The Spirit of the Harlot and the Spirit of the Bride — Santosh Poonen

The Church’s Vision and Calling

Whenever we move like this as a church family, we can get some time away on a retreat, I'm always challenged and my thoughts go afresh to why it is that we are a church body. See, if we just liked each other, we could just as easily be friends and assimilate into any one of the churches around us, perhaps the one that's most conveniently located geographically.

But there's a reason that God has called us and it's not just because, well, you know, we like to be a church, maybe some people have churches because somebody once likes to be a pastor. If we don't, you know, there's a saying, there's a proverb that says, if there's no vision, the people will perish.

And God's purpose for RLCF will perish, not because of any lack on his part, but if we lose sight of that vision and if we start to be taken up with something else, or if we don't know, perhaps. I wonder how many of us, those of us, some of us have been here many years, 10, 12 years, others a few weeks, months.

If we don't know what it is that unites our vision, we could easily go astray and that the work here will perish because we get distracted by something or the other, lose sight of the calling God has given us.

Jesus’ Uncompromising Call to Discipleship

Another thought that I've had over the last few weeks, as I've actually been thinking about this time together, is this, is that Jesus spent a lot of his time seemingly facing people away. If you read the gospels carefully, you see that whenever he sensed that the church was getting big, now it wasn't the church yet at that time, it was kind of a gathering of people.

But whenever he sensed that the gathering was getting big, he kind of said something that intentionally, because he knew what was in people's hearts that would allow them to perhaps get offended or go astray.

And now I don't believe it was his heart to chase people away. And it's never our heart to chase anybody away. It's never our heart to offend anyone. But Jesus knew that true godliness, the true God, our heavenly father will be offensive to some people.

It's just, that's how it is. And the church that Jesus is building will be offensive to many people. And so Jesus wasn't afraid of that. He didn't let the offending of others cause him to think, oh, maybe I should change my message or maybe I should open my arms a little wider.

I think of so many that walked away from Jesus. Like that rich young ruler you read about, Matthew 19. And after Jesus, you know, he was a, I think from an earthly standpoint, he would have been welcomed into any church.

He was a very righteous man. He had obeyed every single command that was given in the law, at least according to his light. He was rich. Now the second person alone would have been a good reason for a lot of people to welcome him.

But yeah, a rich man who was also a good Christian. And he's got power. Like he had some authority. He had maybe a small kingdom or something like that. Imagine if the ruler of some, you know, like the mayor or the governor or president or some respected person in the world walked into one of our church meetings.

How would it change us? That's what Jesus faced when he was building his church. And the man came to him and said, Jesus, you tell me. You should always be careful when you ask Jesus, tell me what I should do.

He'll tell you the truth. And I pray that we will be such a church. My burden increasingly, our burden as elders, brothers, and I think it's our burden as a church collectively. Is this, that when people come into our church, they won't just come and think, oh, what a wonderful place.

But God knowing exactly what is their need from eternity standpoint, will give us as a church a revelation of that. It could, it doesn't have to be one of us elders. It couldn't even be, may not even be through the message to one of you sisters afterwards.

And God gives you a supernatural revelation. You probably won't even be aware of the fact that that thought came through a revelation of God. But you say something that speaks into the very need of that person and they go away changed.

Now they may not accept that. As we see when Jesus said that to the rich young ruler, how did he know what to say? Go sell all that you have and come follow me, all your possessions and come follow me.

He just didn't know much about it. I don't think Jesus had ever met him before. And was Jesus saying that as God or as a man? Now he's God and man together in one. But was it his power as God that he used when he said, go sell all your possessions and come follow me?

Or was it his power as a man? I believe it was his power as a man. Because he emptied himself of his powers as God when he came down to this earth. And didn't exercise any of those powers. And the reason I'm saying that is because now you and I have an example.

We as the body of Christ, when we get the rich young rulers or the women caught in adultery, or the blind Bartimaeuses, or the religious leader like Jairus whose daughter is dying and dies. Situations like that, we too as human beings can have access to the same supernatural divine power that Jesus had.

So that we too through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit can know in our heart, say this right now. It's not like some metaphysical Eastern religion type of thing that I'm talking about. No, I'm talking about a genuine witness of the Holy Spirit in our heart of what to say.

And it's just a normal conversation. There's no halo around my head or light shining down from heaven that's giving me something to say. It's the quiet witness of the Holy Spirit that comes as a thought say, hey, say this.

