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Revelation (Part 20)

Revelation 17–18

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of the End Times from Revelation 17–18


Male: What about the difference in the way Jews may be judged as righteous? For example, one of the teachers I’ve had at Trinity indicates that a Jew who still considers himself a Jew and doesn’t accept Christ as Messiah still can have.… I don’t know if it’s a kind of salvation, but he’s judged in the way they were in the Old Testament.

Don: Did you hear the question? Is there a different basis for judging Jews today? So a Jew who doesn’t accept Christ as Messiah, could he still be judged on the basis of the way he was judged in the Old Testament? What I would say is read Galatians. Read Romans. It just won’t work. There are some messianic Jews today who argue exactly that, but the point is that the Jew who in the Old Testament was judged by God was judged finally …

If for disobedience, it was disobedience stemming from the fact that the faith was unreal. David could be terribly disobedient, but the basic faith was real. The faith, thus, pointed to the one who was to come. Using the arguments of Paul (for example, in the olive tree and elsewhere), the remnant in Israel in Jesus’ day does come to faith in Christ.

If, in fact, a Jew today rejects Christ but believes the Old Testament, then Paul would say, Luke/Acts would say, and John would say he hasn’t really understood the Old Testament. He just hasn’t understood it. He hasn’t conformed to it, hasn’t trusted the God in it. The remnant of saved Jews today is precisely those who become Christians.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: “Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad.” What does that mean? Does that mean Abraham actually lived long enough to see my day? No, Abraham was an old man when he died, but not that old. Or does it mean he saw it completely and clearly by some visionary experience explaining it all? Well, if so, there’s no evidence of it at all. It would be a sort of fiat declaration, which Christ might do, but it’s not what the texts seem to indicate.

Or, finally, does it mean that Abraham, by his faith, by his abandonment to God, by trusting the God who told him that out of his seed he would raise up a whole new humanity, rejoiced to see what God had promised, which now was being fulfilled in Jesus in his day. I think that’s probably closer to it. Melchizedek is a slightly different structure. That crops up in Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 5–7, and only there in the whole Canon. I’d love to tackle that one at length, but I think I’d better let that one go. It would just take too long.

Let me just say this. Some people say Melchizedek was a pagan priest, and if Abraham, then, pays tithes to a pagan priest in the Old Testament, and he’s greater than Abraham according to Hebrews, then should we not consider a place for righteous pagans today who might be very righteous and accepted by God in their paganism today? I think that completely misunderstands who Melchizedek was.

Don’t forget you’re not all that far removed from the flood. There’s nothing whatsoever in the text that suggests there was no one on earth besides Abraham who believed in one God, Elohim. There are all kinds of them. Some of them were people who believed in the oneness of God and served as priest/kings in their various cities, and apparently this was one of them. It says he was a priest of the Most High God. That doesn’t sound like paganism.

Abraham recognizes in him a kindred spirit, and he’s on his turf as a nomad, so when there’s booty from the raid of the kings, Abraham pays him homage, which historically was the right thing to do. At the same time, there is something more going on. Namely, in the book of Genesis, anybody who’s anybody in the story has his genealogy in there, and Melchizedek doesn’t.

Abraham is tied in. Joseph is tied in. Isaac is tied in. Anybody who’s anybody is all tied in the genealogy … except Melchizedek. He’s without father and without mother. Not literally, but as far as the account goes, he’s without father and without mother. If you’re just reading the book of Genesis for the first time and you’ve never read anything in the Bible, you think, “What on earth is this character doing in here?”

The next place he shows up is Psalm 110. Psalm 110 is 400 years after the covenant where the whole Levitical priesthood has been established. There, in a passage that is clearly messianic, God says of the Messiah who is to come that he will be a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. The author of Hebrews says, “Look, if he’s a priest according to the order of Melchizedek, in principle, that is already saying there’s something wrong with the priesthood of Levi.”

According to the Mosaic covenant

. So if now all of a sudden there is an announcement of a Messiah to come according to a different priesthood, it is saying that the first priesthood is principially obsolete. The author of Hebrews is saying, “Look, there’s a built-in principial obsolescence even within the Old Testament Scripture itself as it looks in the future.”

