We have been talking about the Lord restoring mankind and the earth. In Revelation, mankind falls to its deepest depravity before the Lord comes to rule and restore. He said it would be like “the days of Noah,” which saw the worst corruption and evil the world would experience until the end of this age. In His parable about the wheat and the tares, Jesus said, “the end of the age is the harvest” (see Matthew 13:39).

      In this parable, Jesus was speaking of how the wheat and tares would grow up together. The harvest is when all the seeds that have been sown will come to full maturity, so both the good and evil sown into man will come to full maturity at the end of this age. Then, we will experience evil in its fullness—the full maturity of the sin of man personified in “the man of sin”—and the full maturity of the nature of Christ will be manifested in His people. This is predicted in Isaiah 60:1-3: “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you. For behold, darkness will cover the earth and deep darkness the peoples; but the Lord will rise upon you and His glory will appear upon you. And nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising.”

      Most of the books I’ve read and messages I’ve heard preached on the book of Revelation focus on the evil, the antichrist, and the tribulation. By far the most exciting and wonderful thing about the end of the age is what is being done to prepare the way for His kingdom and how the glory of the Lord is going to be manifested in His people. The light and glory of the Lord are going to overpower the deepest darkness, the worst evil. As we see in the prophecy above, the light wins, and the nations will come to the light.

      There has to be an ultimate revelation of the sin of man in the man of sin so that, for all time, the creation will have a clear understanding of the ultimate result of all we try to do without God. We were created to walk with Him, and when we try to go it alone and pursue works without Him, the consequences may look desirable for a little while, but will always be bad. 

      A lot of insight into this can be seen in Genesis 11, where man tries to build a tower to get to heaven by his own strength and wisdom. This was called the Tower of Babel, or the Tower of Confusion, because the Lord scattered men’s language there to end this folly. Their actual intent was a good summary of the root of most of the evil that has manifested through religions. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (see Genesis 11:4).

      These misguided people may have what they thought were good motives, such as getting to heaven and finding God. In truth, they were seeking to make names for themselves and to use this project to gather people around them. These remain the primary motivations behind most projects, including religious projects. We will dig deeper into this later in this study, but for now we need to see that God’s true work always comes from above, is initiated by Him, and requires man to humbly acknowledge and follow His leadership in everything. His work never starts with men, but with Himself. However, He will use men to accomplish it and to teach them how to walk with Him.

      “Mystery Babylon,” mentioned in Revelation 17, is man’s church, not God’s church. Churches can be built with the best of intentions and do many good things. However, if they originate with men instead of the Lord, they will be built with the same motives as those of the men of Shinar, who built the Tower of Babel. We will be trying to reach heaven by our own strength and wisdom, in place of the way God provided for us to reach Him. We will elaborate more on this later.

      God provided the way for us to reach Him and serve Him. Anyone who thinks they don’t need God’s way, but can get to Him by their own righteousness or wisdom, is manifesting the same pride that caused the first fall of man. All such projects will likewise end in tragedy and the further scattering of men, not their gathering. We can recognize this by how the project will be the center of attention, not Christ.