Ask about this thing. And that could open up a conversation that results in you being able to speak into their life exactly what they need. And then they have the choice to say, wow, Lord, I'm going to follow you.

The rich young ruler, sadly, I believe he's in hell today. Do you believe a man who followed the old covenant law exactly according to his light and came to Jesus and said, Lord, you want money? You can have it.

I'll give you 10%. I'll give you 15 even. You want me to come and arrange some meetings for you? Yeah, I can do that. And this is a test for us with what mentality are we coming? Are we a part of River of Life Christian Fellowship?

The Danger of Partial Commitment

Is it Lord? I'll be a part of this church. Yeah, you've saved my sins. Thank you for that. I believe that a Christian who's content with simply being forgiven of his sins or her sins and being taken to heaven is a 10 Christian.

It's somebody who says, Lord, I just want to go to heaven. I don't really want. I want to be able to do whatever I want right now. I want you to bless my business. I want you to take care of my family.

I want you to keep me in good health. Just make my life not too difficult. Take me to heaven. It's a 10 Christian. And that's not the new covenant. And to such a person, I believe Jesus would say today, sell all that you're holding on to.

Sell all those things that you're not willing to give up. You say, no, Lord, you cannot ask me to give that up. That's too much. That's the prophetic word that Jesus would speak into every situation. So, as a church, our mission is to be to the world what Jesus was on this earth.

As the father has sent me, so send I you, he told us right before he left. And so, as the father sent Jesus to the rich ruler, the father is sending us to whoever it is that we experience here and encounter here on this earth.

The Bride of Christ and Revelation 19

I would like you to turn to the book of Revelation. I've been hearing a lot about the book of Revelation recently. Mostly from people who think we're living in the book of Revelation times because of the orange skies and everything that seems to be going crazy in 2020.

Such people haven't really read the book of Revelation. It's sad, but I believe it's getting close. But the things that are talked about in this are much greater than just fires burning that cause the skies to be temporarily red.

The book of Revelation chapter 19. We see this is the only place, by the way, that we read about the marriage of the lamb. That's our destination family. That's our destination. It's a wedding feast. And in when Jesus was here on this earth before he had established his church and the wedding feast.

It is come and be a part of the wedding feast. You know that your calling is not just to sit. Hey, I got a wedding invitation to the feast. He does talk about that. Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage of the lamb.

But that comes after what he talks about before that, which is, I think of it like this. You receive two envelopes in the mail. One envelope says, Jesus says, will you marry me? The other envelope says, do you want to come to my wedding?

Jesus also saying we want to come to my wedding. Or do you want to marry me? Both envelopes are presented to each of us today. It'll cost you something if you say, I want to marry you, Jesus. You've got to give up your single life spiritually.

You're going to give up all your wants. You've got to give up your father's house, whatever that is. Your earthly attachments, your earthly friends, your wants and desires. And you have to give yourself completely and take on the name of Jesus.

You are now Mrs. Jesus. That means where he goes, you go. And it's not just a song you sing. You actually go where he goes. And if he doesn't go somewhere, you don't go. And if he doesn't say something, you don't say that.

Because you are married to Jesus. And Jesus, you know, because he loves us so much. On the back of the card, I imagine that he's laid out the conditions of marriage. I don't want to use the prenuptial agreement because that's a false thing in the world.

But he's given us the conditions of being married to him. On the back of the card he says, you have to hate your father and your mother and your brother and your sister and your wife and your children and even your own life.

He says, you must take up your cross every day. If you did it yesterday, that's great. You've got to do it today. If you denied yourself and bore with somebody yesterday and put up with them and took up your cross and denied yourself, guess what?

You've got to do it today. And you'll have to do it tomorrow. You have to give up all your possessions. It doesn't mean you give away all your money. It just means that you're not holding on to what God has given you.

If God has given you money, it's held loosely. You're holding it, but he can take it away at any moment. And you'll say, the Lord gave, the Lord took away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You're holding on to the house that you live in or own, part of perhaps.

You're holding on to that. He said, you have to give it up. Lay it on the altar. If you're holding on to your job, the thing that you enjoy doing, or some other activity that you have. Not holding on to it.

Your family. That's hard. I don't know, I don't believe the Lord will take away any of my children in my lifetime. But if he should, what will my response be? If the Lord should allow me to suffer in some way physically, health wise.