Male: In principle the Melchizedekian priesthood would be superior; therefore, Melchizedek as an individual would have had to have been superior.

Don: Correct. That’s what Hebrews argues. “Think of what a great man he was,” he says, “to whom Abraham paid the tithe.” In principle, Levi pays it to Melchizedek because in the loins of his grandfather that’s what he’s doing. Of course. That’s exactly what Hebrews 7 argues. Why not? Moreover, I would argue that where that account shows up in Hebrews, chapter 14, there are all kinds of links in Hebrew between chapters 14 and 15, which is one of the great Old Testament Abrahamic covenant passages.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: Yeah, people have argued that. Good people have argued that. I’m thoroughly unconvinced, for several reasons. First of all, I think it misunderstands the nature of the typological argument that’s used again and again and again in Hebrews, where the whole Melchizedek thing is unpacked. Second, he’s depicted in the Old Testament as king of Salem, which is a known place, almost certainly Jerusalem. He’s a real king.

No one reading that passage when it was written, or at any time after that until modern Christian theology, would see in it a Christophany. It makes sense within its own passage. The only thing that’s really strange about it is there’s no genealogy. So I think what takes place instead is that it is a typological connection with the ultimate Melchizedek rather than the preincarnate Christophany. I think it’s a fundamental mistake. I think it misunderstands how the Bible is put together based so much on typological revelation.

Thus, in the same sense that in the book of Hebrews Christ is the true temple and the true sacrifice and the true priest.… He’s the ultimate Moses. He’s the ultimate Aaron. He enters into a better tabernacle, into a better temple, a better Holy of Holies, offering better blood, and so on, because all of those things are not the real ones but are only the type that points ahead. So also he’s the priest according to Melchizedek from the type that points ahead.

Female: [Inaudible]

Don: Yes, that is one of the passages that is regularly brought up. It’s really the death of Bathsheba’s child. When the child dies, the servants are trying to console David. He’s busy washing himself up and saying, “Well, there’s no point in mourning now. Death has taken place. He will not come back to me. I will go to him.” People, therefore, take that to mean, “He’s already in heaven; I will join him in heaven; he’s not going to come back here,” and this proves, therefore, that the child is in heaven.

Well, it may be, and that was certainly one of the texts that was cited by my instructor in theology, but my objection to the argument was so often the death of people in the Old Testament is bound up with going to sheol, which simply means the abode of the dead, nothing more. It can be good. It can be bad. It may mean, therefore, that David is saying no more than, “Look, he’s not coming back to life here; I’ll join him in death there,” without any heavy weight on anything else.

It’s a text that might conceivably be taken by some to hint, but I don’t know. I had some very good friends who lost their first baby and their second baby, and I was with them for days while the baby died. The woman became absolutely convinced that she would see her child again, and I would be the last one to try and disabuse her of that. So I don’t go around trying to disabuse people of that perspective, and I could quite believe that it is the case, because I will ask the question again and again and again, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

All I’m saying is that the ultimate consolation in Scripture for people in this terrible, terrible situation is not, let us be quite frank, absolutely unambiguous answers in that area, but “He who did not spare his own Son, shall he not also with him freely give you all things?” Hang onto the cross. That’s where the ultimate demonstration in the starkest clarity is again and again and again. The rest leave with God.

[Audio cuts off] the judgment of God on the great harlot, great whore. She turns out to be Rome, citadel of pagan opposition to the cause of Christ and, in principle, every opponent of similar ilk, precisely because of her connection with the beast on which she rides.

The two chapters can be divided up pretty clearly, I think. Chapter 17 begins with an opening vision of the harlot sitting on the scarlet beast (verses 1–6), and then the rest of the chapter is given over to the interpretation of those symbols, much of which we’ve already perused in connection with the interpretation of the first beast in chapter 13. Then chapter 18 is a kind of lament, a dirge, over the harlot’s death.

Let’s take the first section: chapter 17, verses 1–6. “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me …” They, of course, come from the vision of 15 and 16. “Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute, who sits on many waters.” Again, the vision of the great prostitute comes right out of Old Testament prophecy. We indicated that adultery becomes a model for spiritual adultery in the Old Testament.

