My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of the LORD.
God's true people who are inside Babylon are commanded to go out of her midst and each deliver his own soul from the fierce anger of the LORD when she is destroyed. The command is imperative and must be obeyed rather than knowingly stayed under, for refusing or neglecting it brings the threatened penalty. What was spoken against literal Babylon is a type of mystical Babylon, the great apostate system ruling over the nations, with a sudden transition from type to antitype matching Revelation 18. The call applies to the last days just before the seven last plagues, when God calls people away from the sins, false teachings and satanic influence of the apostate churches so that obeying delivers them from the fierce anger of the final judgments. It stands in one line with the angels hastening Lot out of Sodom to escape for his life and with Christ's warning to flee Jerusalem when compassed with armies, so that life and eternal salvation depend on heeding quickly without lingering or looking back.
Ancient Babylon's Judgment
My people who are inside Babylon are commanded to go out of her midst, each one to deliver his own soul from the fierce anger of the Lord when Babylon is destroyed. The call is addressed to God's true people, and it is imperative, requiring obedience rather than knowingly remaining in her. To refuse or neglect it brings the threatened penalty. The time to leave was to be signaled by a rumor in one year and another rumor in the next year, followed by violence and conflict between rulers. That sign was fulfilled when Cyrus set out and then resumed his advance the following spring, and the ensuing violence marked the time for God's people to leave.
The verse belongs to Jeremiah's burden of prophecy against Babylon uttered many years before its fall. It charged her with sins, pride, and idolatry, with having filled the cup of her iniquity, with perverted principles of right, and with opposition to God as a system opposed to Him. Even so it gave gracious warning and offered mercy, though the message was slighted and left unheeded. Jeremiah 50 and 51 lament and bear witness that pagan Babylon persecuted God's people. They present God's defense of His people in bringing judgment upon that power.
The prophecy concerns both the fall of the city of Babylon and the fall of its empire. It predicts the downfall of the head of gold before the silver empire of Persia takes its place in succession onward to the end. The circumstances of its capture by Cyrus are to be found in Jeremiah alongside Isaiah. The destruction was to be utter: Babylon would become heaps without inhabitant and would sink and not rise from the evil brought upon her. It was not fully accomplished when the Persians overthrew the city but came gradually until the site was desolate.
As a sign of that sinking, Seraiah read the roll of these prophecies on the banks of the Euphrates, tied a stone to it, and cast it into the river. The fulfillment is proved by Babylon's ruins and by the dispassionate testimony of heathen historians who did not know the prophecy and had no design to show its fulfillment. Buried ruined cities by the Euphrates testify to the detailed predictions of the flourishing city's doom, with sculptured slabs, bricks, pottery, sarcophagi, and ornaments dug from mounds of more than twenty centuries and carried to London and Philadelphia. God's truth stood against Babylon's confusion of error and announced her destruction in her own confusion. It was fulfilled in the night when Belshazzar, weak, dissolute, riotous, idolatrous, blaspheming God and worshiping gods of gold and wood and stone while drinking from the plundered temple vessels, saw the writing Numbered, numbered, Weighed, Divisions, meaning God had numbered his kingdom and finished it, weighed him in the balances and found him wanting, and divided his kingdom and given it to the Medes and Persians. That same night Babylon was taken on every quarter with the cry Babylon is fallen, proving no might or scheme or power or wealth of man can save a city or nation that sows within herself error, confusion, destruction, and death.
Type and Final Warning
What was spoken against literal Babylon was a type of mystical, antitypical Babylon, the great apostate system ruling over the nations. The prophecy makes a sudden transition from type to antitype, so that what concerned literal Babylon humbled by the Medes and Persians applies emphatically to modern Babylon and all sinners punished in the day of the Lord, matching Revelation 18. In the prophecy concerning Babylon can be read the fate of Babylon the great as prophesied in Revelation, for that Babylon was a type of the great mystical Babylon in the present day. The doom pronounced on the kingdoms surrounding Israel reaches to the restoration under Christ.
