Part V — Come Out

The last separation-call — a voice from heaven to MY PEOPLE — Rev. 18:1-4:

• Rev. 18:1. "And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory" — the closing scene opens with light, not doom: before Babylon falls, the whole earth is lightened, that the call which follows may be heard by every soul still inside.
• Rev. 18:2. "And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird" — the city of Cain in its end-form: Babylon, the serpent-seed's confederated city-system (see “Babel — Congregating for Convenience”), become at last what it tended toward from Cain's first wall — the habitation of devils. The city that began with a fugitive from God's presence ends as the cage of every unclean bird.
• Rev. 18:3. "For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies" — the mingling gone universal: all nations drunk, kings in alliance, merchants enriched (see “The Mingling — How the Peculiar People Lost Their Peculiarity”). No one is outside her by geography; the only way out of Babylon is the way of the call.
• Rev. 18:4. "And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues" — the last separation-call of the whole study, addressed to MY PEOPLE — God still has a people INSIDE Babylon. Two mercies attach to the coming out: that they partake not of her sins, and that they receive not of her plagues — and the call sounds before the plagues fall on the marked class (see “The Seal or the Mark — the Distinction Made Visible”).
• WitnessGC 604.1. White: "But God still has a people in Babylon; and before the visitation of His judgments these faithful ones must be called out... the call is heard: 'Come out of her, My people'" — the call is present truth, uniting with the third angel's message as "the final warning to be given to the inhabitants of the earth"; it is spoken to faithful souls yet inside.
• WitnessBP2 69.3. Bates: "the cry is made in the Protestant churches, 'Come out of her, my people.' What is now the response? Thousands on thousands dissolve their connection" — the historical fact: the come-out cry sounded audibly in the 1844 Advent movement and was answered; "the last, and crowning test which God ever gave his people to come away and separate themselves."

Every earlier call was this call — the ark door, the mountain, the tent, the wilderness — Gen. 7:1; 19:17; 12:1; Rev. 12:6:

• Gen. 7:1. "Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation" — the first "come": the righteous called IN while the world is left out. The ark door is "Come out of her, my people" in its first, physical form — one door dividing two classes (see “The Days of Noah — the Institutions of Eden Under Attack”).
• Gen. 19:17. "Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed" — the angels' hands on Lot: flee the doomed city, no lingering, no backward look. The mountain answers the plain — the geography of the two classes from the beginning (see “The Two Lineages — the City and the Name”; "Abraham and Lot — the Tent and the Plain").
• Gen. 12:1. "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee" — Abraham's "get thee out," the call that made him father of the faithful; the covenant people begin with a come-out, separation from country and kindred toward a land not yet seen.
• Rev. 12:6. "And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she hath a place prepared of God, that they should feed her there a thousand two hundred and threescore days" — the true church kept by flight through the mingled centuries: the woman flees the city-power exactly as Lot fled to the mountain, and God prepares her place (see “The Church in the Wilderness — the Mountains Keep the Faith”). The come-out class has never been without a prepared refuge.
• WitnessMWV2 266.5. Miller: "God has called his people into the wilderness state, time and again. 1st. Abraham was called to go out from the land of his fathers 'into a strange land'... for he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God" — the pioneer reading: the come-out-into-the-wilderness pattern runs from Abraham forward, and the pilgrim's eye is on the city God builds.
• WitnessGC 65.3. White: "Behind the lofty bulwarks of the mountains—in all ages the refuge of the persecuted and oppressed—the Waldenses found a hiding place... Here, for a thousand years, witnesses for the truth maintained the ancient faith" — the historical anchor: the mountain class of Gen. 19:17 and Rev. 12:6 walked through history, and the truth was kept a thousand years by the separated — "witnesses for the truth" in the very cloud of Heb. 12:1.