Israel itself, when she’s following other gods, is sometimes described (Jeremiah 2) as having adulteries and neighings. The idea is of a horse in heat. That’s what is meant. Or in Jeremiah 2 it actually explicitly is a wild ass in heat. Jeremiah 13: “For her lewd harlotries.” The same thing in Ezekiel, all the book of Hosea, and so forth. That’s the kind of picture here.

That she’s seated on great waters.… The fact that she is called Babylon might remind some of the historically sensitive that Babylon was, in fact, constructed on a whole canal system. In that sense, ancient historical Babylon was seated on many waters, but Rome wasn’t quite like that. Babylon the Great had that kind of description. Jeremiah 51:13 says that Babylon dwells by many waters, and so on. But we see that in verse 15 the waters are interpreted for us. “The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.”

If you recall, they’re the peoples, nations, multitudes, and languages who are seduced by this woman, to change the imagery. So if you recall, in the final vision there’s no more sea. There’s no more water. In other words, all the opposition is gone. Water is regularly used in one fashion or another for the chaos, the evil, and so on. So you have a beast coming out of the sea as well. In any case, in this particular use, the imagery is defined for us.

“With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries.” How do you commit adultery with an empire? What is meant, of course, is that Rome saw herself so much as at the center of everything, fostered pagan worship, demanded god swaps, demanded, finally, that the emperor himself be worshiped as god, almighty, savior, divine, lord of lords, king of kings …

In that sense, every nation that was allied with Rome was, in principle, bound up with idolatry. It couldn’t be any other way. Because the whole ethos of the empire was “Empire first; everybody else second,” then to be committed to the empire was to be committed to that which was holding itself to be number one over against the living God. It was intrinsically a faithless relationship. It was intrinsically an evil thing. That’s what it’s really saying.

Now it’s understandable that the Christians would see it peculiarly that way when their most serious persecution came from this source, but the essence of the idolatry is not that they persecute Christians. The essence of the idolatry is that they demand the allegiance that should belong only to God. So in principle, wherever you find any system of thought or any political structure or any party that demands the kind of allegiance that belongs only to God, you have exactly the same kind of idolatry taking place, and it has taken place many times in world history.

“Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.” Before we press on, I should mention it’s one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls who introduces this particular woman, this particular prostitute.

Later on in chapter 21 and 22, it is also the same angel, one of the seven with the seven bowls, who introduces John to the bride of the Lamb. Chapter 21, verse 9: “One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues …” See? Same person. “… came and said, ‘Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ ”

I suspect, thus, that by making it the same angel, it’s a way of drawing attention to the two women, one who is a prostitute and the other who’s the bride; one who is and, in the imagery of the book, all the people who are in spiritual prostitution and all those who are engaged to the Lamb. Again, you have only two people.

Just as you’ve had two cities, Babylon or Jerusalem, so you’ve had people belonging to the mark of the Beast or the mark of the Lamb, now you have two women. You either have the prostitute or you have the bride. You belong to one party or the other. You get this bifurcation all through the book. To draw attention to the two women, then, is achieved by having the same angel introduce them both to John.

I think I may have mentioned before that some wag has said that the book of Revelation could be called “A Tale of Two Cities: The Prostitute and the Bride.” There’s a great deal of truth to that, with all due apologies to Charles Dickens for swiping his title. So an angel carries him away in the Spirit into a desert. Again, this means in a vision, like we saw he was caught up into the Spirit on the Lord’s Day in chapter 1 and again in chapter 4. It’s a visionary experience.

He’s caught up in a desert, where he sees this woman sitting on a scarlet beast. Scarlet? It may be just the pomposity of the occasion. It may be some suggestion of his murderous intent. Not certain. “It was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.” This, of course, identifies this beast for us as the first beast back in chapter 13.

“The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones, and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. This title was written on her forehead …” Probably in a band is what is meant. Some sort of band with the words on it. “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and the Abominations of the Earth. I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.”

