Revelation 18 The Future of Sin

You're listening to the podcast of the Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches through his series, Thy Kingdom Come, taking us through the book of Revelation. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And I'm glad that you've taken time out of your busy week to join us here at Recast Church. I recognize that you've got all kinds of stuff that you could be doing this morning on this wonderful, beautiful summer day.

And so obviously, you value gathering together as God's people. That's a beautiful thing. I hope that we are all rewarded this morning by growing in our faith as a result of gathering together as God's community.

And really, ultimately, I hope it's part and parcel of your purpose in being here to hear from God in his word as we're going to open that up and dig in and see what he has for us. But before we jump into God's word, a couple of brief and important announcements this morning.

First, I just want everybody to be aware that we have brought on a new staff member. He started this last Monday, Nathan Douglas. Nathan, if you want to just stand up and wave to everybody. It's Nathan.

Nathan is our new youth director. He's going to be directing Gravity, which is our high school ministry, and then Recast 180, which is our middle school ministry. And he's going to be working for us 20 hours a week.

And also, equally, he is partnering with Young Life. So they do this thing called a church ministry partnership where he'll be working 20 hours in Matawan High School with the youth there, and then 20 hours with us.

He's going to be raising support for that half where he's working in the schools. Nathan has already been working, is it three years now? Three, two years in the high school already. And so he's got a lot of relationships here in this community.

You can be praying for him as for the Young Life portion. He's raising that as financial support. And so be praying for him. And then also, just very simple, his email address is Nathan. Yeah, I'm sharing this in front of everybody, dude.

Nathan at recastchurch .com. So go ahead and send him an email or whatever and welcome him or just greet him this morning while you see him during connection time or whatever. And very grateful for the way that God has led us right at the beginning here of the next school year just in time to get him with his feet on the ground and helping us out.

So grateful for that. Second, I wanted to update you all on the building progress. You'll notice that there's an architectural rendering of the building that's out there. We just threw that up on the easel.

They gave that to us as part of the whole process. We closed on the front street property this past week. And a big thanks to Steve Isham for just kind of spearheading and being the one to go and take care of that for us.

So just glad for these elders who help us out with this kind of stuff. And he was there to represent us at that closing and take care of that. And so that property is officially ours. We are now officially the owners of approximately 24 acres in Matawan, which we don't want 24 acres.

So be in prayer for the process of now the sale. We wanted to make sure we had that property in hand and ours. We didn't want to be without any property. So we wanted to make sure we had that first. Now we're going to be in the process of selling that McGillen property that we own currently.

So be in prayer for that. And then also, we have the blueprints completed. They're awaiting an architectural stamp. We've got the construction advisory team is meeting this next week to go over some finalizing plans on that.

And all of that, the purpose of those blueprints is to get a more refined estimate so that then hopefully by sometime in September, we'll be bringing to the congregation a vote for a loan to begin construction.

And so we are, again, just amazed by the way that God has continued to provide for us. The elders have all along been kind of targeting and shooting to have about 50 down. We are approaching that. But again, just very grateful for the way that the Lord has provided for us in that way.

So continue to pray for all of that process, too. It's been a really cool thing to see over the last seven years, how he's been guiding and directing us. And how many of you are grateful that the schools let us use this area upstairs?

Now, how many of you are excited about the possibility of getting our own? And Eric's hand, who sets up the sound equipment most mornings, he was really the first one to raise his hand because there's a lot of cords that get run and all of that stuff.

So absolutely looking forward to that time when we can have our own facility. Let's switch gears now and get our minds kind of focused on the word of God before we come to worship in regards to music and singing songs.

Revelation 18 as a Funeral Dirge Over Babylon

Revelation 18 is where we're gonna be this morning. And it's one of the longest chapters in the book of Revelation. And if scholars are right, then this entire, the majority of this entire chapter is a song.

It would have at some point been set to music. It's got rhythm. It's got the qualities in Greek of song. And so what we're really looking at here in our text this morning is a funeral dirge over Babylon.

