We come now to the 18th chapter of Revelation, where we see the final stroke of judgment on a fallen race, which takes place in the space of one hour, verse 17. As Paul said in Romans 9.28, he will finish the work and cut it short in righteousness, because a short work will the Lord make upon the earth. When the Lord God takes his glittering sword from its sheath to render vengeance upon the adversaries, according to Deuteronomy 32.40, He will come as a whirlwind, according to Isaiah 66, 16, upon this Christless, godless world. And just as the Lord Himself came for His bride, so the Lord Himself shall descend in judgment upon the city of Babylon, the city of the harlot wife of the Antichrist. We close the study on the 17th chapter of Revelation with the execution of the mystic Babylon of all false religions headed up in one by the ten kings under the authority of the Antichrist who hate her and make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh and burn her with fire. The last verse of chapter 17 identifies the woman with the great city of Babylon which reigns over the kings of the earth. after John had been shown the scarlet-clothed woman who was mystic Babylon, and he had been made to see all of her abominations, idolatry, fornication, and uncleanness that had spread over the entire earth through her idolatrous teachings, not only paganism, but all the so-called Christian denominations of the world, and every ism, he saw the ten kings tear her to pieces, burn her with fire, and make her desolate. Then in chapter 18, He is given the privilege of looking upon the city of Babylon, that great city, yes, that great city which reigneth over the kings of the earth. In other words, turning from the vision of the false religion as such, John now beheld beholds the vision of the whole world system and sees how idolatry in some form or other, with all of its abominations, uncleanness and fornication, has dominated every government of the world from Nimrod up to this present hour, except for the theocracy under the rule of King David of Israel. and the world political system from which all other systems of the world merge is headed up under the reign of the Antichrist in the city of Babylon, which will be his seat during the tribulation period. Let's turn to Revelation 18, verse 1-3, and read these words. Listen, And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power, and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily, with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. and is become the habitation of devils or demons, and the whole of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies. After these things takes us from the destruction of all form of religion, under the rise to power of the Antichrist over three and a half years to the close of his absolute reign. During the three and a half years the Antichrist is exalted to the position of the Emperor God of the world in power. He is worshipped as God and his image is set up in every shrine over the world. We know this from Revelation 17, 17. God hath put in their hearts to fulfill his will and to agree and give their kingdom unto the beast until the words of God shall be fulfilled. Or until all the prophecies of God come to pass. Then at the close of this period, John sees the destruction of the great city of Babylon, the capital of the world empire. I saw another angel come down from heaven, and John looked upon this heavenly being. He seemed like an angel, but he calls him another angel. This angel does not speak to John. He comes down from the heaven. He comes with great power, that is, great authority, full power, jurisdiction. As I look closely at this first verse, I see Jehovah God coming down from heaven to earth and coming as judge. The first thing that happens is the earth was lightened with his glory, and the whole earth is illuminated with his glory. Such language is nowhere used in the Bible to describe an ordinary angel or one of the created beings, but is always used to refer to the majesty of the Son of God. In John 5, 27, we find these words. The Father hath given him power to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Christ is coming down now, not in mercy, but in judgment. The psalmist speaks of the glorious name of Jehovah and says, Let the whole earth be filled with his glory. When Isaiah stood in the temple and saw the vision of the Messiah, he heard one of the seraphims cry, The whole earth is full of his glory. In the Ezekiel, the prophet beholds the glory of the God of Israel coming from the way of the east. The expression full of glory is always and only applied to the Lord Jesus Christ himself and never to a created being. Then the next thing that happens is the angel, the angel, cried mightily with a strong voice. As the Lord Jesus descended from the heaven, clothed in light as a garment, he utters a cry that encircles the globe. It's a cry of judgment, a cry of vengeance. The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man. He shall stir up jealousy like a man of war. He shall cry, yea, roar! He shall prevail against his enemies, cried Isaiah. It is the mighty cry of holy, burning jealousy, because God's word says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. What is the meaning of this cry? Babylon is fallen, is fallen. It is the announcement of guilt. First, this mystic Babylon, the mother of harlots, is a fallen woman, a fallen system, and she has