[HOME] [INDEX OF ARTICLES ] [ COPYRIGHT INFORMATION ] [ ABOUT US ] [CONTACT ]

Babylon: To Stay Or Not To Stay?

⁴ "Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, ⁵ ' Build houses and live {in them;} and plant gardens and eat their produce. ⁷ ' Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare.'. Jeremiah 29




¹ After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven… ² And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! ⁴ …"Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues; ⁵ for her sins have piled up as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Revelation 18





Hardly can two passages put into better focus the great inner divide we feel as believers regarding our relationship to the world system. Within each of us lies a deep conflict over what our attitude should be toward the ungodly society around us. “Do we settle and become established in Babylon? Do we intercede for it's peace and well-being? Or do we proclaim its judgment and get out?”

Some of us experience pulls from conflicting personal leadings of the Lord over this. On one hand, the Lord is telling us to divest ourselves of certain attachments to the society, while at the same time telling us to seek certain other establishings inside of it.

This conflict especially surfaces in those with the intercessory prophetic spirit. Right now, two vocally opposed streams advocate conflicting courses of attitude toward society. One calls on us to be a blessing amidst this foreign land—to influence the culture for good and seek its welfare. The other beckons us to separate as far as possible from the system and its people as we keep seeking God’s manifest kingdom from beyond.

But how can we possibly pray for Babylon’s welfare while declaring its judgment? How can we become established in it while trying to get out of it? Is there anything the Lord would show us that can help us deal with this state of contradiction??




- Hearing in Stereo

Before speaking to this, the very first thing we need to get straight is that the Voice of God is of many modes and dimensions. Where we speak in “mono,” God speaks in “stereo” and even “quadraphonic” sound! To our one-track ears, the dual streams of God’s stereophonic Voice can sound quite contradictory and irreconcilable.

An early mistake we make in trying to apprehend God is in believing that God speaks on a single track like we do. Recognizing this is a major step in breaking spiritual pride, achieving true learning and also true unity in the body. A perpetual challenge lies before us to outgrow monophonic hearing. And that is the case here. Now let’s move on…


Discerning Essential Reality and Supportive Reality

The truth is that, as people of another world and kingdom, a fundamental “identity gap” exists between us and society—one that can never be bridged. Because of this, essential separations of behavior and participation are mandated on us. These separations service our lifelong perfection of identity in Christ toward realizing our true and permanent immortal destiny.

Lifestyle separations answer to God’s call that we leave Babylon. Our fundamental allegiance must remain with this call because it speaks to the seat of who we are as a people separated to God. “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” As the Jews were not truly “of Babylon,” neither are we in this age truly of the world culture.

But within this foundational reality are strategic engagements the Lord requires us to make within society. These engagements, which call us closer to society and to establish ourselves certain ways inside its framework, also are for our discipline—but in a different way. They are for our growth in development regarding the ways of God in the earth. They work toward greater plans God wants to execute in the earth ahead of generations yet to follow us. And they are of course for leaving us as a light to Adam’s remaining people.

These temporal engagements inside world culture answer to Jeremiah’s command that—as slaves still under death’s dominion—we seek the peace and welfare of Babylon. To be sure, this reality is the supportive reality. It must ever be tested in light of the essential reality that we are merely “passing through” Babylon. But it is a reality nonetheless we must accept where mandated by the Spirit—however contrary to our innate identity and destiny of spirit it may seem.


Daniel Saw It All

To get a feel for the proper relationship of these two mandates, it helps to consider the span of time and situation surrounding the original Babylonian captivity.

At the outset of this crisis, when Jeremiah dared exhort the captives to “seek the welfare of Babylon,” hardly could more treasonous words be sounded! It was spoken to people who knew they were distinct from all others and whose identity was tied to their homeland in Jerusalem. Jeremiah’s word foreknew that the Jews were going to be under discipline of Babylon for the long haul and needed to submit to it.

Over the years however, many were born who never knew anything but life in Babylon. And Babylon was a desirable place to live. It had everything and more than a person could want to live well. By the time the captivity period was up, I imagine many did not want to leave! (And we know many did not.) Jeremiah’s word was the only word they had ever lived by. “So why would I want to leave Babylon to go to a wrecked desolate place I’ve never been before?”

But then, there was Daniel. Daniel was among the very very few who lived to experience both the original deportation and the call to leave Babylon to return to the homeland—a period of 70 years! As an original homeland Jew, Daniel knew who he was and could never ever feel at home in Babylon, no matter how high up in government he went! Yet he learned early on to accept Jeremiah’s word with dignity.

Because however Daniel submitted to Jeremiah’s word while never betraying his fundamental identity, and because he endured to the end with the hope of returning, he became the actual intercessory instrument for bringing about Israel’s release from Babylon 70 years later. Imagine! Enduring Jeremiah’s word against his fundamental homeland nature brought the fulfilment of Daniel’s hope for his true nature! The people were released. Can we learn anything from this?