Now, how many of you have ever heard a funeral dirge before? Probably not very many of us. But how many of you know what a funeral dirge is? Okay, it's kind of like a song of lament, a deep kind of dark brooding song about death and the loss of somebody.

It's a mournful song. And if all of those scholars are accurate, and this is indeed mostly a song, then this chapter is the longest song in the entire book of Revelation. And it is singing about the final death of humanistic unity, humanistic sin against the Almighty.

It's celebrating, in one sense, the death of sin. And this funeral for the sinful world system is met by a variety of responses. We'll see them in the text as we read this and go through it. And the real focus of our time this morning will be to determine our individual honest response to the demise of this sin curse system that we live in, and we breathe in, and we move in, and we work in, and we raise families in, and we struggle and strive in.

What will be our response when this finally goes away? Will we mourn the destruction of the sin that we have enjoyed? Or will we celebrate and rejoice that this old system is passing away and the kingdom of his son is breaking in?

What will our response be? So let's, if you're not already there, Revelation 18, navigate over there, flip over there in your Bible. If you don't have a Bible on your lap, we want everybody to have a copy of the word of God, and Eric's got some in his hand.

Just do me a favor and raise your hand. If you don't have a Bible, we want you to be able to see. This is one of the longest chapters in the book of Revelation. I am going to read it in its entirety. It's beneficial for you to be able to follow along and see that in there.

Excellent, so yeah, a few up there too. Eric, I don't know if you see him, there you go. But Revelation 18, and recast, I love to remind you of this each week, that this is God's word. This is a powerful and amazing thing that we have the privilege of listening to and reading together.

That's one of the reasons I read it to us every morning. I don't just explain it, but I want to read it because this is God's word to us this morning. This is what he wants you and I to hear, the Almighty.

So Revelation 18. After this, I, remember that the I is John being inspired by the Holy Spirit. After this, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory, and he called out with a mighty voice.

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the Great. She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues, for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.

Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds. Mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen.

I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see. For this reason, her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire, for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.

And the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, alas, alas, you great city, you mighty city Babylon, for in a single hour your judgment has come.

And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots and slaves, that is human souls.

The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again. The merchants of these wares who gained wealth from her will stand far off in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud, alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels and with pearls, for in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.

And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors, and all whose trade is on the sea stood far off and cried as they saw the smoke of her burning. What city was like the great city? And they threw dust on their heads, and they wept and mourned, crying out, alas, alas, for the great city, where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth, for in a single hour she has been laid waste.

Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her. Then a mighty angel took up a stone, like a great millstone, and threw it into the sea, saying, so will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence and will be no more.

And the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters will be heard in you no more, and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more, and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more, and the light of the lamp will shine in you no more, and the voice of the bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more, and your merchants, for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery, and in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who had been slain on the earth.

Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship. Father, it seems like a strange introduction to worship, to read this funeral dirge, this lament over the death of sin, and Father, just even, just to think in terms of rejoicing over the demise of one here in the text, even though it's a figure of speech, and we look at it, and we could easily be confused in our minds and in our hearts, and Father, that is in part because our lives have been entrenched, have been entangled with sin since our birth.

Father, we confess that we are not what we were made to be. This morning we have sinned, we sinned yesterday, and tomorrow we will sin. Father, it is only your grace, only your mercy that gives us hope that we will not be judged like Babylon, that we are not a citizen of that kingdom anymore.

We are not a citizen of that city, but a citizen of the new Jerusalem, a citizen of your eternal kingdom with a king named Jesus. And so, Father, I pray that in this contrast between Babylon and the city that is coming of his established kingdom, Father, that we would rejoice and be grateful and moved in our hearts because we are a part of that kingdom.

May we rejoice and sing only in as much as we understand in how much we have been saved from. Your just wrath poured out on the planet because of our sinfulness rising up before you. We are those whose wrath was poured out on the sun.

So may we rejoice that we need no longer face your condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. May that put a swing in our step and an enthusiasm in our voice as we lift up praise to you this morning.