Clearly, in the context, for reasons we’ll review again briefly in a moment, this woman represents Rome, but the intriguing thing here is that she is identified with this beast. She’s riding a beast, who, as we saw in our earlier exposition, is that power controlled by Satan who incarnates himself (for lack of a better word) in successive antichrists in historical opposition and persecution of the people of God.

To say that she rides the beast is not trying to establish her form of locomotion. The point is that under the harlot, supporting the harlot is the beast. It’s not just a political power. You’re seeing that behind the superficial, sociological, phenomenological level is Satan and his prime power incarnated this way. That’s what’s going on. It’s a disgusting image.

A golden cup, seeming so precious and pure, but, in fact, it’s filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The term mystery, or musterion.… Many people have thought this means something like, “Now let me give you the mystical interpretation of what’s coming,” or the mysterious interpretation or a coded unpacking or something, but it’s probably more than that.

Mystery you find again and again in the New Testament is bound up with something in some measure hidden in times past and now revealed, but the nature of the hiddenness is often bound up with typology. It’s hidden in the past in some form of typological structure, which is now unpacked forcefully in the new.

So also here you have Babylon functioning as a kind of type of the ultimate malevolence, which is now servicing contra Christ. So the Old Testament patterns of what happens to Babylon now happen to Antichrist or the antichrists that come again and again and again. “Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth.” She’s drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bear testimony to Jesus.

The fullness of blasphemies are not so much because this beast and this woman are swearing all the time, are blaspheming. They’re blaspheming in the sense not that they’re throwing curses against God but that they are engaged in such wholesale self-deification. There are all kinds of people who never blaspheme overtly, who never say, “Cursed Jesus” or something like that, but who are blaspheming all the time by trying to make themselves the center of the universe. It’s a form of self-deification.

Even the language of the harlot being the mother of all that is appalling and abominable and the prostitutes of the earth.… There were Roman historians who described how disgusting Rome was in the ancient world. Tacitus, for example, the Roman historian, a pagan, describes Rome as the place where all the horrible and shameful things of the world congregate and find a home. A big city, a shameful place with a lot of dirt.

Juvenile, another Latin historian, gives an account of how the Roman empress Messalina was so debauched and profligate she sometimes went and joined the pagan brothels just so she could sleep around with a few more people. She was the empress. Mind you, one sometimes wonders if some of the British monarchy are trying to do the same thing, but that’s another story. We don’t view it as shocking; we view it as sort of titillating, fine for the gutter press. God is not so amused. John comments at the end of verse 6, “When I saw her, I was greatly astonished.”

Now much of what comes next we have already looked at, so let me run through it very quickly. We looked at it when we examined chapter 13, so I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it now. Let me just unpack it. The angel says (don’t forget, angels are constantly explaining things), “Why are you so astonished? I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns. The beast, which you saw, once was, now is not …”

Remember all of that? “Now is not.” At the moment, the beast doesn’t exist but will come out of the Abyss (already introduced in chapter 9) and go to his destruction. He’s the one that receives the fatal wound, if you recall, and then everybody is surprised because he comes back again. “The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast, because he once was, now is not, and yet will come.”

They always think he dies. They always think he’s gone, yet he keeps coming back again. “This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills …” Clearly, therefore, an identification with Rome and the Roman Empire. Then later on the seven kings. We’ve been over that passage too: the difficulty of identifying them, and it may simply mean that there are simply more to come; the full number is not yet all there. In any case, the result of all this kingly power and beastly power, which we’ve looked at before, is verse 14: making war against the Lamb.

Ultimately, “The Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers.” You’re getting closer and closer, as you move on in the book, to the final conflict. Chapter 18 is the fall of Babylon. In chapter 19, Christ is acknowledged as the great Lord of Lords and King of Kings. You’re getting closer and closer with each step of the revelation to this final conflict.

“Then the angel said to me, ‘The waters you saw, where the prostitute sits, are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages. The beast and the horns you saw will hate the prostitute.’ ” Now that’s interesting. “The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” That’s an extremely important passage.

If the beast is the embodiment of all of Satan’s power in concrete historical persons, situations, and so on that manifest themselves in concrete historical realities, what it’s really saying is that these terrible kingdoms ultimately destroy themselves. Here’s this harlot, this particular empire, the Roman Empire, riding on the beast, thinking it has all the power, but, in fact, that kind of power finally proves destructive. You don’t get a thousand-year Reich. It destroys itself.

