Jezebel's Siren Song
Scripture teaches the followers of Jesus to live their lives as people who are distinct from the world. Not physically, but morally and spiritually separate from the “forms” and ideologies of the present evil age. They are to be “in the world but not of it.” Their mission is to call other men and women to “save themselves from this crooked generation” before Jesus arrives in glory and judges the world.
Nevertheless, many voices in popular
Christianity are exhorting believers to compromise with the world so they may infiltrate
the surrounding culture and its institutions and change society’s ungodly character
ever so gradually from within. This is the church’s so-called “Seven Mountains
Mandate.”
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| [Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash] |
But no such “mandate” is found on the pages of the New Testament, and nowhere do we find Jesus or his apostles instructing the church to take over the cultural and political centers of this age, to reform an inherently sinful society, and otherwise, to fix the corrupt “forms” of this world.
Moreover, according to Scripture, the
present world order has been condemned already on Calvary, and consequently, its
institutions and ideologies are even now in the process of “passing away.”
There is no biblical mandate for the church
to take control of society or the government. If anything, the attempt to do so
inevitably results in the corruption of the body of Christ, and to this reality
church history eloquently bears witness.
Ironically, many of today’s popular preachers and “prophets” that warn constantly about the “spirit of Jezebel” are, in fact, dancing to her seductive tune.
After all, what is wrong with eating a
little “meat offered to idols” if doing so helps influence one of the
“mountains of culture”? Do not Jezebel’s prophetic seductresses reassure us
that this is how the “deeper things of God” work in the “spirit realm”?
We will learn to our great detriment that
Babylon and her sirens are instead teaching the “deeper things of Satan,”
and those saints foolish enough to venture into the political “mountain” will discover
just where “Satan’s throne” sits.
The Bible does refer to “seven mountains,”
but it links them to Babylon, the “GREAT WHORE, the mother of harlots and
the abominations of the earth.” This foul creature not only “sits on
many waters” and the “scarlet-colored Beast,” but she also rules
over the “seven mountains.”
IN REVELATION
In the Book of Revelation, the “many
waters” over which the “Whore” rules represent “peoples, multitudes,
nations, and tongues.” And the “scarlet-colored Beast” that she
“rides” is none other than the “Beast from the Sea,” Satan’s
agent that wages “war against the saints and conquers them.”
Its red color connects
the “Beast” with the “Dragon, the Ancient Serpent, the one who is
called ‘Devil’ and ‘Satan’ and the deceiver
of the whole habitable earth.” And the “Great Whore of Babylon”
sits comfortably on the whole sorry lot, executing the Devil’s dark agenda.
The “seven mountains”
over which the “Great Whore” exercises influence symbolize seven “kingdoms,”
five of which fell by the time John received his vision, one existed in his day,
and the seventh is yet to come. Each kingdom is an incarnation of the “Beast”
that ascends from the “Sea” and “wages war” on God’s covenant people.
And the seventh
“mountain” is identified with the “Beast that was and is not, is
himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he is going into perdition.” There
is nothing positive here, nothing possibly worth fixing or reforming. In fact, the
“Babylon” is riding the monster in its mad dash to destruction in the “Lake
of Fire.”
AN UNHOLY CITY
This unholy city, “Babylon,” is stained red with the “lifeblood of prophets and of saints,” and all while drunk
with the “blood of the martyrs” of Jesus, the results of the Dragon’s war on those who “have the testimony
of Jesus.”
Her sins “reach even to heaven,” therefore, “in one day shall her plagues
come, death, and mourning, and famine, and she shall be utterly burned
with fire, for strong is the Lord God who judges her.” It makes no sense for followers of the holy “Lamb”
to befriend and (hopefully) coax this satanic creature into changing her evil
ways.
Instead of undertaking that dubious venture, God summons
His church with the utmost urgency
to “come out of her, that you
have no fellowship with her sins, and that you
receive not of her plagues!!” Any disciple
of Jesus who plays with this Satanic fire will get burned!
As Paul wrote, the forms of this age “are passing away,” and disciples of Jesus must live accordingly. The present evil age is a rudderless ship that ran aground violently eons ago.
There can be no compromise with Satan. The
church cannot win the world by emulating its evil ways or infiltrating its
corrupt institutions. Attempting to do so is a fool’s errand, a wasted exercise
in “working for the meat that perishes.”
This is not a call to abandon the world,
but for disciples of the Nazarene to engage it using the biblical means, including
gospel preaching, Christian witness, faith, prayer, death to self, self-sacrificial
service for others, and living “in the world but not of it.”
The church is called to become a “light set
on a hill” that shines brightly in this darkened world. She must be everything
that the fallen world is not, and she must summon others to leave its darkness
behind while time remains.
Alas, many popular preachers are teaching us
to embrace this Babylonian world system that was judged and condemned on the
Cross. The very idea is absurd. But, as the Apostle Paul continues to warn, in
the last days, evil men will invade the church, “becoming worse and worse, deceiving
and being deceived.”