In Jesus' name, amen. Get comfortable at any time during the message. I say that all the time. Just get more coffee, juice, donuts. You can get up and stretch out in the back, but most importantly, keep your Bibles open to Revelation 18 as we walk through this good-sized chunk of text with a little bit of a otherworldly feel to it.

All throughout the book of Revelation, you've been, as you read it, as you dig in or you just study it, or even if you just read through it in your Bible reading, so you're reading a chapter at a time or whatever, a lot of times it feels like it doesn't quite touch our world in the way that some of the gospels do or the epistles do where you can just read it and go, oh, I know what God wants of me right here, right now.

A lot of times the book of Revelation doesn't quite fit our mindset or the way that we lived this past week, and so it takes a little bit of digging in. And as I mentioned in my introduction, this text is primarily one long funeral dirge.

If we set it to music, it would be in a minor key for those of you that are musical. And the song really falls out into three separate movements that we're gonna see this morning. The first is in verses one through eight.

For those of you that are note takers, you can put these as your headings. Verses one through eight are Babylon indicted. Verses nine through 20 are Babylon lamented. And lastly, verses 21 through 24 are a reemphasis of Babylon destroyed.

And so that's the movement. And I already identified two weeks ago, obviously I was on vacation last week, but we went through chapter 17 two weeks ago, and we identified that Babylon is a representation of this present world system in opposition to God.

Not just the world system, not just politics, not just the way that we do things. I mean, how many of you have some systems in place for budgeting in your household? Or you have some systems in place for the way that you do things around the house or discipline or for the kids or whatever?

So you have some systems. This isn't an anti-system message. Babylon isn't evil because it's a system. It's evil because it is a system of human unity against the Almighty. It is in direct opposition to him.

Remember that Babylon got its roots clear back in Genesis chapter 11, rather, in that whole Tower of Babel incident, where humanity rejected God's command to disperse across the face of the planet, and instead united in order to go past his command to forsake his command, and they sought to make a name for themselves.

And that same spirit has been passed down from generation to generation to the nation, from Babylon to Rome to our current era, and in the future, according to the book of Revelation, according to verses chapter 17 and 18, there is a future time, a future manifestation of this Babylon of powerful human unity against the creator God.

And it's ultimately gonna be crushed once and for all, and we're seeing that here in this funeral dirge. God has been ever so patient. It's very important for us to remember when we come to these passages of final judgment, when we come to what we see as just kind of almost a delight and a rejoicing in this, is that what we're looking at is a rejoicing, ultimately, in justice.

God has been so patient with us. God has been patient. Raise your hand if you acknowledge that God has been patient with you. God has been patient with the human race. He has given us breath in our lungs.

We don't deserve to be alive today. According to the pages of Scripture, what we deserve is eternal condemnation today because of our rebellion against our creator, and yet he has been grace, he has piled blessings on us, and grace upon grace, not even withholding his own son for us.

Has he been patient? Crazy patient. Crazy gracious. And it's important that we set these passages of judgment in that context where we recognize the scope of human history has been one great big demonstration of God's patience and love toward us.

Hmm. But a day is coming when he will act on his plan to remove this sin-cursed human system and replace it with the kingdom of his glorious son. I look forward to that day. Are you looking forward to that day?

That day when this sin-cursed existence will be no more and it will be a glorious kingdom with no sin, no pain, no suffering, but delight and rejoicing in our savior forever and ever. Beautiful thing.

And so John is given a vision of another mighty angel in verse one who comes down from heaven. He's an angel of great authority. He illuminates the world with his glory. And again, these angels throughout Revelation probably ought to and are there intentionally to create and add a little bit of level of mystery to us and pique our curiosity at the reality.

At least at the bare minimum, we should walk away from the book of Revelation recognizing there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than you and I often acknowledge. We have a very Western scientific approach to life, to the world around us.

Have you ever identified that in yourself? It's kind of an American way. And at the same time, there's a lot going on. Have you seen that in the book of Revelation? There's angels doing things all over the place.

There are messengers coming to earth from heaven and doing all kinds of things. But this angel specifically comes down to make a declaration, to basically trumpet or to herald news. And this is the news that he comes to bring.

