My first date with David Guthrie was on New Year’s Eve. And when he left at 3 a.m. on that first day of 1986, I blissfully fell asleep. I knew I had found him, the one. When Valentine’s Day weekend came around a little more than a month later, I didn’t like it that he was talking about renewing his lease on his apartment because I didn’t want him to be tied up there and unable to get a place with me.
Then in June, he picked me up to go out for dinner. He made some sort of excuse to stop by his apartment. There on the door was a hand-drawn sign that said “Chez Dave” (French for “at the home of Dave”) at which he said we were going to have dinner. He gave me a rose (which I still have pressed in a book) and a card that had the words of Psalm 34:3 written in it: “Glorify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together” (NIV). And the “together” part was underlined. I said yes.
The next day we went to a jewelry store in Waco, Texas, and bought a ring. And Sunday I wore it to church. I remember sitting in the choir loft admiring its sparkle under the lights. And then the next day we got busy getting ready for the wedding. There was so much to do: Pick a date, send out invitations, get a dress, plan a reception. And I loved it all because I loved him. I could hardly wait, not just for the wedding but for the marriage.
If you know a couple who are engaged to be married and getting ready for a wedding, you know how busy they are, how focused they are on preparations, how happy they are as they look forward to that day and the life together that will come after that day.
If you are in Christ, you are the person who is engaged to be married. You are preparing for a wedding.
Actually, if you are in Christ, you are the person who is engaged to be married. You are preparing for a wedding. Perhaps you’ve never thought of yourself and your relationship to Christ in this way. But clearly the Bible intends for us to view it that way. From the very beginning of the Bible, God speaks of His relationship with His people in terms of a marriage. Since the very beginning in Eden, when God presented a bride, Eve, to His son, Adam, and everything went terribly wrong with this bride and groom, God has been at work to present a bride to His Son, Jesus. It has been a very long engagement. But the wedding day is coming. In light of this coming wedding day, the questions we need to consider are these: Are we preparing ourselves for it? Are we remaining faithful to our Bridegroom as we wait for Him to come for us?
Revelation 17:1-19:10 may not appear at first blush to have anything to do with this marriage. But it does. Revelation as a whole is a call to patient endurance as we wait for our King, the Lamb, our Bridegroom, to come. And inherent in that patient endurance is faithfulness. To wait is going to require that we refuse the advances of any other lovers who seek to seduce us. Revelation 17 through 19 shows us what we must do if we’re going to be prepared as a bride for our Bridegroom. And the first is this: We can’t allow ourselves to be seduced by a love that won’t last.
In Revelation 17, we’re presented with a seductress who has every intention of having us for herself. She doesn’t want us to hold out for our holy Bridegroom. She is portrayed as alluring and exciting. She appears wealthy and promises uninhibited pleasure. But that is just how she appears from an earthly and human perspective. In Revelation, we’re being shown reality from heaven’s perspective, from the vantage point that reveals all things as they truly are. And she is not what she seems.
“Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk …’ And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.’ And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:1-2, 5-6).
Here is Babylon, which is a symbol for the city of man, intent on living apart from God, portrayed as a woman, but not just a woman; she’s a prostitute. In fact, she’s not just a prostitute; she’s the “mother of prostitutes.” The picture John paints is so vivid that you can almost see her profile picture and bio on the app she uses to find sexual partners to hook up with. She’s dressed in the latest designer clothes. No costume jewelry for her; it’s all real gold and jewels and pearls. In her photo, she’s holding a golden cup. She must be rich.
We might imagine there is fine wine in the cup, but we’d be wrong. Inside the cup is the blood of those who have refused her, those who have seen her for what she is and exposed her. In the cup is the blood of those she has put to death who were patiently enduring her persecution while waiting for the true Bridegroom. Also inside the cup is the evidence of the disgusting and degrading things she’s done to obtain all of her nice clothes and expensive jewelry. She’s had way too much to drink from this cup, and she’s intoxicated.
Across her photo in large letters is the name she has given to herself: “Babylon the great.” And when we read it, we realize that we’ve heard of this family. She comes from a long line of Babylons. She is a daughter of Babel, that ancient people who sought to build a tower to the sky to invade God’s glory and take it for themselves. They intended to build a city and make a name for themselves. But their project came to a destructive end. She’s a daughter of that ancient city that dragged the people of God into exile, the city led by Nebuchadnezzar, who said, “Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty?” (Daniel 4:30). We can see the family resemblance.
This woman represents the world in opposition to God and His people. She is seated on seven mountains (17:9). John’s first readers would have immediately recognized that John was talking about Rome, as the city of Rome was built on seven hills. Rome glittered with an abundance of wealth. She flexed her muscles of power. She was attractive and alluring, and everybody who was anybody was engaged with her.
But certainly John is using the symbol of the great prostitute to refer to more than first-century Rome. The fact that he doesn’t say explicitly that this is Rome makes the vision timeless. Throughout history we’ve seen a succession of Babylons or Romes — regimes that have attracted the masses, declared their own greatness, rejected any need for God, and oppressed those who are “called and chosen and faithful” (17:14).