corrupted all mankind. Therefore she is under the dire judgment of God. The second expression is fallen, refers to the city of Babylon. That city is under the sentence of doom. Judgment hangs over her. Vengeance awaits her. Now how is Babylon fallen? She has become the habitation of devils and the whole of ever foul spirit. and a cage of every unclean and hateful or hated bird. As God looks upon this wicked fallen city, he sees a whole city, now you get it now, hold it, hold it, hold it. He, as God looks upon this wicked fallen city, he sees a whole city given over to demons and demon worship. This is the capital city of the Antichrist and practically all the inhabitants are given over to demonism, idolatry, the worship of Satan's son, the Antichrist. He sees nothing but foul demon spirits and strange flesh, the sons of God cohabiting with the daughters of men. He sees the city as one cesspool of corruption and sink of iniquity, and a whole cage of foul spirits, lewd, impure spirits, possessing humanity. It is a city given over to spiritism. and the worship of Satan with all the immorality and lewdness that accompanies a depraved heart. Then he says, the city has become a cage, now get this, hold it, a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. To understand this passage of Scripture, let's turn to Jeremiah 5, 26. For among my people are found wicked men. They lay wait, as he that sitteth snares. They set a trap, they catch men. As a cage is full of birds, so are their houses full of deceits. Therefore they have become great, waxen rich, they are waxen fat. They shined, gave their overpass, the deeds of the wicked. Shall I not visit for these things, saith the Lord? Shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this? This means that every house in that city is full of deceits. Now the word deceit means trick. or device to trap or capture prey. Babylon is a cage of devices to trap men and women and hold them prisoners of sin and worshipers of Satan. Every attraction of the lust of the flesh, every facility for the indulgence of fleshly lust, every form of fornication and type of sex perversion is provided for Every opportunity for the covetous, grasping desire of the lust of the eyes is found in Babylon. The pride of life rises to its culmination. How much she hath glorified herself and lived delicacy. Verse 7. There seems to be no language that can describe the outward manifestation of such weakness, iniquity, corruption, and uncleanness. Then Revelation 18.5 says, For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities, such as he spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yes, the sins of Babylon have reached unto heaven. and are crying for vengeance, the Lord Jesus Christ himself comes down and pronounces her doom. Iniquity is ripe to the full, the point of no return in their weakness is past and it leaves God no alternative but to punish her. Therefore he comes down and cries with a loud voice that encircles the earth, Babylon is fallen, Babylon is fallen. Throughout the scripture we find occasions when God came down to investigate the sin of man. He maketh inquisition for sin. When God comes down, it is always in judgment on sin. I want us to look at that great truth throughout the history of man when God comes down. God came down in the Garden of Eden when man sinned. He came down in judgment. God created Adam and Eve, placed them in the Garden of Eden. It was a literal paradise. and he gave them one prohibition, thou mayest not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed, they sinned, they fell. The Lord came down in the cool of the day and walked in the garden. And he cried, Adam, where art thou? Adam and his wife had hidden themselves behind the trees and were sewing together aprons of fig leaves to hide their nakedness, because the glory of God had left them and they found themselves naked. God pronounced them guilty, pronounced the judgment, then executed the senates, that is, he drove them out of the garden, divorced them from himself, and placed the cherubims at the entrance of the garden to guard the tree of life. In their hands he placed a flaming sword, now you get this, hold it, that turned every way, burning, destroying, and laying waste the entire garden. The ground was literally cursed. The yield and yielded as fruit only by hard labor. For God turned at him and said, From this day thou shalt make thy living by the sweat of thy brow. We are told the land of Shinar was originally a barren desert which became fruitful through an extensive system of canals. In the midst of this judgment, God showed mercy in clothing them with the coats of skin after the shedding of blood and the atonement made for their guilt. The next time God came down was at the flood in the sixth chapter of Genesis. The sons of God, the angels, had cohabited with the daughters of men and produced a race of giants. And the whole world was corrupted and given over to weakness and fornication and uncleanness and abominations until they reached the point of no return. God, in his infinite mercy, called Noah and his family out of that wickedness and preserved them through the flood judgment. When Noah and his family entered the ark and God shut the door, he spoke. The fountains of the deep were broken up. That is, the underground springs of the oceans shot up great gushers and the beds of the seas came up in one great upheaval, raising the ocean level above