Babylon’s judgment
Day 716, Tuesday, July 28
Revelation 18:1-20
It has long been clear that Rome/Babylon will fall and that God will save his faithful followers. In verses 4-5 we’re warned to keep an eye on being faithful. “Then I heard another voice from heaven say: ‘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.’”
Saying to come out of Bablylon is not to be taken as a call to move to another location as much as it is a call for believers to disentangle themselves from Babylon so as not to suffer her fate. Back in 1 Corinithians 7, Paul cautioned those who “use the things of the world” to live as though “not engrossed in them.” That is the same chapter where he encouraged refraining from marriage so as to not be “concerned about the affairs of this world.”
The reading today from Revelation speaks of those who benefit from the “adulteries” of Babylon: not just the kings, but also the merchants the ship owners, the sea captains and the sailors who profit from her luxuries.
There are those who claim that the modern United States, like ancient Rome, is a wealthy empire headed for a time of judgment. However true that may be, and however soon that judgment may be, Revelation is a warning to avoid excessive entanglement lest we “share in her sins.”

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Tuesday meditation

Song of Solomon 5:2-9
She
I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me, my sister, my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” I have taken off my robe—must I put it on again? I have washed my feet—must I soil them again? My beloved thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone. My heart sank at his departure. I looked for him but did not find him. I called him but he did not answer. The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city. They beat me, they bruised me; they took away my cloak, those watchmen of the walls! Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you—if you find my beloved, what will you tell him? Tell him I am faint with love.
Friends
How is your beloved better than others, most beautiful of women? How is your beloved better than others, that you so charge us?

Prayer focus
Keep us engaged with our community and our nation, but protect us from entanglements that tempt us toward compromise and unfaithfulness.