I’ve been looking forward to this title! At the same time realising we enter into two of the most sobering and shocking chapters in the whole of the Bible. Roll on chapter 20!
All around us, every single day, in most advertisements and most vocabulary comes a spirit which is alien to ours who have been redeemed and are walking as disciples. It offers fulfilment, hope, satisfaction and what we all deserve. The world has a formation that is opposite to ours. It creeps near to us, sometimes we can feel the shadow hovering over us, trying to lull us into false security, to believe things and say things that is opposed to our decision to follow Jesus. The aim is to gain followers. Everyone is a disciple either of Him or her. We all make disciples either of Him or her.
Let us read a couple of verses:
“One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits by many waters. 2 With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” (Revelation 17 v 1-2)
We are heading to a wedding, a perfect one, in a perfect garden within a perfect city between the perfect Jesus the Lamb and the perfected Church the Bride.
Before we get there we have another metaphor.
A rich, great prostitute who on the outside looks beautiful but on the inside we will see is filled with words that I cannot type here.
She is Babylon in a nutshell. She is not a person, nor a place but the spirit of the world which offers everything, but gives nothing and take it all.
The quick promise of success, from dream to destiny with no sacrifice and hardly any work. This is easy. The cost? Your very soul. However the prize is so attractive that the world pushes, chases and clamours to be the best, the one with the most, the first, treading over one another, using and abusing to get to the top so that they can drink from her cup.
Who is behind this woman? It is the beast from the sea, we have met him before, the one who deceives the world to drink from her cup.
Well, not everyone, for the Jesus people drink from the cup of Christ, they are people of the cross and she is drunk on their blood as they suffer and are martyred.
Resist her and you die for Him. Die for Him and you find life. Choose her and you experience true death.
As a disciple who are you following today?
Missions Paul 