Today is the death knell for Babylon, the final stages of judgement against a fallen world that no one city is responsible for, yet all have Babylon-esque characteristics in them somewhere.
21 Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying,
“So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more;
22 and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters,
will be heard in you no more,
and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more,
and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more,
23 and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more,
and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more,
for your merchants were the great ones of the earth,
and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.
24 And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints,
and of all who have been slain on earth.”
In Matthew 18.6 we see the imagery of the millstone, and here an angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, showing the final judgement has come. We saw this prophesied in Jeremiah 51.61-64, and the accuracy with which he spoke is chilling.
In vv.22-24 we see this repetition of the words ‘no more’;
22 and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters,
will be heard in you no more,
and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more,
and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more,
23 and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more,
and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more,
for your merchants were the great ones of the earth,
and all nations were deceived by your sorcery.
Simply, all industry and commerce, everything human, fleshly, and of a worldly nature will just cease to be, will stop, will come to an end. As we progress into chapters 19 to 22 of Revelation we will see why there is no need for this kind of activity anyway.
This fleshly, wordly system, the world system at large is like a drug addiction. The word we read as sorcery is pharmakia in Greek…sound familiar? Sounds like pharmacy right, a place where drugs are prepared and distributed.
The fleshly, worldly system is like a drug addiction, and all nations have been deceived by it and become enslaved to it.
There is no one city that is responsible, remember, Babylon is representative of this system, and because of this we all need to pause and think; do I have any of this in me? Because there is nowhere that we could have come from that has not been influenced by the fallen ways of mankind, we all need to stop and think; am I living – at least in part – in Babylon?
Where is my treasure?
What do I hold as precious and important?
1 Peter tells us that Jesus is precious to those that believe, He is a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame (2.6).
