Resisting Trump with Revelation (30)
the fall of babylon (Revelation (18)
Rev.17
details the “mystery” of the harlot, the beast, Rome. Only to eyes of faith
does the true reality of this figure disclose itself. If you take the blue pill
the glitz and glamor, power and prosperity will be what you see. If you take
the red pill, however, you will see what John shows you, for Revelation is the
red pill par excellence. This
illustration from the movie “The Matrix” is a perfect example of how this book
works. It unveils, or x-rays, the surface of things so the community of faith
can carry on with a sure sense of the deep truth of God and the world it has
been called to bear witness in.
Rev.18
details in horrible detail the demise of this figure. A great angel announces
Rom’s fall, declaring it a wilderness, a haunt of every foul thing, who has
polluted and deceived the earth with it oppression, injustice, and cruelty
(18:2-3.
Another
heavenly voice calls God’s people out of Rome. This is not a physical retreat or
withdrawal. That would not have been possible for the many slaves who were
Christians. And it was really possible to escape Rome even if one physically withdrew
because Rome is a spirit, a power, embodied in but not exhausted in the
institutions and culture of the city set on seven hills. Rome is a spirit and
must be combatted spiritually. Rome is the spirit of America. And it must be
combatted spiritually. It is that spiritual struggle to which the heavenly
voice calls us.
If you take the red pill Jesus offers you in this
sermon it becomes possible to develop a
profile of the spirit of Rome/America as the spirit to be resisted.[1]
“Since the ideology and religion of empire almost invariably includes
nationalism, militarism, and consumerism (that is, aggrandizing the merchants
and reinforcing the dominating power of the nations), the call to “come out” is
a call to resist, to create alternative, to practice refusal in the midst of
Babylon.”[2]
This leaves a hole, a vacancy, at the heart of the culture
that tries to live without God. Hence the vision’s description of Rome as a
haunted wilderness (v.2).
2.
Sensuality (18:3,9).
Sexuality is inextricably tied to commerce. It is thus engaged
in a reciprocal perversion of each other.
3.
Injustice (18:13).
The most horrible example is that Rome engaged in promoting
slavery, human chattel. And what chills the heart even more is that this human “merchandise”
is placed at the very end of the list – the least of what Rome is buying and
selling!
4.
Commodification (18:13-19)
Everything is a thing that can be quantified and assigned a
cost. After all, that hole in the culture’s soul must be filled by something
and nothing can be off limits to buy or sell in that effort.
5.
Violence (18:21)
Violence was endemic to the spirit of Rome/America. It is
endemic to the human project of trying to live without God (Gen.6:11). So
endemic that her judgment entails the violence that has marked her life.
6.
Deception and Counterfeit (18:7)
This “Queen” feigns to rule over and determine the lives of
all under her sway. The Pax Romana (“Peace
of Rome”) was anything but if you resisted its rule. The Vietnam maxim of “destroying
a village to pacify it” comes out of Rome’s playbook.
7.
Idolatry (18:7)
Self-glorification,
or I-dolatry (the rule of the imperial “I”), is the primal human sin. The animating
center of peoples and cultures trying to live without God.
That’s
what God’s people are to steer clear of, even while living in the heart of the
beast. This is the spirit of Rome/America that creates much of the injustice,
oppression, and hardship that most of the world lives with. Wherever this
spirit takes root, Rev.17-18 come into play.
The true
and living God never allows self-proclaimed surrogates to prevail for long.
Even if they claim to rule in his name. Rome’s judgment falls in a single day (18:8),
indeed, a single hour (18:8, 17)! Obviously, this means a short time not a
literal day or hour.
The
lone note of hope in this bleak scene comes in the last sentence: “in you was found the blood of prophets and of saints” (v.24).
At first glance this seems an indictment of the hardness of heart that refused
to hear and heed the message and life of God’s people. And it is that. But as
we have seen in this book, the “blood” of the Lamb and his people has
redemptive power. It just may be that Jesus offers a hint here that if his
people live his way, sacrificial, loving, servanthood, the kings and inhabitants
of the earth’s enmity might be graciously overcome in divine goodness and
mercy. It is intriguing that when we see all these enemies of God defeated and
destroyed in the next chapter, we find them coming in and out of the holy city,
the New Jerusalem, in Rev.21!
[1] Johnson, Discipleship on the
Edge, 302-303.
[2] Grimsrud, https://peacetheology.net/2013/03/09/revelation-notes-chapter-18/.
[3] This is the powerful argument of Adam B. Seligman’s Modernity’s Wager.
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