, we don’t participate with them in the sinful habits and lifestyles that they have. Instead, we remove ourselves from that and get away from that and do not allow that to corrupt us. That is what He is talking about here. He is getting ready to judge Babylon the great, and unless they want to participate in that judgment, they need to remove themselves from that system. So, He says, “come out of her, my people.” He gives us two reasons for that, first, so they do not participate in their sins as we just read in Revelation 18:4.
In Revelation 18:5 He starts to tick off her sins, “for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back even as she has paid, and give back to her double according to her deeds.” Notice what He is saying in Revelation 18:4-5 and He is saying, “here is a whole list of sins.” He is going to look at some other sins later in the chapter, but these sins are piling up. God has allowed them to pile up. Sort of like our chores at home sometimes. We have these things that we need to get done and we are not getting them done and so they are piling up and they are getting bigger, and they are not going to go away on their own. Eventually we must tackle them. So, these sins have been piling up. God has allowed them to accumulate, especially during these seven years of the Tribulation Period, but really going all the way back. God does not often immediately judge the sins of different peoples and people groups. Often, God allows many years, decades, and centuries to go before certain sins are dealt with . . .