the land level, caused great tidal waves to sweep over the entire earth. Then again, he spoke. The windows of heaven were opened and tyrants from the ocean above fell upon a wicked world for forty days and nights, until the water was fifteen cubits above the highest point of earth on this globe. The whole earth's surface was changed during those forty days and nights. Tornadoes, hurricanes, storms raged, the wind blew, howls, forests were destroyed, millions of animals were submerged, all living creatures were snuffed out as in one breath. What a wilderness Noah and his family found themselves in when the waters had a sage. All civilization had been destroyed. All commerce, trade, the cities, the farms, everything was gone. Everything had gone down in the deluge. The first thing Noah did, get it now, hold your seat, he set foot on dry land and was to erect an altar and offer a burnt offering which stands as a monument to all the generations that God was right in his judgment, and his judgments are just and righteous altogether. He didn't erect an altar to a sin offering, but an altar to a burnt offering. God came down again at the Tower of Babel. Men began to multiply upon the face of the earth, and under the leadership of Nimrod, the greatest rebel the earth has ever known, and he is a type of the Antichrist, they began to build a tower to the sun god. Under Nibrod, the worship of the Son, God was established. Babylon became the seat of idolatry, from which spread idolatry in every section of the globe. Babylon, that we see rise in Genesis, now falls in Revelation. Babylon, commended in Genesis, commenced in Genesis, continued through all of the Scriptures, and comes to a conclusion here in Revelation. The Bible student who does not see and understand the rise of idol worship and know how it has permitted the entire earth since the flood, does not and cannot understand his Bible. The Bible student who does not see and understand how even our present day, the wine of old Babylon, has permeated every religious denomination and turned away the hearts of multitudes from the worship of the true God, does not understand redemption in Christ and is therefore ignorant of the great basic truths of God's eternal word. May I recommend to you a book called The Two Babylons by Hislop. Write me about it. To restrain the corruption of the human race through the idolatry of Babylon, God came down and confused the language of the people so they could not understand each other. Here was the beginning of the different races of the earth. It was then, it was when God came down at Babel that the land mass was divided into the different continents, oceans and seas according to Genesis 2.25. God's judgment fell upon this earth and as a result there came a cataclysmic upheaval of the entire earth that changed the surface of the earth. Take away our map and study it closely. If you could bring every continent together in one land mass, you would find that they fit together perfectly. Then God, it is infinite mercy, called out Abraham of Ur the Chaldees to be the depositor of true worship, and through him would come the Messiah, the Savior of the world. So we see that when God comes down to earth, there's always judgment, but it's judgment mingled with mercy. The next time God came down was when he rescued his people, the Jews, out of the land of Egypt and gave to the world the law from Mount Sinai. He met Moses in the desert, in the burning bush. This was the prelude to the ten plagues of Egypt that rocked not only the earth but the heavens and brought judgment after judgment upon that idolatrous, wicked nation. First the waters were turned to blood. The history of the nations revealed that not only the waters of Egypt turned to blood, but waters in different sections of the world turned to blood. And the Red Sea still carries that name. Next we see the whole atmospheric heavens broke loose in a raging storm. Hail mingled with fire. In Hebrew, means a burning or hot stone or glowing mass of meteorites. And God rained these upon the land of Egypt and literally destroyed everything in the way of food, killed cattle and even human beings. Finally, God rocked the nation with the death of the firstborn and the Jews under Moses' leadership followed the pillar of cloud by day and the fire by night across the Red Sea to the foot of Mount Sinai. Listen, here again God came down upon that mountain, and when he did, there were thunderings and voices, and the mountain quaked, and the whole earth trembled. The mountain became a mighty volcano of smoke and furnace. It was God. It was God coming down in judgment and pronouncing the law to the inhabitants of the earth. We think that the law was given only to the Jews, but the law was given to the entire earth. When the Lord spake from that mountain, I believe not only the Jews heard him, but that voice echoed around the world. And every nation on the globe heard that mighty voice as he said, Thou shalt not have any other gods before me. