Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Revelation.  Tonight is study #23 of Revelation, chapter 18, and we are continuing to look at Revelation 18:9-10:

And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

Last time we were taking a close look at the Greek word “blepo,” which is translated as “see” in Revelation 18:9: “And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning.”  We were considering how it is that the unsaved people of the world can “see” the judgment of the world, because Babylon burning is the judgment of the world.  And, yet, at the same time, they do not “see” it.  Here we are and we are well into the prolonged period of Judgment Day, which will very likely be 1,600 days.  In May of this year, it will be four years since May 21, 2011 and, yet, there is very little recognition or understanding on the part of the world that they are under the judgment of God. 

So we wanted to take a closer look at this word “blepo” to gather information that might explain this apparent contradiction.  God speaks of the kings of the earth, the merchants of the earth and the shipmasters as seeing the burning of Babylon, which is the wrath of God upon this world.  They are “seeing” it and they are even crying out, “Alas, alas,” and they are bewailing and lamenting.  How can that be?

We saw that God tells us, concerning parables, in Matthew 13 that the unsaved person “sees,” but “sees not.”  So they hear the Word of God or they see information in the Bible or in tracts or they hear someone talk about it, but they do not comprehend it.  They lack understanding, so they “see not.”  This is how God has written the Bible and many people have read the Bible and seen the Word of God and, yet, they have not understood the deeper spiritual meanings in the Bible.  Therefore, they “see not.”

We also went to Revelation, chapter 11, and we looked at the death of the two witnesses, once Satan was loosed and they were killed.  God said in Revelation 11:8-10:

And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

The word “see” is our word “blepo.”   We have a very similar context and statement that God makes in Revelation 11 with what we find in Revelation 18, because Revelation 11 describes the judgment of God when it begins at the house of God upon the churches back on May 21, 1988.  God speaks of the judgment on the churches, which relates to the time when Satan was loosed out of the bottomless pit and he came against the churches and “killed” them.  Then God speaks of the dead bodies of the two witnesses (the lifeless church) because the life of the church was in the Spirit of God’s presence in blessing His Word to give spiritual life, but God departed from the churches.  He left them the Bible, but without the Spirit of God to bless the work of His Word, it is as if the “two witnesses” are dead.  So God says that the peoples, kindreds tongues and nations (four groups pointing to universality) see the dead bodies of the two witnesses lying in the streets; they not only see them, but they have a reaction to it.  It is just like the kings of the earth that see Babylon’s burning and their reaction is to bewail, lament and cry, “Alas, alas.”  But here, the world “sees” the dead church and their reaction is to rejoice and make merry and send gifts.  There is much similarity between these accounts in Revelation 11 and in Revelation 18; we have the cup of the wrath of God’s judgment on the churches in Revelation and the judgment on the world in Revelation 18.  We have a terrible situation with the two dead witnesses and with Babylon.  The two witnesses are dead and Babylon is burning and in both cases people view the judgment as they see the dead body of the two witnesses and they see the burning of Babylon. 

So this passage in Revelation, chapter 11, can help us to understand what God is saying in Revelation 18.  When we think about it and carefully consider what God is saying here, we know we also have the benefit of knowing that the Great Tribulation is past, so we have already experienced and gone through what God describes concerning the two witnesses lying dead in the streets and the world’s reaction.  Therefore, we have an excellent vantage point to understand what it means and we must ask the question: Did the world literally see this?  Was there comprehension and understanding on the world’s part in regard to the end of the church age and God’s judgment upon the churches?  Did they know that the Spirit of God had left the churches?  The answer is that the world did not know; they had no inkling of these things.  Even the true believers did not know that God had left all the churches until well into the Great Tribulation period.  But God says that as soon as the two witnesses were killed, the world could “see” these things and rejoice over it, as if they fully understood that the two witnesses that had tormented them were dead.  It is as though they had complete comprehension regarding what happened to the two witnesses, as we read about this in Revelation, chapter 11, and, yet, that was not literally the case; the world did not have understanding of what God did when He removed His Spirit and set up Satan in the churches, ending the church age.  The world had hardly any understanding of these things, so how can we explain the language of the Bible when it says they “saw” the two witnesses. 

Again, “seeing,” they “see not,” and they did see the dead churches; that is, the world encountered and did view the behavior of the dead churches in many ways over the course of the 23-year Great Tribulation period when God ended the church age and brought judgment upon them.  The world did see the churches on one level.  For example, as the church involved itself in “holy laughter,” the world heard about that.  As the church involved itself in “healings” and the “tongues movement,” the world had friends in the churches that would have talked about these things.  They heard about some of the craziness going on in the congregations; they were aware of it.  They also heard more and more about the churches and their scandals.  We do not have to go into the details, but there were horrible scandals that involved pastors and priests and it happened on a regular basis.  God had lifted His hand of restraint off the churches and they became involved in sins just like the world and the world heard and saw these things. Basically, the world saw the members of the congregations because they lived among them – they lived on their blocks or they worked with them or they were members of their families.  They saw the members of these churches conducting themselves just like the world and it became obvious, on this level, that the church was “dead.”  There were many failings and false teachings and many errors made by the churches that happened because God was not defending and protecting them and they were exposed to the eyes of the world as being a “dead” church.  They “saw” but they “saw not” in that they did not understand exactly what God was doing with the churches, but they “saw” a dead church and they rejoiced over it and made merry because they felt much freer to indulge in their sins and show forth their sinful tendencies than ever before.  Historically, the churches had had some positive affect on the communities around them, but now God’s Spirit was not there and the world either consciously, or subconsciously, could “see” it.  They witnessed all the evil behaviors the churches were involved in, which really demonstrated that God was no longer with them.  The churches were a dead corpse.  Again, the world did not have spiritual understanding, but they were rejoicing and making merry and sending gifts one to another.  So they could “see” the dead churches and, yet, they did not “see.”  And this is exactly what God is illustrating to us in Revelation 18 in regard to the judgment upon the world.