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. Fallen is Babylon the great. I think we could take some liberty and put the great in quotes. Like I put it in air quotes there. I always find it ironic that when people first united against God at Babel to build a great city and to build a great tower and to make a name for themselves against the Almighty, Genesis 11 five says this.

The Lord came down to look at their city. They said, we'll build something amazing and God will take it in and he will be so impressed with us. We'll make a name for ourselves and God will know who he's up against when he comes up against us.

And God comes down to look at the best that mankind can create. It's intentional. The language is intentional there. He comes down to look at their cute little tower that they've built. It's like, oh, they're so proud of it.

Look at them down there in the sandbox making towers. And any of you with kids ever had your child make something and just desperately want to show it to you? Just be like, oh, here, look at this. And it's cute and it's like whatever.

But I mean, that's kind of the thing. I mean, God comes down to look at humanity's best attempts to oppose him, to come down to look at it. From the perspective of earth, however, to say Babylon the Great is a pretty big deal for you and I.

Now, to God, it's nothing. But to you and I, where we live, how many of you know that there are forces arrayed against you that feel overwhelming? You ever feel like you're drowning in this culture? Anybody?

As a Christian, do you ever feel like you're swimming upstream and you're not making any headway because the current against you is so great? Babylon the Great. From our perspective, it is great. It is an overwhelming flood from day to day, right?

Sometimes it feels very, very much like we're alone in this battle against sin that we struggle with that entangles us, that entrenches us. So from the perspective of those within this humanistic system, that is you and I, this system is a system that elevates mankind.

It elevates our comfort. It elevates our power. It elevates our unity, right? Is that a big deal in our culture if we could just all come together? If everybody in the world could just come together and get rid of our religious divisions, get rid of every division that there is, and if we could just come together, what is the world saying?

Well, that's how we get to whatever it is that we're trying to achieve. Whatever they say out there in the nebulous they, whatever they want for humanity, it has a whole lot to do with us uniting together and just being the best that we can be.

What does that even mean? I don't even stop to think about it. We just could easily buy into that system that man, if we could just all get along, we would usher in a kingdom. No, if we just got along, we would just completely try to forsake our creator, and it would turn into Lord of the Flies.

Anybody know what I mean when I say Lord of the Flies? It gets ugly really quick when we're left to our own devices when we unite, we destroy things. Our system, our world system seems powerful, and if we're not careful, even as Christians, we may be tempted to think of the power of this world system as insurmountable.

We live in a sexualized culture, don't we? We live in a materialistic culture, right? We live in a live for the moment kind of culture, independent, self-reliant, American dream kind of culture, right?

Is that where you live? That's where I live, and I'm a pastor. I don't go to your workplace. I'm sure it's even more pronounced in the places that you work and in your neighborhoods and in your communities.

You see it, you hear it. You see it in yourself, right? I mean, it's very easy for us in the church to stand here and talk about them out there. What about in here, right? Do you see it in your own heart?

Do you see that you don't really have to have a neighbor come and entice you to materialism. I mean, the commercials are just tapping into something that's already in you. Have you noticed that? Those commercials are trying to win you over in something and grab ahold of the hooks that are already in you about your belief, latent belief that the more that I accumulate, the more stuff I have, the better stuff I have, the better my life is gonna be.

What I find is that, man, if I get a new snowblower, it's one more thing to maintain, right? Any of you at that age that you're kind of like, more stuff means more maintenance? I gotta figure out, now I gotta call community technical support on one more device, right?

Great. So it doesn't necessarily work out to our advantage. But the angel's cry in verse two is important for our perspective. This great Babylon called herself great. She has fallen. See that in the text?

What we think is insurmountable in the end will fall. She is deserted. She has become, according to the text, a haunt of demons and wild, unclean animals. In the absence of humanity who has been removed and judged, the animals will have free reign in Babylon.

Well, that gets us kind of towards our first point. The indictment really begins in verse three, the indictment of Babylon. Why has she been treated this way? Why has she been left desolate? We know from chapter 17 that she has been identified as the great prostitute in that passage.