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God. and him only will thou serve, and so on. I am the Lord thy God. The psalmist describes that scene in these words. O God, when thou wentest forth before thy people, when thou didst march through the wilderness, Selah, the earth shook. The heavens also dropped at the presence of God. Even Sinai itself was moved at the presence of God, the God of Israel. My friends, We don't know much about our Bibles, do we? Yes, that voice sounded forth the law, and it shook the entire earth, according to Hebrews 12, 26, whose voice then shook the earth. But now he hath promised, saying that once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. Here again we see the Lord God of heaven coming down in judgment. These laws that he gave, not only to Israel, but to the whole world, were graven on two stones and placed in the ark of the covenant. But above that ark was the mercy seat where the blood was sprinkled. Therefore, in the midst of judgment, again we see mercy. Judgment produces mercy. If there were no judgment, There could be no mercy. If God did not visit this earth in judgment, he could not visit it in mercy. It's the union of judgment and love that promises mercy. for God to show mercy to any sinner, he first has to visit that sinner in judgment until all of his rebellion, hatred, malice, envy, and jealousy are put under the rod of eternal justice. And that sinner sees and condemns himself under the wrath of a sin-avenging God. Then only as the sinner submits to the rod of judgment can God show mercy and express love to that sinner. It is only when God shows mercy, it is only, get it now, It is only God's judgment, it is only when God's judgment is extended to this sin-cursed earth that mercy is manifested from the hands of a loving God. If you do not see that, you do not know salvation in Christ. If you never see that, you will never know the love of God or experience the mercy of God. God has mercy only on objects of mercy. Individuals who have broken under the sword of justice and the rod of judgment to see that they do not deserve mercy. In other words, God has to hide pride for man, seal instructions in his heart, break his stubborn will, knock, as it were, the chip off his shoulder, bringing him down in the dust of repentance before he can show him mercy. God omelts Sinai, thundering forth the Lord of the world. He is not only the God of justice and judgment, but in the midst of the smoke of the furnace in which the law was given, when this old earth shook and trembled and belched forth fire over the entire globe, God sent forth mercy in judgment. I personally believe from the start of history that when the feet of Jehovah touched Mount Sinai, that not only did the mount tremble and move, but the entire globe responded to his touch. God is interested in this earth. God has visited this earth. Then my friend, in that day, when our blessed Lord, it was a night of nights. when God came down as a baby in Bethlehem. Let's see what happened. The whole universe moved when the feet of the Son of God in that baby touched this earth. Wise men yonder in the east who had been looking for the coming of the Messiah saw a star in the east. The whole star of heavens were moved when God touched this earth as a baby because he was the Son of God. You infidels deny the virgin birth of Christ if you will and go to hell. Christ was virgin born. The Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God. In that day when our blessed Lord hanged on Calvary's cross, God came down. The whole earth shook. Mountains, the rocks were riven from the mountain sides. Darkness covered the entire globe for three hours when our Lord went to hell. The graves opened. The saints arose! The veil in the temple was read and cleaned when God came down. Let me tell you something, friend. It's the greatest moment in our lives when God comes down. Are you beginning to see, my friend, that when God comes down in judgment, it is not in order to manifest mercy? When he came to Revelation 4, we find heaven open and John invited to come up hither, which fulfills 1 Thessalonians 4, which says, Our Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout into midair, which according to Greek is 10,000 feet above the earth's surface. And the believers come forth from the grave, leaving believers as translated, both are caught up to meet him in the air. Then we see the throne set in heaven, the throne of judgment. And we have followed that throne through the book of Revelation now to the 18th chapter. And we see the devil resting upon the city of Babylon. My friend, in closing, let me ask you this question. Has God ever come down to your heart? That was the greatest day of my life, when God came down to my heart and bruised over me by the Holy Spirit, and pronounced doom upon this sinner's heart and life. He found me one seething, boiling cauldron of hell. He found my heart a bottomless pit of hell. He found me totally depraved, a lost, hell-deserving sinner, under the wrath of a sin-imminging God. And He pronounced doom, lost, lost, lost, guilty, guilty, Guilty, hell deserving, hell deserving. Cast him into the pit was the cry of justice. His iniquity is full. That voice echoed, re-echoed in my heart until I was shaken from center to circumference. My heart quaked. My foundation slipped out from under me. The pillars rolled over me. The lightning of his wrath frightened me. His thunders of shiny eye terrified me. I saw I was guilty, and under the judgment of God, I broke at his feet. began to cry for mercy. In the midst of judgment, mercy was extended to this poor sinner. I set before you today a pardoned sinner, redeemed by his precious blood. I heard that voice say, My people, come out of her. I never ceased to praise him for rescuing, delivering me, redeeming me from sin. Has God come down to your heart? Has he?