Revelation 18

v.4

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;

We recall that part of the strategy of Revelation, in creating a symbolic world for its readers to enter, was to redirect their imaginative response to the world. If they were to disassociate themselves from Babylon and its corrupting influences on their own cities, they needed not only to be shown Roman civilization in a different light from the way its own propoganda portrayed it; they also needed an alternative. If they were - metaphorically - to ‘come out of’ Babylon (18:4), they needed somewhere to go, another city to belong to. If they were to resist the powerful allurements of Babylon, they needed an alternative and greater attraction. Since Babylon is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth (17:18), even over the earthly Jerusalem that comes down from heaven. It belongs to the future, but through John’s vision it exercises its attraction already. On its great high mountain in the future (21:10), it towers above the impressive citadel of Pergamum where Satan had his throne (2:13) and even above the seven mountains on which Babylon was built (17:9). Its radiance, which is the glory of God, already attracts people to it - even, through the church’s witness, the nations and their rulers (21:24). John’s readers may not enter it yet, but they may anticipate a place in it (3:12, 22:14, 19), and belong already to the Bride of the Lamb (19:7-8; 22:17), whose marriage to him will be the city’s arrival on earth (21:2). Thus because the spiritual centre in the present is hidden and contradicted (11:1-2), while the splendour and power of Babylon dominate the world, including the life of their own cities, John’s readers need the vision of a centre in the eschatological future towards which they may live. It has to be presented as the alternative to Babylon, and so the visions of the harlot city of Babylon (17:1-19:10) and the Lamb’s bride the New Jerusalem (21:9-22:9) form a structural pair in the latter part of the book. They both play on the ancient mythic ideal of the city as the place where human community lives in security and prosperity with the divine in its midst. Babylon represents the perversion of this ideal, what it comes to when, instead of the true God, humanity’s self-deification is the heart of the city. All the proud, God-defying, tyrannical and oppressive cities and states of the Old Testament, contribute to the picture: Babel, Sodom, Egypt, Tyre, Babylon, Edom. The Babylon of Revelation sums up and surpasses them all. But the echoes of the past are tailored to the reality of the present: John’s readers would recognize well enough the contemporary Rome in her true colours. Conversely, the New Jerusalem represents the true fulfillment of the ideal of the city, a city truly worth belonging to. It takes up the ideal to which the earthly Jerusalem aspired but surpasses her in an eschatological excess already to be found in the visions of the Old Testament prophets. The fall of Babylon, which occupies so much of Revelation, is what human opposition to God must come to, but it is not celebrated for its own sake. Babylon must fall so that the New Jerusalem may replace her. Her satanic parody of the ideal of the city must give way to the divine reality. But John hopes that, before this happens, not only his readers but even, through them, the nations, may be won from the deceitful charms of Babylon to the genuine attractions of the New Jerusalem. For this reason, the two visions of Babylon and the New Jerusalem are replete with parallels and contrasts between the two. A list of some of the major ways in which the New Jerusalem is presented as God’s alternative to Babylon will illustrate the point:

1. The chaste, bride, the wife of the Lamb (21:2, 9) v. the harlot with whom the kings of the earth fornicate (17:2)
2. Her splendour is the glory of God (21:11-21) v. Babylon’s splendour from exploiting her empire (17:4; 18:12-13, 16)
3. The nations walk by her light, which is the glory of God (21:24) v. Babylon’s corruption and deception of the nations (17:2; 18:3, 23; 19:2)
4. The kings of the earth bring their glory into her (i.e. their worship and submission to God: 21:24) v. Babylon rules over the kings of the earth (17:18)
5. They bring the glory and honour of the nations into her (i.e. glory to God: 21:26) v. Babylon’s luxurious wealth extorted from all the world (18:12-17)
6. Uncleanness, abomination, and falsehood are excluded (21:27) v. Babylon’s abominations, impurities, deceptions (17:4, 5; 18:23)
7. The water of life and the tree of life for the healing of the nations (21:6; 22:1-2) v. Babylon’s wine which makes the nations drunk (14:8; 17:2; 18:3)
8. Life and healing (22:1-2) v. the blood of slaughter (17:6; 18:24)
9. God’s people are called to enter the New Jerusalem (22:14) v. God’s people are called to come out of Babylon (18:4).

In the beginning God had planted a garden for humanity to live in (Genesis 2:8). In the end he will give them a city. In the New Jerusalem the blessings of paradise will be restored, but the New Jerusalem is more than paradise regained. As a city it fulfills humanity’s desire to build out of nature a human place of human culture and community. True, it is given by God and so comes down from heaven. But this does not mean humanity makes no contribution to it. It consummates human history and culture insofar as these have been dedicated to God (cf. 21:12, 14, 24, 26), while excluding the distortions of history and culture into opposition to God that Babylon represents (cf. 21:8, 27; 22:15). It comes from God in the sense that all good comes from God, and all that is humanly good is best when acknowledged to come from God. But the city that both includes paradise unspoiled (21:19) points to that harmony of nature and human culture to which ancient cities once aspired but which modern cities have increasingly betrayed.

The theocentricity of Revelation, so apparent in chapters 4-5, is focused again in the description of the New Jerusalem. God’s creation reaches its eschatological fulfillment when it becomes the scene of God’s immediate presence. This, in the last resort, is what is ‘new’ about the new creation. It is the old creation filled with God’s presence.

RichardBauckham

Christians are not being called to withdraw from economic life or from the world in which they live, but they may be ostracized because of their refusal to compromise. They are to remain in the world to witness (11:3-7) and to suffer for their testimony (6:9; 11:7-10; 12:11, 17; 16:6; 17:6; 18:24), but they are not to be of the world (14:12-13; 16:15). V. 4 is not an exhortation to unbelievers who have always been outside the church, but is addressed rather to those within the confessing community of faith who can already be referred to by God as “My people.” This is an exhortation to persevere in the true faith.

GKBeale

v.5

for her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.

Spiritual Babylon mirrors the old earthly Babylon, whose judgment “reached to heaven and towers up to the very skies” (Jer. 51:9). The sins that have mounted up before God remind Him to punish the sinners. The image of sin mounting up to heaven is metaphorical of the great amount of sin committed, which God recognizes. Babylon has so multiplied her sin that God must multiply His judgments against her in order to maintain His justice.

GKBeale