And she has led all the nations into her sexual immorality. You see that in the text. The kings and leaders of the earth have been compromised with the promises of wealth, power, and fame that the world system has to offer.

What does she have to offer? She offers life without God. Life full of human potential. Life with human pleasure as its ultimate end. And that's lured many. And the world gets rich from her offers of luxurious living.

With this indictment, a command is given to the people of God from heaven. Voice heard from heaven. It's not very clear whether it's God's voice or it's another angel, but a voice from heaven that says, come out of her.

Come out of Babylon, my people. An interesting observation about that is to come out of Babylon means that we're in it in the first place, right? Do you get that? Do you see that right? It's just kind of obvious, but you could miss it for the simplicity of the point.

And that is that the people of God are mixed in with Babylon. Right now, it's not like you're supposed to be in a commune. You're not supposed to be removed like the Amish. You're not supposed to be out there on a mountaintop like a guru who is just kind of living in ascetic lifestyle.

You're in with Babylon for now. And scripture is full of that type of analogy of the people of God mixed in with those who are not. Lot lived, where did Lot live? Does anybody remember their Bible? He lived in Sodom.

Okay, he lived there. But a day came when he was given a very certain command to flee. Lot, today's the day. Get your family. Don't pack your stuff. Get out the door and flee this place. Judgment is coming.

There's a day coming like that. My people, get out now. It's time. Lot lived in Sodom, but that day was required for him to flee. Jesus told a parable, by the way. It's all throughout the Bible, and you see it in a variety of different places.

I'm just kind of hitting a couple of them. Jesus told a parable about the wheat and the weeds. According to the old King James, it would be wheat and tares, wheat and weeds, being sown in a field, and the wheat was sown, but in the middle of the night, some bad guys came in and sowed the tares or the weeds in with the wheat, and so rather than pull out the weeds and compromise the wheat, it's all left together, and it's gonna be sorted out in the end, Jesus says.

They'll eventually be separated out. The way that life is right now isn't that separate, right? I mean, we can even be confused about our own family. Are they in or are they not in? I mean, how many of you are glad that it's not up to you to be the judge of who's a Christian and who's not, right?

That's in God's hands, that's up to them. I'm a poor, I'm poor at guessing that. As a matter of fact, I would suggest to you, I'm very open to your deception. If you wanna come and tell me a credible story that you gave your life to Christ at a summer camp, I'm gonna believe you.

I'm gonna take it at face value, and that's one of the risks that we have as a church when it comes to wolves and sheep living in community together, is that it's very easy to pull the wool over a sheep's eye.

That's a weird analogy. Um, ah, I don't know what that looks like, but yeah, it's very easy to fool a sheep, right? I mean, and so, there's this whole notion of we're bad at guessing this kind of stuff.

Who's the weeds? And I'm not sure that it's up to us to determine that. But it is up to us to bring the gospel to bear in each other's lives consistently. That's why I preach the gospel to you guys. I hope you don't tune out at the end.

When I start to go into communion, I start to explain the gospel. Man, that's the time, if you wanna take a nap at the middle of the message, make sure you're awake for that. Okay, I just, I don't know.

Please stay awake for the whole thing. But, um, but it's the gospel. We all need the gospel preached to us regularly. It's not like, oh, that's how I started. No, that's how you started. That's how you carry on, and that's how you'll finish.

You know, it's the beginning. There's no like, well, now that I'm a Christian, and now that I believe the gospel, what's the real meat? The gospel. That's the meat. That's what I have to offer. I wanna be a one-trick phony.

I wanna keep telling you the gospel, because that is the message that will bring you to glory. It's not, oh, I've been saved. Now tell me all the things I have to do to be pleasing to God. I thought that you became pleasing to God at the cross.

Okay, so that's the place where it is. So it's all about the gospel. Got a little off my notes here. When the people of Israel were exiled to Babylon in the sixth century BC, they were told this. This is an interesting thought, because I'm thinking in terms of being called out from Babylon, and I don't want you to miss the understanding that this is a future thing that's gonna happen, because it would be very easy for somebody to misread this, and I think this has been misapplied and misused and abused.

