Revelation 18.23 refers to the sorceries of fallen Babylon. It could be a reference to Babylon in general or more specifically to the merchants of Babylon. Ultimately it doesn't matter as the mercantile-mammon driven activity of its 'great men' are part and parcel representative of the Babylonian system as a whole along with its larger list of deceptions and evil.
Sorcery is a somewhat tricky term when it comes to English.
It's magic to be sure and may involve potions and other ingredients commonly
associated with that practice. The actual word is pharmakeia which in English we derive words like pharmacy and
pharmaceutical. Some expositors have run with this and taken it in directions
well beyond the text. Or to put it differently they read the modern context and
usage back into the Biblical text and arrive at a result that condemns all
modern medicine. And yet few are actually willing to go that far and thus they
try to tweak the definition or pigeon-hole it to a specific set of
medicine-types and uses. Though there's some validity to the discussion it
usually goes off the rails.
Generally speaking the reference here is not to merchants
employing pharmaceuticals as much as it is to witchcraft or spell-craft in
general. This too is tricky as there are very different understandings as to
what witchcraft is.
Generally speaking witchcraft or sorcery (as it is used here)
is something beyond charms and magic though those things are part of the larger
equation. The core concept that is critical to understanding witchcraft is
hinted at in Samuel's denunciation of Saul in 1 Samuel 15 wherein the prophet
condemns Saul who had set his own agenda and timetable above that of God's and
unwilling to submit to it, he chose to manipulate the circumstances in his own
self-interest. That's what witchcraft really is – attempting to take the reins
of Providence into one's own hands by means of manipulation of nature and
disregarding the rule of God and his commands. That's what witches are trying
to do in the end – play God by means of nature-manipulation.*
There's definitely something to be said about the nature of
pharmacology and medicine in general when it comes to this discussion but again
I know very few who would follow this through to the utmost. It's a difficult
topic and one that requires a great deal of wisdom and knowledge and certainly
no small amount of deep reflection.
Of one thing I am sure. The sorceries or pharmakeia are not a reference to the Covid vaccine. Those who
argue that the spectrum of vaccines being employed to counter the effects and
proliferation of a particularly virulent and deadly strain of Coronavirus are somehow Babylonian sorcery (a la
Revelation 18) or even the Mark of the Beast have totally missed the point.
I've addressed the Mark of the Beast error elsewhere. In this case we must say
that the concept of sorcery-pharmakeia in Revelation 18 is something much
bigger than drugs or medicine. If they wanted to talk about the sorcerous
aspects of Western mercantilism, usury, capitalism, advertising, consumerism
and the like – and their political uses and implications, there might be a
discussion to pursue. But if we were to restrict the discussion to the vaccine,
the logical end of such argumentation would be to condemn all of Western
medicine in toto.**
The sorcery referenced in the passage is not medicine but the
'drug' of mammonism, the feeding of fallen humanity's covetousness and lust for
power, along with its lust for idols, idols that are used as substitutes for
God, idols used as proxies for heaven and the reconciliation and peace it
represents.
The merchants of Babylon were (and certainly are) princes and
wield their power by means of money-idolatry and the tools of manipulation,
deception, and seduction. Science and medicine are only part of this equation.
Certain veins of Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism will argue
the sorcery aspect to economic practice is somehow tied to modern fiat currency
and they'll posit that a gold standard is necessary for righteous transactions
to occur and for the economy to be moral. This is to miss the point on multiple
fronts.
The gold standard position is convenient and it makes for a
good economic theory on paper but reality has shown that it doesn't work in a context
of interest, credit, speculation and the various forms of insurance, which is
why it was abandoned in the end. And indeed we could argue that actually it's economic
elements or tools such as these that represent the sorcerous aspect to modern
economic theory and practice – with or without a gold standard in place. Mammonism
is still mammonism regardless of the paradigm or the foundations of its
currency. These practices are exploitative and virtually weaponise the financial
system especially when wealthy powerful countries interact with classes and nations
that are poor and downtrodden.
Of course such transactions are always conducted under
pretense and on the basis of being a purely business transaction, or even false
friendship. In reality, these mechanisms and the goals which drive them are a
means to power and as such the words, tools, and means of manipulation employed
by the merchants of Babylon (in all ages the world over) are a type of sorcery.
Much more could be said about the nature of international finance and the
conduct of its leader-princes – not to mention the corollary role played by
militaries and intelligence agencies and their relationship to the markets.
