The Proclamation of the Three Angels

Scripture Reading: Revelation 14:1-20, Psalm 107:1-3, Hebrews 12:18-24

In today’s reading an angel declares that Babylon—a symbol of the powers of this dark world—has been effectively poisoning the world. I think we can see these effects around us today too. I picture a personified Babylon offering me a glass of wine and saying, “Here, drink this. You’ll love it!” Sensing no immediate danger, I have a taste, and all is well. But this crafty sommelier will be back tomorrow to offer me more. And the next day the same. And the one after that. Before I know it, I have a trusted (but wicked) friend, and I’ll accept whatever I’m served.

But Babylon is more than a passive, instructive metaphor; it is an active entity with malevolent intentions. All along, its ambition was to drive me insane and destroy me from the inside out with the fruit of its rotten vines. The cup I willingly accepted was tainted with trace amounts of poison too innocuous to be detected but potent enough to damage my mental and spiritual faculties by imperceptible degrees. I was never observably “drunk,” but my judgment was dangerously impaired and my thinking hideously distorted.

Now, we do have an insurmountable confidence that Jesus can scatter the darkness of even our most heinous wickedness. But for some, the mere suggestion that the enemy has infiltrated our minds would elicit an emphatic “Not I, Lord!”

Alas, the stakes are too high to avoid self-evaluating, precautionary questions. Is it possible that I’ve been hypnotized by the wiles of modernity’s Babylon? Am I in any way complicit with the agenda of the enemy? Has Babylon’s cup of deceit softened my defenses? Have I allowed any subtle forms of maleficence to become commonplace—and therefore acceptable? How much injustice, gossip, greed, back-biting, selfishness, vanity, ungratefulness, and deceitfulness have I tacitly permitted in my own life and within my own community? I simply do not want to wake up some day and realize I’ve been fooled into thinking that everything is coming up roses when really the world around me is a stinking, rotting field dotted with the unmarked graves of those who didn’t even know they were dead and who didn’t have to be.

Please, dear reader. Let’s sober up. Let’s snap out of dark reverie and heed the warnings of God’s precious Word. Let’s not wait for an angel to declare Babylon’s demise before we finally come around and see we weren’t on the side of Jesus. We cannot afford to delay. Let it be us, those “whose names have been written in heaven” (Hebrews 12:23), who live out the gospel of Jesus wherever we go. Let us, “the redeemed of the LORD” (Psalm 107:2), arise and join the chorus encouraging the world to “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come. Worship the one who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water” (Revelation 14:8). Now is the time to learn the song of the redeemed and sing it for all to hear.

Written by Alex Florez