After all this I saw another angel come down from heaven with great authority, and the earth grew bright with his splendor. He gave a mighty shout: “Babylon is fallen—that great city is fallen! She has become a home for demons. She is a hideout for every foul spirit, a hideout for every foul vulture and every foul and dreadful animal. For all the nations have fallen because of the wine of her passionate immorality. The kings of the world have committed adultery with her. Because of her desires for extravagant luxury, the merchants of the world have grown rich.” Then I heard another voice calling from heaven, “Come away from her, my people. Do not take part in her sins, or you will be punished with her. For her sins are piled as high as heaven, and God remembers her evil deeds. Do to her as she has done to others. Double her penalty for all her evil deeds. She brewed a cup of terror for others, so brew twice as much for her. She glorified herself and lived in luxury, so match it now with torment and sorrow. She boasted in her heart, ‘I am queen on my throne. I am no helpless widow, and I have no reason to mourn.’ Therefore, these plagues will overtake her in a single day—death and mourning and famine. She will be completely consumed by fire, for the Lord God who judges her is mighty.” And the kings of the world who committed adultery with her and enjoyed her great luxury will mourn for her as they see the smoke rising from her charred remains. They will stand at a distance, terrified by her great torment. They will cry out, “How terrible, how terrible for you, O Babylon, you great city! In a single moment God’s judgment came on you.” Revelation 18:1-10
There is a decided difference between a cruise and a journey. Cruises sail out from port, circle around
awhile, and return to the same place. A
journey is going somewhere, a destination.
The question becomes, is your life on a cruise or a journey? The answer to that question is the difference
between a cruise, which has the purpose of enjoying the moment and being served
whatever luxury pleases you, as opposed to journeying to a destination while
helping others along the way to that same destination.
Cutting to the chase here, this morning, let us flesh-out the cruise metaphor
for life’s threescore-and-ten, the luxury cruise which (in
reality) isn’t going nowhere; it is the very definition of
Hell! An endless cruise of self-gratification,
luxury, and ease is a purposeless existence, not a life. We were not created for opulence and luxury;
if that were the case, only Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump (among
others in that rarified, gold-adorned crowd) have boarded the ship; the rest of
us are mere imposters in life, thinking we’re going somewhere, but missing the
point to eat, drink and be merry, because (as the inference has
it) this is all you get. Admittedly, if there
is no eternity, no God, no right and wrong, and, therefore, no accountability,
that life’s mantra is simply fine. Live
it up; you only go around once.
But if there is a God, and He’s in charge, because He created it all, and
we ARE accountable to Him…those who love the cruise ship will dock in the same
Hell they sought to escape. Those
leaving the ship will be full of lobster dip and shrimp delights, ten pounds
heavier, and a soul that is nailed to the piers.
The angel of Revelation warns us to keep to the journey that matters,
the one that travels through this life to the destination purchased by the
blood of Jesus Christ.
For You Today
You
chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!
Title image, Pixabay.com and W Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
For other posts on Revelation 18 see: When a Queen Rides the Lightning and
To Cooperate or Not