Revelation 18 certainly reads like the USA or even the West
in general and given the present context that's true enough, but it's not the first
manifestation of this Babylonian phenomenon and may not be the last. Bestial
heads die and are revived. History is a series of cycles moving toward an
ultimate final chapter culminating in the day of the Lord. The fall of all empires
are in that sense typological or foreshadowed 'Days of the Lord' pointing to
what is to come.
But additionally and perhaps more important, the Babylon
imagery is blended with that of the False Zion. It's not the Bride of Christ,
but the Harlot-Whore, the unfaithful covenant spouse. The imagery is present in
Revelation and in numerous passages throughout the Old Testament. And as we see
in the Old Covenant prophets, God's people often succumbed to mammonism and it
was the road to apostasy and judgment in the form of Sodom and all that it
represents – its decadence, perversity, self-serving and ultimately sub-human
conduct. Mammonism leads to the cultural decadence of sodomy, a great irony as
the American Church advocates the former even while it condemns the latter.
It's a case of deceived deceivers and blind guides leading the blind. In the
Old Testament it was these apostates who long dominated society that would
persecute the faithful – generating economic grief and oppression, through
bitter exploitation and (especially in the case of the prophets) open and often
deadly persecution.
This mammonist-apostate theme and imagery is repeated in
Revelation 17-18 and must be contrasted with that of the Kingdom presented by
Christ in the Sermon on the Mount.
We see similar imagery at work in passages like Revelation 11
wherein the apostate Covenant city is referred to as Sodom and Egypt and the
outer court of the Temple is given over to the Gentiles – another depiction of a
remnant-apostasy dynamic throughout the Church age. As the late Meredith Kline
pointed out in his 2001, Glory in Our Midst, there is a connection to be found with Revelation's Sodom-Babylon
and Zechariah 5, another instance of apostasy and apostates sent into exile –
the woman wickedness (a form of covenant apostasy) is demonically enthroned in
Shinar or Babylon.
Indeed one must also ponder the imagery in Revelation 12 of
the Bride escaped into the wilderness and John's later visionary visit to the
wilderness wherein he finds woman not the woman in white but instead the
Harlot-Whore of Babylon.
Further suggestions of apostasy are found in Revelation's
earlier references to Jezebel – a false prophetess at work in the Thyatiran
congregation.
In light of this apostate imagery that's tied to wealth,
power and global empire, the connections to Christendom are palpable and yet to
no one's surprise very few will be willing to hear it – especially as they are
given to its service and goals. A flawed concept from the very beginning, its
embrace represented a turn toward apostasy, and though the warnings in
Revelation are clear enough, the shift it represented was quickly and willingly
embraced and is so to this very day. The tragedy is this and it was one
identified by Kline – the ideal that so many Christians seek after, their
vision of the Church and its place in the world, the passion that drives them –
is the very Antichrist-Babylon paradigm we're being warned against in
Revelation and exhorted to come out of.
To conclude with a bit of speculative contemplation -
If the Constantinian-Christendom model is nearly dead and the
Western model always patterned after Rome (Daniel's fourth and last Beast) is
waning – then that's something to consider. We're either moving toward the
culmination of all things or we're ready to enter a new phase of history
altogether in which case the Second Coming may yet be (by human reckoning) a
long ways off.
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*There is no doubt that this topic ranges into a discussion
of modern science, the worldview of scientism and the ethics of its use – which
would most certainly include medicine.
**Some of the popular agrarian-naturalist narratives are almost
there but (right or wrong) Christians embrace these positions in defiance of
historic Magisterial and Confessional Protestant understandings of culture,
civilisation, industry, technology and progress.
It's more than a little ironic that many modern agrarian
narrative-driven Evangelicals have embraced holistic-alternative medicines, homeopathy
and the like. And yet to an earlier generation these practices were associated
with paganism, hippies, and essentially viewed as New Age or even witchcraft. We've seen quite
a reversal over the past thirty years. Right or wrong, the largely progressive
view Protestants once embraced regarding science and technology has been
significantly challenged and reversed in many quarters as the 'hippie'
practices and some of their naturalist ethos took root in Evangelical circles
in the 1990's – even while many other Evangelicals embraced a world of SUV's,
McMansions, and ostentatious consumerism. These social-lifestyle tensions have
expanded into other realms of ethics and doctrine and are part of the cultural
divide at work within the Church – one greatly exacerbated by the Obama-Trump
era and Covid. But in every case the Evangelical world still embraces mammonism
and Christendom. Their styles may differ but there are no serious challenges to
the theological underpinnings of the paradigm and its path to apostasy.