That kind of raw abuse of power finally turns out to feed on itself. It destroys itself. You think of the fantastic power of the Russian Empire. One way or the other, it destroyed itself. It’s hard to believe how thoroughly it’s destroyed and how fast. Where were all our pundits before 1989? Where were the wise men? Where were the state department officers who got that one all right?

“But he who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord shall have them in derision.” While we’re building more and more and more bombs, they’re destroying themselves economically until they don’t even have enough to lift a slingshot. They can’t even feed their own troops. There’s a sense in which a certain kind of evil totalitarianism feeds on itself and destroys itself and sometimes does it with remarkable rapidity. It eats its own flesh, burns its own people.

That’s what has happened here. “They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked; they will eat her flesh and burn her with fire.” I suspect a mixture of those sufferings is bound up with the fact that the harlot is pictured in different ways. “Burn her with fire.” Well, she is a city as well. The city is burned with fire.

“They will eat her flesh.” Don’t forget that the beast is also seen as a lion and a leopard. “Leave her naked.” She’s a whore who has been stripped to shame her. The various images of who these pagan people are are picked up in the forms of suffering that are described as well. But she is destroyed.

“For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule, until God’s words are fulfilled. The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.” Do you see that? Passages like that destroy utterly any notion of ontological dualism. They destroy utterly any suggestion that Satan and God are roughly on the same pinnacle.

At the end of the day, God can control even their evil minds and use their evil for their own self-destruction until God’s appointed time is at hand for his ultimate consummative regeneration. That is why the people of God are encouraged to trust this God, to abandon themselves to him and to endure. The end is coming.

Male: [Inaudible]

Don: What I pointed out was that the images in Daniel, chapter 7, had to do with distinct kingdoms. I gave them at the time. That is, first of all, the Babylonian or Neo-Chaldean, Medo-Persian, and then finally the Greek Empire. Then out of this comes ultimately the little horn, who I think is, in the first instance, Antiochus IV Epiphanes. Those images are picked up then in Revelation, and they’re not identified as the same ones, but they are types of the ones that come back again and again.

Now then, chapter 18. I won’t comment upon all of this, but what you really have now is a kind of dirge or lament about the fall of Babylon. Not a lament that says, “Oh, I’m so sorry this is happening; what a tragedy,” but a lament that says, “Oh, this is desperately sad, but she’s getting what she deserves.”

In other words, “It’s sad that we’ve had all the sin that has brought up to this, but this is inevitable.” It’s a lament in that sense. Thus, it becomes a lament and, at the same time, a kind of warning to escape from her and all of her corruptions, not to be allied with her. It becomes a kind of prophetic invitation to make sure you don’t fall under what this dirge is all about.

“After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority, and the earth was illumined by his splendor.” What a lovely picture. “With a mighty voice he shouted: ‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.’ ”

It’s very important to hear what these laments, these dirges are. It’s saying, “Fallen, fallen” before, in John’s time, Babylon has fallen. At this point, Rome is at the height of her power. So these dirges are sort of dirges in advance. They’re dirges that are prophecies. Yet the language is picked out of things that have to do with historic Babylon.

What happened to Babylon? First of all, it became a ruin on the Tigris Euphrates merge on the Euphrates River. With wonderful hanging gardens and irrigation and all the rest, it became a home of jackals, of wild birds, a place where lizards ran about. It’s described for you, first prophetically and then historically in the Old Testament. Babylon was destroyed. It’s still nothing but a village on the river where you spread your nets when you’re going fishing. It’s nothing.

The same language then is picked up. “Fallen! Fallen! Mighty Rome, Babylon the Great. She becomes a home for demons, a haunt for every evil spirit.” Well, it would take another 300 years before Rome was sacked, but sacked she was. She became a little spit on the edge of the boot of Italy too for a long time. It’s a much bigger place today, but she was nothing. She was destroyed. As an empire, as opposed to merely a city, there is no Roman Empire, people.

