There was a time before anyone understood that germs could kill people.
It was when doctors unknowingly doomed women during routine childbirths, and wars created more casualties through infections than bullets. It was when a simple drink of water could kill, and where surgery rooms of any sort were a death sentence.
All from something invisible to the naked eye.
Now shifting gears, what is it that makes the religious world sick, perverted, or dead? Could there be something unseen that siphons off spiritual energy, while managing to turn everything into money or power grabs? Yes. Once again, the problem is something the naked eye can’t detect.
And only the Holy Spirit can grant true discernment of such things.
In Revelation 17, the angel carried the apostle John away in the spirit into the wilderness where he saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast. What is that woman? A prostitute, an enormous worldwide system unfaithful to God.
“And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations” (Rev. 17:5).
Her tendrils have grown into everything religious, evidenced by the fact that she spawns all the sub-systems beneath her.
To natural eyes, she appears beautiful, even praiseworthy.
“The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality” (Rev. 17:4).
The cup she holds can numb all who drink from it. Those who are thus intoxicated find her beautiful and praiseworthy. John needed spiritual vision to see her true nature. Otherwise, he might have become one more naive person embracing a reprobate system.
But carried away in spirit, the apostle received a high-definition vision of it all, the corruption as well as the befuddling attractive things mixed into it.
A lot of people try to exercise probing levels of discernment, yet without the Spirit. They diligently study religious forgeries and fakes. They become experts in identifying questionable movements, erroneous doctrines, compromised churches, and suspicious personalities. They know everybody who is wrong.
Such Christians find Babylon in nearly every denomination they disagree with, every religious movement they dislike, and every political development that makes them uncomfortable. They see Babylon everywhere.
The downside is that they become cynical, critical, and distrustful. They may even reject authentic things of God because suspicion has become their governing instinct. Meanwhile, though their concerns and convictions run deep, their relationship with the living Christ remains strangely shallow. True spiritual discernment only grows from an intimate familiarity with Him. As we fellowship with Christ in the Spirit, absorb His Word, and become acquainted with His character, we by default develop a sensitivity to whatever contradicts Him.
There is a remarkable parallel to Revelation chapter 17, where John is carried away in the spirit to see the harlot. In Revelation 21:10, he is carried away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain to see the holy Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb.
For us to comprehend both “women,” spiritual vision is needed.
The natural eye, void of the Holy Spirit, admires Babylon because she is wealthy, influential, and impressive. Meanwhile, it overlooks the genuine church because she appears ordinary, weak, or lacking in worldly prestige. By the same token, the natural eye oriented to “discernment,” condemns everything as Babylon, including the bride of the lamb.
Only the Spirit can reveal the true nature of both.
When the microscope finally came along, it exposed an entire world invisible to the naked eye. Though this discovery didn’t automatically establish the link between germs and sickness, it furnished the groundwork for a lot of practical applications over time. Someone had to see something first.
Spend your time in the Spirit, the enabler of sight, and let your primary interest be Christ. You’ll be amazed at how many peripheral things get revealed. Once you begin to see the glories of Christ and His bride, the true nature of Babylon will also become apparent.
“I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:16-18)
