That God's true people are members of babylonish churches can be seen from the above.

Every once in a while we hear ministers call to us to leave our denomination or church. We are to "come out of Babylon."

I think the Lord is telling us today to seek the good of the Babylon where we find ourselves, just as He told the Jews in captivity to seek the good of the nation that had captured them.

When we leave our church today and meet in a home group we are apt to bring the spirit of Babylon with us. Babylon is self-will performing religious service. We find self-willed people in the small home group just as readily as in the megachurch of ten thousand members.

Babylon is a state of the heart!

Babylon thinks of herself as being the queen of the Kingdom.

Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts, "I sit as queen; I am not a widow, and I will never mourn." (Revelation 18:7—NIV)

But there are no queens of the Kingdom. The Bride of the Lamb is referred to as the Body of Christ, not as a queen who governs alongside the Lord Jesus Christ.

Some of the queens of history have been great rulers in their own right, such as Elizabeth of England. But the Church is not a queen in her own right. She is absolutely nothing apart from the Lord Jesus Christ. She is the Body of Christ, that is, she is His fullness, His glory, His counterpart. She cannot sit as a queen and govern according to what she thinks the King desires.

But this is exactly what the churches of history have been—queens! They govern according to what they think the King desires, or what they themselves desire. They do not permit Christ to build His own church on the Rock He Himself is. Rather, they seek to build the church according to their own ideas. The result through the centuries has been, and is to the present hour, Babylon!

But God finally will overthrow all babylonish organizations, in the day He is ready to present the true Bride of the Lamb.

The next passage reveals that in the last days the Antichrist governments and the babylonish organization will share the wealth of the nations. They will be amazed and afraid, when they are cast down, because they never believed that their comfortable situation would ever be disturbed.

In prior verses we are told that Antichrist and ten kings closely aligned with Antichrist will bring Babylon to ruin and leave her naked. But in the next two verses we are told that some of the kings of the earth will not be part of the ten kings aligned with Antichrist, apparently, and that these kings of the earth will be upset over the destruction of the great man-controlled denomination.

When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry: "Woe! Woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power! In one hour your doom has come!" (Revelation 18:9,10—NIV)

To be continued.