It's abused churches, like, you've just gotta separate yourself from those non-Christian pagan neighbors. You've gotta get away from those people. That's not what this text is saying. Babylon itself, sixth century, they destroyed Jerusalem.

They knocked down her walls, poked out the king of Israel's eyes with a hot poker, after killing his sons in front of him. Grew some terrible stuff, I'm just quoting scripture, it's in there, and then they haul him and his people off into exile in Babylon, and those people, those Israelites, now living physically in the pagan nation of Israel, are told to be a blessing to the place that is exiled them.

Look out for the interest of the city, and be a blessing to the city and the culture of Babylon. Wow. I'm saying all this to clarify that I don't believe that we're supposed to leave the world and hide out in communes until the Lord returns.

Instead, I think God is warning that a time is coming when that indeed will be needed. We need to walk so carefully, and I think that's another point here. We need to walk so carefully lest we take part in Babylon's sin, and therefore share in her plagues, as the text tells us directly.

But this is about a future calling for God's people to flee a literal wrath that is coming, and yet for all of us, this should be the first wake-up call of the final point that we're gonna get to in the text.

It's not too early to steal that thunder and to make sure that it's in your mind as we go through. Are you compromised? That's the point. How much are we in love with our Babylon? How much do we love the commodities that she gives to us?

How much do we take pleasure in the sins that she so readily delivers up to us? How much would we be sad? Man, this takes some honest introspection. Be very easy to brush over these with a nice Christianese answer, a not very thoughtful answer that just says, oh, I don't love sin.

I don't love anything of this world system. I'll just be so glad to see it go. How much would we be sad to see the collapse of this sin-cursed world system? You have to deal with some specifics in that in your life and in your heart.

What would you miss? According to this text, her sins, the sins of Babylon are heaped up as high as heaven. It's an amazing word picture that takes us right back again to that tower. Ironically, humanity set out to build a tower in a great city and a name for themselves, and they wanted that tower to go up to the heavens to get God to recognize how awesome we are.

Look, God, how awesome we are. We're amazing. We're so cool. We built this really great tower. Now do we have your attention? Not yet. But what will, in the end, finally rise up to the heavens will stack up upon itself to the very throne room of God to the point where he goes, you got my attention now, is our wickedness, our sin.

Wow. We, as a human race, will, in the end, get his attention. In his patience, he has been graciously, gloriously waiting, but we are stacking up sin and testing the patience of the Almighty as a human race.

Babylon will therefore receive a double portion from the very cup that she used to judge others. There's a great ironic twist in this. And as much as she has glorified herself and lavished herself in luxury, as much as she has poured out condemnation on God's people from this figurative cup of her wrath, that's the very wrath, that's the very cup that God's wrath is gonna be measured out to her in, according to verse seven.

We measured, according to verse seven, that will be the measure of the torment and mourning that she will receive according to how much she has lavished herself in luxury. And in verse seven, she's quoted.

We see a direct quote from the woman herself. She said, I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see. The arrogance of this world system, I suggest to you, has crept into many churches who will now teach the power of positive thinking and the power of positive speaking.

You could hear something similar to this quote from Babylon if you had stayed home this morning and tuned in to TV and watched some preachers there. You could have heard some say, we as a church, we sit as a queen.

We will never be a widow. We will never go through mourning. Or as a culture, we will never go through mourning. Babylon has named her miracle. She's claimed her miracle. She has spoken her victory. She has visualized her future.

And it's nothing but good. You see that in the text? She's got it. She's got it figured out and she knows it. I was watching the Olympics this past week. Any of you watching the Olympics the last couple weeks?

Pretty fun, entertaining, some stuff there. There was a commercial. I don't even remember what it was for. Linda thinks it was a car. I'm not positive. I think it might have been a car because there was kind of a mountain scene.

And I remember a car winding along as this voice is overlaid over this beautiful scenery and this car is riding. And it says, and I'm gonna paraphrase it. But it says something to the effect of, I don't know the future, but I know that it's wonderful.