Judgment

Reading Amount: Revelation 14:1-20

Central Verse:

Then I saw another angel flying in mid-heaven, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who live on the earth - to every nation and tribe and language and people. He said in a loud voice. "Fear God and give him glory, for the hour of his judgment has come; and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water."

Then another angel, a second, followed, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication."

Then another angel, a third, followed them, crying with a loud voice, "Those who worship the beast and its image, and receive a mark on their foreheads or on their hands, they will also drink the wine of God's wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger, and they will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever. There is no rest day or night for those who worship the beast and its image and for anyone who receives the mark of its name."

Revelation 14:6-9

Central Truth:

Judgment eventually falls upon all and the deciding factor of judgment is not profession of faith in God but in rejection of the unholy trinity and worship of the state.

Food For Thought:

Connections:

We live in a true global economy. As I sit writing this lesson I am drinking a cup of coffee whose beans were grown in South America. Using creamer that was made in Ohio, typing on a computer that was made primarily in China, on software that is American designed but mass produced in China. I could easily continue with everything else located on my desk and end up with another five or six countries and seven or eight states. To state the obvious we live in a connected world. We are more dependent on each other now than at any other time in our history. We are dependant for labor, manufacturing, ideas and food on all parts of the world.

This has had positive and negative effects on our daily lives. A positive aspect for us here in America is we are able to sample the variety the world has to offer. When I was growing up, which wasn't that long ago, mango's were a rarely in the grocery store in fact most people wouldn't even know what to do with them. Now they are standard fare at grocery stores everywhere. A negative side effect is that in order to get these goods people are not paid enough that they can survive where they live, or they're not given access to health care facilities or other advantages that we have.

In the ancient world people had that same sense of global connection with the Roman empire. And there was a cost to the way you did business in the ancient world, just as there is in the modern world today. We expect people in business to act in certain ways and do certain things. There are certain unspoken cost to doing business. In Rome the cost was to actually worship the emperor and to be a part of the trade guilds that required worship of a patron deity.

Today we accept ways of doing business that harm people or to make sacrifices for price instead of people. We have accepted the ways of business in our society that dictate we must have the newest and best. We encourage our nation to destroy other nations and peoples for our comfort. In Revelation 14 we are shown that while there is a cost to doing these things we will stand in judgment because of our actions. This is a call to not separate our lives into "church" and "not church." Where your faith is put into action is in the grocery store.