Learning the Seasons of Oscillation

The clash between the voices of the Lord regarding our relationship to Babylon plays out as a clash between true disciples who know their true identity and destiny outside this world, and those who do not know their identity so well, are used to the captivity to this world and have little vision for a destiny beyond it, even though they technically know they are not “of it.”

The disciples’ cry is “Flee Babylon.” The settled believers’ response is, “Seek Babylon’s welfare!” Each has a word from God on which to draw. But it takes the perception of the excellent spirit of Daniel to apply both these words—this stereophonic Voice—in its right appropriation. What understanding did Daniel have? He had an understanding of times and seasons.

Prior to our permanent exodus, our leaving of Babylon is one of oscillations—in and out of society, in and out of churches, in and out of fresh relationships that later turn stagnant. Our leaving alternates with leadings of re-establishment. God calls us out, but then calls us back in, only to call us out again—sometimes at the same time (to our ongoing frustration and consternation).

It’s here that the words from Ecclesiastes take on particular meaning:




^3:1-2“To everything there is a time…a time to plant, and a time to pluck up.”

Spiritual life is lived out through seasons of development. Spiritual reality functions on a basis of seasonal development. Under present mortality, there is almost never a time where it is always right to maintain a single unbending perspective regarding our destiny in Christ or of the Lord’s will for us here and now. Every directive from the Lord has a season regarding how it is to be carried out after which it expires and must either be renewed or transcended.

The challenge for us as a body becomes how to discern the season of our relationship to the world system around us. We must “work out our salvation” over seasonal perception. How long are we to pray regarding this nation? How long are we to stay in this job? This house? This location? This disobedient church? Are we entering a fresh period of re-engagement with Babylon on a new level? Or has our present level reached a ripeness where it is time to get out—to stop praying—to set our face once more as flint toward the eternal horizon—to make the break?




- Tempering Permanent Hope Against Present Endurance

Some day, our leaving of Babylon will a have a permanent manifestation. This leaving corresponds to the exodus of Revelation 15, an exodus which, like the original exodus under Moses, is irreversible. We will leave Babylon in the final sense when we put on immortality. The more purified our hope as disciples becomes now, the more intense this hope becomes in us!

But our declaring of this hope and even our taking actions on this hope does not make it so or bring it to pass. Moses learned this the hard way the first time. Many movements past and present bear failed testimony to this. Many have called us to "leave Babylon" and have taken actions to flee it (myself included!)—yet Babylon is still there and we are out here tending desert sheep.

Until we obtain our permanent separated glorification, our leaving of Babylon can never be final inasmuch as, being flesh and blood, we always carry a certain amount of it on our own backs! (It’s for this cause that every movement ever built on the one-track objective of “fleeing Babylon” has only ever succeeding at recreating it somewhere else! One track thinking combined with seasonal indifference always produces new Babylonian wilderness encampments.)

Until God is ready to change us like He did Elijah, we must always be prepared to make another Jeremiah 29 re-establishment in some way in society—right to the end.

Yet our heart must be ever ready now to “leave our nets,” “leave father and mother,” “leave Ur” when the time is ripe, and ever in hope of making that final crossing from Egypt and flight from Babylon. We must be on the perpetual lookout for each ripe moment of God’s release from one more Babylonian tie toward immortal perfection.


The Signs of the Times Now

As a New Covenant people in the earth, we have been in captivity to Babylon for a very long time. In fact, our covenant was born under Babylon’s reign (Rome)! After 2000 years, we still labor as mortals in anguish under authority of foreign culture and government (—in fact, having lived in Babylon so many generations, the vast majority of us remain drunk in excess on Jeremiah's word.) But the wisdom of Daniel after all these centuries has something to tell us.

The signs of the times are clearly working toward our final leaving of Babylon for good. The days left to the earth of our seeking Babylon’s welfare are drastically waning and numbered. The day of Daniel and Ezra is overtaking the day of Jeremiah. The end of the “70 years” is near.

But still, though its glow is here, its fullness still has not broken the horizon. There are yet “final” prayers to be offered, “final” engagements and establishments within Babylon to be made before its collapse. We must yield to what remains of God’s lower call to Babylon while keeping our eye on the star of New Jerusalem, awaiting our True Cyrus and Deliverer from heaven.

This enduring superior wisdom of Daniel can bring new light out of heat between the words of Jeremiah 29 and Revelation 18 if we can stop to listen. If we can gain the excellent corporate spirit of Daniel, we are in position to see a new productive harmonious leadership develop in the prophetic stream regarding our closing relationship to society before final exodus—one that will actually produce the intercession that will effect our final deliverance!

Let’s accept the challenge to leave one track prophecy behind and begin listening with quadraphonic ears. Corporate Daniels of the new season, come forth!





Chris Anderson
Riverside, RI

First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org

6/05



BACK TO TOP