People have tried to revive it at various times. One remembers the Holy Roman Empire in the fourteenth century and so on. It didn’t amount to much. It was pathetic. One remembers Charlemagne trying. That didn’t go very far either. One remembers the Austro-Hungarian Empire claiming a certain succession. It doesn’t matter. They’re all gone anyway. Mussolini tried to revive it too. Remember? Silly man.

“All the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries. The kings of the earth committed adultery with her …” That is, they participated in her essential self-centered paganism. “… and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.” That is to say, commerce was everything. Integrity was nothing.

“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. Give back to her as she has given; pay her back double for what she has done. Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself.

In her heart she boasts, “I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.” Therefore in one day her plagues will overtake her: death, mourning and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her.

Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: “Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!” The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes any more …’ ” Even the comments are cynical. Not mourning over her because she’s loved but because the commerce is cut off.

“… cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth; every sort of citron wood, and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble; cargoes of cinnamon and spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls of men.”

Extremely dramatic. At the one level, it’s just commerce. Excessive luxuries, maybe. But the commerce includes the bodies and souls of men. The whole slave trade.… That’s what that means. Now I’m going to say something in passing that has nothing to do with this passage but is worth thinking about, nevertheless, in terms of our own history.

There was an African-American scholar by the name of Snowden who lectured at Howard University a number of years ago. He published a book with Harvard University Press called Before Color Prejudice. If you’re interested in race relations, you might want to read that book sometime. What he argues, and he is, I think, just about right.… One could pick apart some of his footnotes, but I think his main thesis is right.

What he argues from the primary sources is that in the ancient world, yes, there was slavery, but slavery was not connected with one race. You see, in American history, slavery was restricted to blacks, and that changes the psychology of both blacks and whites. It means it is very difficult for whites to avoid the overtones, however much we think we escape it, of superiority, and it is equally difficult for blacks to avoid the feelings of inferiority.

What you have to understand is that the alignment of slavery with a particular race is different from the slavery of the ancient world. In the ancient world, you could have slaves who were white or yellow or brown or black, and you could have nobility in the ancient world who were white or yellow or brown or black.

There were all kinds of princely people who came up from Africa and circulated in the Roman world, people of nobility, like the Ethiopian eunuch, for example. People of power and prestige and pomp. Although there was a bit of shame and degradation, and so on, bound up with slavery, there was no association in the empire between slavery and one race, and that makes a world of difference in terms of the impact on the long-term psychology of the people.

Here, clearly, the slave trade is being pilloried in pretty sarcastic terms. One needs to understand that it was a slave trade that crossed races just the same. It wasn’t more or less vile because of it, but it didn’t produce the same kind of psychological effects on both sides that is part of American heritage.

Now the exhortation to “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins” has often been taken in conservative circles in this century and in other centuries to be a people of God called out from mixed churches. “Come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord,” in the King James Version, has often been cited in fundamentalist circles and so on.

There is a principle of holy separateness of people unto God that really should be espoused, no doubt, but this is simply not talking about separating yourself from mixed churches or the like. Nor is it talking about leaving the empire entirely. Where on the outskirts could you go? The empire was the whole show. You had to move up into barbarian Germany, as it was viewed then, in order to escape it, and that wouldn’t have brought you into a more holy place.

You couldn’t escape physically. All you’d head to is a different kind of paganism. You could head off to India, but then there would be more paganism there. It’s not talking about physical escape. It’s not even talking here about a pure church. There are other passages that do talk about a pure church, but that’s not the point here. The point is to come out from her in the sense that you don’t participate in her sins. If that costs you persecution and death, so be it. You overcome by the blood of the Lamb.

That’s surely the kind of coming out that’s at stake here. There may be entailments in terms of your political allegiances and religious allegiances and all the rest, but in the first instance, it’s not a call to come out from a mixed denomination. In the first instance, what you’re coming out from is all of the sins, profanity, blasphemy, cruelty, and injustice of a whole world order with which we are not to be identified.

Now this has been a pretty depressing night. I mean, how many evenings can you come and hear yet more disquisitions on judgment and hell? Next week is partly encouraging and partly discouraging, but the last one is a winner. There’s triumph in the end, people. Hang in there.