Say, Lord, I'm in my health. I'm not holding on to it. That's the conditions. This is Jesus. But the reality is, you will be with me. You will be mine. You can say, yeah, you know what, Lord, that's too much.

It says the rich young ruler read the conditions and said, nah, I'll just go to the wedding. What regret? Now, I don't even think he's in the wedding, actually. But that's besides the point. Think of the tragedy.

Think of those people. Think of yourself, perhaps. Sitting in the audience and looking back on your life at the wedding feast. And thinking, man, I got the invitation too. I should be up there. What was I thinking?

The thing that he asked me to give up was such a small thing. In light of eternity. In light of being the bride of Christ forever. I think there will be regret in heaven. I don't know what that's like, but I'll tell you this.

I want to believe that there will be regret in heaven while I'm here on this earth. So that it changes the way I live on this earth. Maybe there's no regret in heaven. I don't know heaven completely. But I do know this.

If there is going to be regret because of how selfishly I live my life now. And I miss out on something in eternity, which I believe is biblical. I want to make sure that I see it now. When I have the opportunity to say, Lord, I give it up.

What is it that you want me to give up? It's yours. Wherever the rich young ruler is today, he is regretting. Because we don't read that he ever came back to Jesus. In Revelation 19, we read about the marriage of the Lamb.

We also read about the word Hallelujah. It's the only place in the Bible where the word Hallelujah comes. Revelation chapter 19. Now, strictly speaking, it probably shouldn't even be used. I don't know why the translators preserved just that Hebrew word as it is.

I don't think, personally, it's my personal opinion, that in heaven they're actually saying Hallelujah. Because that's an earthly language. It's Hebrew. It's some other word, which just means praise the Lord.

So whatever the heavenly words for praise the Lord are, that's what we'll be saying. And the reason I say that is a lot of people think that Hallelujah is some sort of magic word. I say Hallelujah, it's going to turn on a switch.

No, it's not. Praise the Lord. If it's coming from your heart, then you've turned on the switch. Whatever language you want to say it in. That's all Hallelujah means, is praise the Lord. So here we read this, praise the Lord.

But I want you to see what it is that they shout in heaven. Praise the Lord. It says in chapter 19, verse 1, I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, Praise the Lord.

Hallelujah. Salvation and glory and power belong to our God. Because His judgments are true and righteous. For He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality. And He has avenged the blood of His bondservants on her.

Babylon, the Harlot, and Religious Christianity

You know, in the past I've read that and just kind of, okay, great. Hallelujah. I focused on the praise the Lord or the Hallelujah because it looks like a nice word. But I missed why there was this suddenly a great shout in heaven saying praise the Lord.

I missed it. Have you seen that the praise the Lord in this moment in time that John got a revelation of was because Babylon had been judged. Now, if Babylon is not, if we don't see Babylon clearly for what it is, it's no wonder that we think Babylon was judged.

Oh, okay. What's the big celebration about? The devil thrown into the lake of fire? Yes, that I could totally understand. But Babylon judged. Babylon is not the devil. What he's talking about here is not the judgment of the devil.

You'll read about that in chapter 20. That's later on. Before the devil is bound, he judges Babylon. And I think you all have been listening to New Covenant teachings long enough that you know what Babylon is.

Babylon is religious Christianity. It's Christianity mixed with a little bit of the world. It's not really Christianity, but it's got the label of Christianity. It's Christianity that welcomes the rich young ruler and says, yeah, we'll find a way to fit your ideology and theology and especially your money into our church.

We'll adjust. Yeah, we used to be like this, but we can stretch it a little bit because we really need you, brother, in the church. We need your gift. We need your money. And we'll adjust. We'll change our convictions a little bit here.

That's a minor command that God says. He only said it once. So, yeah, come. You're a really good singer, so we need you. You're a really good administrator. You speak very well. This is Babylon. And when that religious Christianity, he's not talking about other false religions.

He's not talking about atheism. He's talking about people who took the name of Jesus in vain. He's talking about religious Christianity. When that is judged, heaven rejoices. And the burden of my heart this morning, dear brothers and sisters, is that God will give us a deeper revelation of what Babylon really is.

So that when God judges that here on this earth, in our lives, or in the church, we too can rejoice. And we know that we've become, we've tasted a little bit more of the spirit of heaven. Because more of Babylon has been judged in my life.

