Hope of Exile
Revelation 17-18, 21
Young adulthood makes you think living for Christ and living for the world will look the same. Work, hobbies, rot at home, watch the same K-dramas, friends from college/high school. Go out, eat, and play. Your life may look virtually very similar.
But John sets a sharp contrast between Babylon and New Jerusalem.
Compare Two Cities: Babylon and New Jerusalem
Which city are you living in? Which city are you living for?
Source of glory: self vs. God Dwelling: demons vs. God Clothes: purple vs. righteousness
- The chaste, bride, the wife of the Lamb (21:2, 9) vs. the harlot with whom the kings of the earth fornicate (17:2)
- Her splendour is the glory of God (21:11-21) vs. Babylon’s splendour from exploiting her empire (17:4; 18:12-13, 16)
- The nations walk by her light, which is the glory of God (21:24) vs. Babylon’s corruption and deception of the nations (17:2; 18:3, 23; 19:2)
- The kings of the earth bring their glory into her, i.e. their worship and submission to God (21:24) vs. Babylon rules over the kings of the earth (17:18)
- They bring the glory and honour of the nations into her, i.e. glory to God (21:26) vs. Babylon’s luxurious wealth extorted from all the world (18:12-17)
- Uncleanness, abomination, and falsehood are excluded (21:27) vs. Babylon’s abominations, impurities, deceptions (17:4, 5; 18:23)
- The water of life and the tree of life for the healing of the nations (21:6; 22:1-2) vs. Babylon’s wine which makes the nations drunk (14:8; 17:2; 18:3)
- Life and healing (22:1-2) vs. the blood of slaughter (17:6; 18:24)
- God’s people are called to enter the New Jerusalem (22:14) vs. God’s people are called to come out of Babylon (18:4)
On Babylon
Babylon is a symbol of the world, the system, the way things operate in a fallen humanity—worldliness in a word. Babylon represents in particular the temptation to go along with the world in order to share in the world’s wealth.
The woman in chapter 17 is the anti-Church. Babylon is even dressed up to look like the Church: gold, precious stones, pearls, fine linen. Both women are mothers. One will live and reign forever, the other will be cast down in one hour.
Babylon is the anti-Church. It’s one more attempt by God in this book to show the radical distinction between those who overcome the world and those who succumb to the world.
On the New Jerusalem
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.
The theocentricity of Revelation 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.