Babylon in Scripture is the epitome of wickedness, idolatry, and gross indulgence of every kind. No wonder when the Lord pictured Rome in the Book of Revelation, he called it by its code name Babylon. Peter, writing from Rome, did the same.
The exhortation everywhere—whether it be in the Old Testament when speaking of literal Babylon, or in the New when using the code—is “Come out of her!” When God was through using her to punish His people, He warned against remaining in Babylon. God’s people belonged in the holy land once the seventy-year captivity was finished. They no longer had any reason to remain in Babylon! The tragedy is that some stayed!
So, today, every wicked and disgraceful place is a Babylon so far as the people of God are concerned. They have no business being there unless it is to testify to the way of salvation and/or to warn other believers to leave.
Are you living in a modern Babylon? Are you enmeshed in the wickedness and immorality that characterized old Babylonian in the time of Nebuchadnezzar? Or are you engrossed in a modern Babylon of slick business practices and white collar crime? It makes no difference in the long run. God despises every type of sin and wickedness. And will judge it. God’s call to you, believer, is “Come out of her, and be separate!”
To be holy is to be “separate,” as the word holy means. Holiness is separation from that which displeases God and separation to that which pleases Him. Are you as holy as you ought to be? Do you “take time to be holy” as the old hymn put it? Or do you just continue on as one among many of the Babylonians of this present world, living for self and pleasure? Listen to the Lord’s call—let Him awaken you to your plight. He calls, “Come out of her and be separate.” Will you hear and listen? Or will you perish along with the Babylonians whose kingdom was doomed to destruction?
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