Don't look at somebody else who's got the spirit of Babylon and say, oh, that person. Don't look at some denomination and say, oh, that's Babylon. That's very easy to do. Label some denomination. Check.

That's Babylon. Because the devil would love for me to do that. Because then he knows that I'll never see the Babylon in my own flesh. It's the spirit of Babylon. It's not a person or an entity. It's the spirit of Babylon.

And what makes me part of the system of Babylon, what makes me part of the harlot, is if I've got that spirit of Babylon in me. And the marriage of the Lamb can only happen after this religious Christianity is destroyed.

Once the harlot is thrown down, now let's have the wedding feast. And I'll tell you, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the essence of what I'm trying to say. Is that for you to experience deeper marriage intimacy with Jesus, there must first be a cutting away of the spirit of Babylon in your life.

And if I could think of one sentence to summarize my thoughts this morning. You must destroy your religious club if you want to build a true church. And what I mean by that is you can't just alter that existing structure.

Sometimes you can have a building that's so old and so decayed that you can't do anything about it. But imagine if you had this building that's really old and you're too attached to it because you're living in this house.

But the structural engineer comes to you and says, man, this is condemned. You shouldn't even be living here. But you know, my grandparents lived in this house and I've got this wonderful wall. There's some memory there and some memory there.

And we want to expand the house. We want to add another room. So we attach things to this house and we bring new furniture. We go to our favorite furniture show and buy new furniture to put into this old house.

The structural engineer keeps saying, no, man, it doesn't matter that you have a nice couch and wonderful color of paint and beautiful paintings on the wall. The house is condemned. And there's nothing you can do to make this house better except to completely tear it down and start afresh.

The work of God, the true church of Jesus Christ cannot be built on top of something that is built with the wrong foundation. You can't build the New Jerusalem on the foundation of Babylon. Babylon must be completely destroyed.

You read about the New Jerusalem in chapter 21. But all of that is before, is after Babylon has been destroyed. So identifying the spirit of Babylon in our hearts, what that really means. And don't be taken up with the word Babylon as much as like, what does that really mean?

Here's what it essentially means. Mixing Jesus with the world. And I'll tell you, it's like the layers of an onion. The more you peel it, the way you realize, man, I thought I was completely devoted to Jesus.

I thought I had simple, pure devotion to Jesus. And then some situation happened, caught me off guard, where I discovered a little bit of the spirit of Babylon. A little bit of a love of this world deep in my flesh.

That's the process of sanctification. Not just that, oh, I used to be defeated with lust of the wise. I used to be defeated with anger. I used to be defeated with lying. Now, apparently I don't see any outwards sins, so I must be fully sanctified.

No. Sanctification is that freeing of attachment and love of anything else that's mixed in with the love of Jesus. That's why he says in 2 Corinthians 11, it's a simple, pure devotion to Jesus. And maybe you know right now that according to the light that you have, the circle of light that God has given you, there is a simple, pure devotion to Jesus.

But God will now expand his searchlight. You know how you can expand the searchlight by going a little higher. Now it's showing you more of the darkness around that circle of light. And you realize, hold on, there's a little bit of darkness there.

There's a little dark spot there. A little bit of a mixture of the world with love for Jesus. And true growth in Christianity is increasingly, maybe not every day, but I think we should be at a place, church family, that maybe about every month, and don't get caught up with the number, but maybe at least every month I should have discovered, over the last month, has God shown you a little bit more of unchristlikeness in you?

A little bit of the love of the world mixed in with Christ? If not, I want you to take a serious look at your life like we heard yesterday at the communion meeting. Examine your heart. It could be there.

There could be a love of the world that's mixed in. Now don't condemn yourself. Just go and ask the Lord to show you. Paul got to the point where he was seeing light every day. Day by day. Think, when you go to Paul, he's been a Christian.

He's been serving the Lord, planted churches, 60-year-old man. He's been walking the Lord for 30 years. He says, man, I got light of unchristlikeness in my life for the last 24 hours. That's a man that I want to follow.

Who's following Christ. He's so passionately devoted to Jesus. He's running so fast that it's like every day he's seeing something new. See, that would be like me saying, between here and there, I should discover something new.

But if I'm just trudging along in my Christian life, it takes me a month to get there. Yeah, then it would take a month for me to realize some unchristlikeness in my life. But Paul was running so fast that he got there within a day.