Her picture might look good on the screen at this point. But the day is going to come when her pimp, the beast, will turn on her, and she will be made desolate. Her beautiful clothes will be gone, and she’ll be left naked and exposed. Instead of feasting on the finest of foods herself, she’s going to become a feast for the beast. He’s going to devour her. She’s going to get burned. More than that, she is going to burn. And all who have joined themselves to her by committing spiritual adultery with her are in danger of being burned too.
“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’” (Revelation 18:4-5).
Here is a voice from heaven speaking to us, God’s people, calling us to come out of this city of Babylon, away from this wicked woman, so we won’t be seduced into living like her and vulnerable to burning up with her. There is an urgency to his voice. He’s warning us to flee from the evil city before it’s too late. We’ve seen where association with her will lead; it’s time to get out.
So how are we going to do that?
We live in Babylon. It is ubiquitous, everywhere. Are we supposed to follow in the steps of the second-century Essenes who went out to live in the desert, or the monks in the medieval era who moved into monasteries, or the Amish in our day and time who live out in the country avoiding modern technology? I don’t think so.
If only changing our address would accomplish what we’re being called to do here. This is going to require far more than a change of address. It will require a radical change of heart, a change in our affections, interests, and desires. It means that we have to figure out how to live in Babylon as citizens of the new Jerusalem, as aliens and strangers. We’re going to have to figure out what it will mean for us to refuse to make ourselves at home here. What we’re being called to here is not separatism but distinctiveness. What we hear in this voice from heaven is a summons to refuse to become entangled with the world, to refuse to make our home here spiritually in terms of allegiance and loyalty.
As we take note throughout this chapter of Babylon’s materialism and consumption, we realize that to come out of her is going to mean resisting the seductive nature of her advertising, starving the greed of always wanting more and better. If we are going to be prepared as a bride for our Bridegroom, there is something else we are going to have to do: We have to break up with all of our old lovers.
Revelation as a whole is a call to patient endurance as we wait for our King, the Lamb, our Bridegroom, to come. And inherent in that patient endurance is faithfulness.
We’re going to have to delete the world’s number from our phones. No more late-night conversations. We can’t keep up the flirtation. We can’t think that we can stay close to the world, enjoying all it has to offer, giving our heart and affections to it, and still be faithful to our Bridegroom. It simply won’t work.
If we refuse to come out of Babylon, if we refuse to give up our dalliances with the world, we’re going to be destroyed with her. She seems so in control, so self-confident. Our interactions with her seem so natural, not dangerous. And we can’t imagine that she will ever be anything except beautiful and powerful. But John shows us, one day, in a single day, everything will change. She’s going to lose everything. And everyone who has joined themselves to her is going to lose everything too. On the day when Babylon gets her due, everyone who has made their home there, their fortune there, finds their identity and meaning there, will lose everything they thought made them happy, everything that provided their security, everything that gave their lives meaning. John wants us to hear from them. He wants us to hear agony in their cries.
“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’” (Revelation 18:9-10).
Everyone whose power was an extension of the beast’s power, everyone who was seduced by her into committing spiritual adultery with her, they’re going to watch in fear as she burns because they know that her torment is going to become their torment.
Finally, we get to hear the bride speak. Instead of crying out “Alas! Alas!” she’s crying out, “Hallelujah!” This is what she’s been waiting for! All her resistance to the world’s seduction and all her years of waiting for her Bridegroom have proved worthwhile:
“Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His Bride has made herself ready; it was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure”— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints (Revelation 19:7-8).
She has been preparing for this day, and the day is finally here. After all of the waiting, it is finally time for the wedding. And she is ready. And in this she shows us a third way we must prepare ourselves for our wedding day: We have to say yes to the dress.
We can’t get ourselves ready for this wedding on our own. We’re being prepared as a bride for Jesus by Jesus. To be dressed appropriately for this perfect day requires the righteousness of another, the righteousness of Christ given to us as a gift. The righteousness of our Groom is going to work in and through our lives in such a way that His righteousness will be evident. It’s going to purify us, beautify us, and satisfy us.
We find the wedding day in Revelation 21:2-3, where we read: “I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’”
When I think about being prepared as a bride, it makes me think back to what it was like when David and I were engaged, and how hard it was to wait for the wedding day. One day, after all of the preparing for the wedding, our Bridegroom will come for us. All the waiting will be over. Finally, we’ll have the relief and joy of being together, enjoying the marriage we were meant for, the happiest marriage of all time, the marriage that will never end, an eternity of togetherness with the One who loves us. Until then, let’s keep ourselves pure for Him, let’s love Him with all our souls, all our strength, and all our minds.
Nancy Guthrie teaches the Bible at her home church, Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as at conferences around the country and internationally, including her Biblical Theology Workshops for Women.
This essay is excerpted from her newest book, “Blessed: Experiencing the Promise of the Book of Revelation,” published by Crossway. For more information, visit crossway.org/books/blessed-tpb/.