The command stands in one line with the angels hastening Lot out of Sodom to escape for his life without looking back or lingering in the plain, and with Christ's warning to flee Jerusalem when compassed with armies and to depart out without coming down from the housetop or returning from the field, and with the final message to come out of great world-Babylon whose sins have reached to heaven. It was given for those with ears to hear when wrath was about to fall upon ancient Babylon, to leave her midst and deliver every soul from fierce anger. Life and eternal salvation depend on heeding the warning and moving quickly, forsaking sin and all earth's Babylons of pride and acting at once in God's work, with no loitering save at peril of the soul. Great Babylon will surely come in remembrance before God for ruin just as doom fell upon those ancient cities.
The call to come out applies to the last days just before the seven last plagues, when there is no intercessor and God's wrath is poured out, and it warns people to flee Babylon before its plagues fall. God calls people away from the sins of the religious world before the final judgments fall, to come out from under the satanic influence, false teachings, and antichristian priesthood of the apostate churches. Obeying this call delivers them from the fierce anger of the final judgments. In that application, people in the churches who received the Advent message recognized the churches as fallen Babylon and broke their ties to the sects, becoming free to rejoice in the Advent hope. Their departure followed Babylon's fall in prophetic sequence, and the many who obeyed in different places without coordinating with one another are evidence the work was of the Lord.
The warning is a lesson for cities and people that forget and defy God, including New York and Chicago. Modern cities are doomed like the cities of the plain, and the warning applies to places whose open defiance of God invites judgment. San Francisco's sudden destruction shows how suddenly city life and its places of pleasure can be brought to an end. Its catastrophe is presented alongside the preliminary punishments of Babylon and Tyre as a warning of the fate wickedness brings, whose people failed to heed warnings before fire marked its doom. Judgment may come suddenly when warnings go unheeded until doom is evident, and calamity warns them to repent and turn from sin.
God's true people who are inside Babylon are commanded to go out of her midst and each deliver his own soul from the fierce anger of the LORD when she is destroyed. The command is imperative and must be obeyed rather than knowingly stayed under, for refusing or neglecting it brings the threatened penalty. What was spoken against literal Babylon is a type of mystical Babylon, the great apostate system ruling over the nations, with a sudden transition from type to antitype matching Revelation 18. The call applies to the last days just before the seven last plagues, when God calls people away from the sins, false teachings and satanic influence of the apostate churches so that obeying delivers them from the fierce anger of the final judgments. It stands in one line with the angels hastening Lot out of Sodom to escape for his life and with Christ's warning to flee Jerusalem when compassed with armies, so that life and eternal salvation depend on heeding quickly without lingering or looking back.
Ancient Babylon's Judgment
My people who are inside Babylon are commanded to go out of her midst, each one to deliver his own soul from the fierce anger of the Lord when Babylon is destroyed. The call is addressed to God's true people, and it is imperative, requiring obedience rather than knowingly remaining in her. To refuse or neglect it brings the threatened penalty. The time to leave was to be signaled by a rumor in one year and another rumor in the next year, followed by violence and conflict between rulers. That sign was fulfilled when Cyrus set out and then resumed his advance the following spring, and the ensuing violence marked the time for God's people to leave.
The verse belongs to Jeremiah's burden of prophecy against Babylon uttered many years before its fall. It charged her with sins, pride, and idolatry, with having filled the cup of her iniquity, with perverted principles of right, and with opposition to God as a system opposed to Him. Even so it gave gracious warning and offered mercy, though the message was slighted and left unheeded. Jeremiah 50 and 51 lament and bear witness that pagan Babylon persecuted God's people. They present God's defense of His people in bringing judgment upon that power.