Unchristlikeness. That's a challenge for me, I tell you. Not to condemn anyone, but it's a challenge for me. Lord, I'm not there yet, I'll be honest. Some days go by where maybe I didn't search myself well enough.

And again, I don't say this to bring condemnation or, you know, overanalyze yourself. But examine your hearts. That's the scriptural word. Test yourself to see if there's any unchristlikeness in you. We heard that verse also, Psalm 139.

Search me, O God. Know my thoughts. Show me if there is any grievous way in me. Something that makes you sad. And I believe, family, if you pray that every day, God will answer your prayer. If he knows that you're sincere about it.

And if he says there is a grievous way, it's a few levels deep. But Antosh was really sincere when he prayed it. I'm going to show it to you. Oh, I love when he does that. Because it shows me he loves me.

He shows me that, man, that way you spoke to your wife or you spoke to your children. You spoke to that brother or sister. Yeah, you know, maybe there's nothing legally wrong in what you said.

But there's a little bit of motive there.

A little bit of unkindness there. A little bit of a lack of care or thoughtfulness towards that person there. A little bit of a wanting to promote yourself, make yourself look good there in a proud way.

That unchristlikeness he'll show you. And in Revelation 19, it's three times that he says, Hallelujah. The harlot has been judged. Second time in verse three. And third time, the 24 elders say, Hallelujah.

Amen. It is so. Babylon the Great is fallen. All of this religious Christianity is completely destroyed. And then you hear the fourth Hallelujah in verse six and seven about the marriage of Allah. And for me, this has been a reminder of God saying, Santosh, for that purity, for you to really be ready.

Like he says in Ephesians 5, that he might present her spotless and blameless. Without any spot or wrinkle or any such thing, he says in Ephesians 5. And here he says, the bride has made herself ready.

This is the time for us to make ourselves ready, family. By identifying the spirit of the world that's in us. I'd like to quickly say three things about this that have helped me. The difference between Babylon and the New Jerusalem.

The difference between building a cultural club. And I sadly think most churches, you probably read the little booklet I wrote on congregation, the club and the church. But I think about that often. I see the danger so much, so much in the world today.

Especially for gatherings of people to start out sincere, but degenerate to simply becoming clubs. So easy. We have to fight it constantly. Fight it. And it's not up to us elders. God has given us the responsibility to be overseers and to be watchmen.

And we'll watch out for the spirit coming into the church. But you must watch out husbands in your homes. Fathers, you must watch out for that in your homes. We don't have authority in your home, you do.

Mothers, you have the responsibility. You spend a lot of time with your children. You must watch out for the spirit of Babylon in your home. Children, you must watch out for the spirit of Babylon that's in the world.

Many of you interact with other people who call themselves Christians. Who really, and it's no fault of their own, but really what they're after is money. And the things of this world. And the false gospel, which is not gospel because it's bad news.

The false message in much of Christendom today is that you can have everything in the world, enjoy everything in the world, and somehow Jesus will still welcome you to heaven. What a tragedy. So the true church is not focused on size, but on purity.

It's not focused on size, but on purity. Now we can often say, yeah, we don't care about size. And I honestly, to the best of my knowledge, I don't care about size. But the test comes when somebody comes to our church or a new person comes.

What is the motive? Or you find out somebody say, hey, I'm thinking about coming to your church and I want to be a part of your church. There is an excitement we can have. Okay, you want to be a part of it?

Not because you'll be in our church, but because God is doing something in our midst and you can be a part of that too. The blessing is for you. Not because RLCF will somehow have more people sitting in the chairs or anything like that.

We don't care about that. So when we find out that somebody wants to come, some new attendee comes to the church, somebody wants to become a member, somebody says, hey, we want to move here and join your church.

If there's a carnal excitement about that, then you may have the spirit of Babylon. But if the desire of your heart, the response of your heart is, are you interested in purity? Are you coming here because you really want to give up everything to follow Jesus?

There's no selfish motivation behind it. The New Jerusalem, the church is focused on purity, not on size. And you see in Revelation 14, you know that every time Babylon is mentioned here in chapters 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, it's called Babylon the Great.

Every time. Babylon, Babylon the Great. That's like its name, Babylon the Great. What would you think if RLCF became known in Loveland as RLCF the Great Church? That church, the big church in town. The church in town that everybody knows of.

It's a dangerous thing. I don't want to be known in the city of Loveland or in Colorado or in the United States as, oh, have you heard, do you know about that church? Let all the other churches focus on their size and their programs and all that.