Let me just go a couple of verses in the Old Testament.  God is going to show us some Scripture in the Book of Lamentations where it is as though the churches recognize or “see” the judgment of God upon them and lament and weep and mourn over it.  It is as if they fully understand what God has done, but we know that was not the case – the churches did not understand at all what God did to them.  Lamentations is a Book that describes the judgment on Judah or Jerusalem, which typifies God’s judgment upon the churches at the time of the Great Tribulation.  It says in Lamentations 2:9-12:

Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from JEHOVAH. The elders of the daughter of Zion sit upon the ground, and keep silence: they have cast up dust upon their heads; they have girded themselves with sackcloth: the virgins of Jerusalem hang down their heads to the ground. Mine eyes do fail with tears, my bowels are troubled, my liver is poured upon the earth, for the destruction of the daughter of my people; because the children and the sucklings swoon in the streets of the city. They say to their mothers, Where is corn and wine? when they swooned as the wounded in the streets of the city, when their soul was poured out into their mothers' bosom.

Notice that God is speaking of His judgment upon Judah, which in turn points to the judgment on the churches, and He speaks of the elders sitting on the ground and they have cast dust upon their heads and girded themselves with sackcloth.  In the Bible this language means you are “broken” and crying out to God and, yet, this is describing the reaction of the elders in the churches when God brought spiritual famine upon them – not a famine of bread and water, but a famine of hearing the Word of the Lord.  It was the end of salvation for the churches and congregations of the world.  It is as though the elders sit in sackcloth and ashes and as if the children are saying to their mothers, “Where is corn and wine?”  It is as if they are asking their mothers for some food and nourishment.  The way God writes this it seems they have some understanding that God’s wrath is upon them, but that was not the case. 

When we look at the actual judgment of God upon the churches when He brought the spiritual famine to pass, the churches were (and are) completely ignorant of the fact that there is no blessing and there is no Spirit of God with them.  The Comforter has left them and there is no salvation within the churches and congregations of the world.  Since they are ignorant of that, they are obviously not going to be sitting in sackcloth and ashes and the children are not literally swooning and crying out for food to those that “give suck” in those days.  This was not the case and it did not literally happen as a reaction; they denied it was the end of the church age; they denied God had abandoned them and they denied that Satan had entered in.  Therefore, they denied there was a famine.  But, it is as if God is drawing a picture and “putting words in their mouth” that indicate how they should react.  It is not what actually happened.  The world did not have understanding of the dead church and those in the churches did not cry out to God because His judgment was upon them, but it is how God is portraying it in His Word.

Let us go to one other passage in Lamentations 5:9-16:

We gat our bread with the peril of our lives because of the sword of the wilderness. Our skin was black like an oven because of the terrible famine. They ravished the women in Zion, and the maids in the cities of Judah. Princes are hanged up by their hand: the faces of elders were not honoured. They took the young men to grind, and the children fell under the wood. The elders have ceased from the gate, the young men from their musick. The joy of our heart is ceased; our dance is turned into mourning. The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!

Here, everyone in the society of Judah is being addressed: the children, the women, the men, the elders, and so forth.  It is an end of salvation because the “crown,” which points to the crown of salvation, has fallen from their heads.  They cry, “Woe unto us, that we have sinned!”  It is similar to how the kings of the earth, in Revelation 18, cry, “Woe, woe, for that great city Babylon.”  They are wailing and lamenting for her. 

We need to understand that this is not literal.  It does not mean that the people of the earth will “see” with comprehension the judgment of the world (the burning of Babylon) and react to it in a literal way, with tears and sorrow and cries of, “Woe, woe!”  They are not “seeing” it on that level, but they are going to “see” it on another level.  They are going to see it through daily, evil reports, as God has given up mankind more and more.  They are going to see it through the failure of secular philosophy.  They are going to see it through the sin of homosexuality and homosexual marriage; this particular sin is a sign post that God has permitted in the world.  It was a sin that had been kept under wraps in all nations throughout history, but now it is suddenly very public and open. 

They are going to see it in the greatest way through the lack of evangelization from the true declaration of the Gospel.  The true Gospel message of salvation has ended and there is no true Gospel message going forth into the world by the people of God.  The churches still bring their gospel message of salvation and other false ministries are doing this, but it is no longer the true Gospel.  The churches continued to preach during the judgment upon it, but it lacked the Spirit of God and the world was able to detect that on a certain level, according to Revelation, chapter 11.  Likewise, the world will “see” a lack of evangelization of the true Gospel and the absence of the Spirit of God in any witness bringing a message that God is still saving today. 

The world will “see” these things, but “seeing,” they will “see not.”  They will not comprehend it.  They will not have understanding.  They may have heard about the spiritual judgment that began on May 21, 2011.  They may have heard about a likely date for the end.  They may hear truth, but they will lack understanding.  But God is not concerned with that.  God is concerned with justice and in Revelation 18 He is giving an illustration of His judgment, just as He judged the churches.  He says the world will “see” the burning of Babylon.  Presently, the world is “seeing” it, but not on a level of spiritual understanding, but they are seeing the effects of God’s judgment upon the world.