The prophecy concerns both the fall of the city of Babylon and the fall of its empire. It predicts the downfall of the head of gold before the silver empire of Persia takes its place in succession onward to the end. The circumstances of its capture by Cyrus are to be found in Jeremiah alongside Isaiah. The destruction was to be utter: Babylon would become heaps without inhabitant and would sink and not rise from the evil brought upon her. It was not fully accomplished when the Persians overthrew the city but came gradually until the site was desolate.
As a sign of that sinking, Seraiah read the roll of these prophecies on the banks of the Euphrates, tied a stone to it, and cast it into the river. The fulfillment is proved by Babylon's ruins and by the dispassionate testimony of heathen historians who did not know the prophecy and had no design to show its fulfillment. Buried ruined cities by the Euphrates testify to the detailed predictions of the flourishing city's doom, with sculptured slabs, bricks, pottery, sarcophagi, and ornaments dug from mounds of more than twenty centuries and carried to London and Philadelphia. God's truth stood against Babylon's confusion of error and announced her destruction in her own confusion. It was fulfilled in the night when Belshazzar, weak, dissolute, riotous, idolatrous, blaspheming God and worshiping gods of gold and wood and stone while drinking from the plundered temple vessels, saw the writing Numbered, numbered, Weighed, Divisions, meaning God had numbered his kingdom and finished it, weighed him in the balances and found him wanting, and divided his kingdom and given it to the Medes and Persians. That same night Babylon was taken on every quarter with the cry Babylon is fallen, proving no might or scheme or power or wealth of man can save a city or nation that sows within herself error, confusion, destruction, and death.
Type and Final Warning
What was spoken against literal Babylon was a type of mystical, antitypical Babylon, the great apostate system ruling over the nations. The prophecy makes a sudden transition from type to antitype, so that what concerned literal Babylon humbled by the Medes and Persians applies emphatically to modern Babylon and all sinners punished in the day of the Lord, matching Revelation 18. In the prophecy concerning Babylon can be read the fate of Babylon the great as prophesied in Revelation, for that Babylon was a type of the great mystical Babylon in the present day. The doom pronounced on the kingdoms surrounding Israel reaches to the restoration under Christ.
The command stands in one line with the angels hastening Lot out of Sodom to escape for his life without looking back or lingering in the plain, and with Christ's warning to flee Jerusalem when compassed with armies and to depart out without coming down from the housetop or returning from the field, and with the final message to come out of great world-Babylon whose sins have reached to heaven. It was given for those with ears to hear when wrath was about to fall upon ancient Babylon, to leave her midst and deliver every soul from fierce anger. Life and eternal salvation depend on heeding the warning and moving quickly, forsaking sin and all earth's Babylons of pride and acting at once in God's work, with no loitering save at peril of the soul. Great Babylon will surely come in remembrance before God for ruin just as doom fell upon those ancient cities.
The call to come out applies to the last days just before the seven last plagues, when there is no intercessor and God's wrath is poured out, and it warns people to flee Babylon before its plagues fall. God calls people away from the sins of the religious world before the final judgments fall, to come out from under the satanic influence, false teachings, and antichristian priesthood of the apostate churches. Obeying this call delivers them from the fierce anger of the final judgments. In that application, people in the churches who received the Advent message recognized the churches as fallen Babylon and broke their ties to the sects, becoming free to rejoice in the Advent hope. Their departure followed Babylon's fall in prophetic sequence, and the many who obeyed in different places without coordinating with one another are evidence the work was of the Lord.
The warning is a lesson for cities and people that forget and defy God, including New York and Chicago. Modern cities are doomed like the cities of the plain, and the warning applies to places whose open defiance of God invites judgment. San Francisco's sudden destruction shows how suddenly city life and its places of pleasure can be brought to an end. Its catastrophe is presented alongside the preliminary punishments of Babylon and Tyre as a warning of the fate wickedness brings, whose people failed to heed warnings before fire marked its doom. Judgment may come suddenly when warnings go unheeded until doom is evident, and calamity warns them to repent and turn from sin.