I want to be known in heaven. And I want to be known in hell or in the second heaven where the devil is with his hosts. I want to be known there. They're talking about us there. They're making plans for how they can come and try to bring division and disunity and friction or false teaching into RLCF because that's the one we need to be worried about.

So Babylon focuses on size. So and whereas in the church, we don't care about how many people are sitting in the chairs. It means absolutely nothing. Do you think that the early church, persecuted as they were in the first century, were worried about how they didn't even have chairs?

They sat on the ground. Did they see an empty floor space and think, man, we need to find somebody to fill that floor space. Because they're sitting in somebody's house and there's a little gap there.

They were just thankful that there was anybody and that God could build unity among them and the spirit of God was in their midst. And sadly today, Christendom has become about these big buildings and chairs.

And you think about how you need to find somebody to fill that chair. Then you fill every chair and you think, okay, now we can go to a second service. Now you're looking about filling the second service and the third service and the fourth service.

And then you start a money campaign to build a bigger building because guess what, we've got four services. So we need to start another one where we can all come together. And it's really not about all coming together because then they'll have two of those.

And this is what's going on in Christendom today. It's the spirit of Babylon. It'll creep in if we're not watchful. To know what the spirit of holiness, purity, I said, what is holiness? I've recently been seeing holiness this way.

Holiness as Bridal Commitment to Jesus

A lot of people can think holiness is, let's take a trivial example, that women shouldn't wear pants. They should only wear skirts. Some people say that's holiness. Some people say women should never cut their hair.

They should always have long hair. That's holiness. Other people say holiness is you should never play sports because that's a worldly thing. You shouldn't watch sports. That's holiness. If you don't have a TV, you're holy.

What is holiness essentially? I believe more recently I've been thinking of it like this. Holiness is a bridal commitment to Jesus. That's really what it is. It's such a fervent bridal commitment to Jesus as his bride that I see Jesus and I see that it's not about whether Jesus has a TV or not.

The moment that thing comes out on the TV, Jesus walks away. And I'm so committed to him that I walk away because he walks away, not because of what's on the TV. So my holiness is determined by what Jesus is doing.

Not some idea of, oh, skirts, pants, but it's modest. No, what does Jesus have to say? And dear brothers and sisters, Jesus wants to show us through the Holy Spirit what he is like. It's more than just a WWJD bracelet that became popular a few years ago.

It is a conviction of the Holy Spirit. Conviction of sin and righteousness and judgment, like we're told in John 16. He will disclose to us the things of Jesus. For what purpose? That we might be holy.

That's why he is the Holy Spirit. So I see Jesus would not say that word, even though it will sound funny and it's a great joke and it comes at somebody else's expense and everybody will laugh at the joke I'm about to say that makes fun of somebody, but you say the Holy Spirit because you're full of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus wouldn't say that. You're like, I am bridally as a wife committed to Jesus. The moment I see that he wouldn't do something or would do something or wouldn't go somewhere or would go somewhere, that's what I do.

My holiness is my fervent, bridal commitment to Jesus. Are you committed to Jesus as his bride? Then you will be holy. So no longer is you shall be holy for I am holy, a command that I'm trying to fulfill and work hard at.

I'm saying, Lord, I'm committed to you. Show me unholiness, impurity in my life and I'll follow you. Where you go, I'll go. What you say, I'll say. What you don't say, I won't say. Where you go, I won't go.

So the focus of the church, the focus of RLCF, the focus of your home, the focus of your marriage, brothers and sisters, must be a bridal commitment to Jesus. You're committed to Jesus. And if you're about to watch a movie as a family or a TV program and you do a little research on it and you see, well, that's pretty good.

But at the last line, you see, well, but there's this one scene where immediately what you take over is, I'm committed to Jesus as his bride. You know what? Not even worth finding out. If the worldly person says it's got this one scene, it's not even worth me trying to find out what it's about.

Not worth it because I'm committed to Jesus.

Now, if you're careless with it, well, you shrug your shoulders at it, especially us men, leaders of the home. If we shrug our shoulders at it, the devil will find a foothold in there. Pretty soon he'll find you have the spirit of Babylon.

So Babylon is not just about size. The issue is not size. God has already allowed us to grow and he'll continue to allow us to grow. That is up to him. But it must come on the basis of an emphasis on bridal commitment to Jesus.