Separation is a settled law — and its reward is adoption — Isa. 52:11; 2 Cor. 6:14-18:

• Isa. 52:11. "Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the LORD" — the Old Testament root of both texts that follow: going out of her midst and touching no unclean thing is a settled law of God's people, not a novelty of the last message. Note the reason attached — "that bear the vessels of the LORD": the separated are separated FOR service.
• 2 Cor. 6:14. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness?" — the unequal yoke is the very mingling by which the peculiar people lost their peculiarity (see “The Mingling — How the Peculiar People Lost Their Peculiarity”); the questions admit no third answer.
• 2 Cor. 6:15-16. "And what concord hath Christ with Belial?... ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" — the ground of the separation: the believer is God's dwelling; the temple cannot be yoked to idols. "They shall be my people" — the same "my people" the voice from heaven addresses in Babylon.
• 2 Cor. 6:17. "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you" — Isa. 52:11 quoted into the church: God's reception is conditioned on the coming out. He does not receive a people still yoked to Babylon.
• 2 Cor. 6:18. "And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty" — separation is not loss but ADOPTION. What Babylon calls exile, heaven calls a family; the unequal yoke forfeits the sonship, the come-out receives it.

The pilgrim confession — the cloud of witnesses and the better country — Heb. 11:13-16; 12:1; 13:14:

• Heb. 11:13. "These all died in faith, not having received the promises... and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth" — one confession on every tongue in this study: Abel at his altar, Enoch walking with God, Noah in the ark, Abraham in his tent, the church in the wilderness — the pilgrims-and-strangers identity (see “Abraham and Lot — the Tent and the Plain”).
• Heb. 11:14. "For they that say such things declare plainly that they seek a country" — the confession is a declaration: to confess "stranger here" is to declare "citizen there."
  • the better country = the heavenly inheritance every pilgrim witness confessed and sought — God's answer to the man-built city of Cain; not any place on this earth, for "here have we no continuing city," but the prepared city to come (Heb. 11:14; Heb. 11:16; Heb. 13:14). Defined in full in the Symbol Dictionary.
• Heb. 11:15. "And truly, if they had been mindful of that country from whence they came out, they might have had opportunity to have returned" — the come-out is kept in the MIND: the road back stood open all their lives, and the pilgrims refused it. Lot's wife took it — the backward look that unmade an escape (Gen. 19:17, 26; see “As in the Days of Noah — the Last Mingling”).
• Heb. 11:16. "But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he hath prepared for them a city" — the desire names the class, and God answers the desire with a CITY. Man built the first city in rebellion; God builds the last one for the pilgrims — and He is "not ashamed" to be the God of pilgrims; He owns no other class.
• Heb. 12:1. "Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" — the seal on the whole arc: the reader now stands compassed about by every come-out witness of the study and is summoned to run the same separated, pilgrim race.
• Heb. 13:14. "For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come" — the pilgrim confession stated as doctrine: no continuing city HERE — not Cain's city of Enoch (Gen. 4:17), not Babel, not Sodom, not Babylon. The seed of the woman seeks the one to come.
• WitnessPP 81.1. White: Cain stands "at the head of that great class of men who worship the god of this world," while Abel led a pastoral life, and the descendants of Seth followed the same course, "counting themselves 'strangers and pilgrims on the earth,' seeking 'a better country, that is, an heavenly.' Hebrews 11:13, 16" — the two classes at the fountainhead named in EGW's own words, from this very spine text: the pilgrim confession is as old as the second generation from Eden.
• WitnessPP 170.2. White: "We must dwell as pilgrims and strangers here if we would gain 'a better country, that is, an heavenly'... Those who are children of Abraham will be seeking the city which he looked for, 'whose builder and maker is God'" — the confession made present-tense: to gain the country, dwell as pilgrims now.

The come-out class named — peculiar, priestly, at war with the flesh — Titus 2:14; 1 Pet. 2:9-11:

• Titus 2:14. "Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works" — the purpose of the cross is a purified, PECULIAR people (the covenant identity itself, see "Israel Mingles — 'Like All the Nations'"); the separation is not idleness in the mountain but zeal in good works — separated FOR service, as Isa. 52:11's vessel-bearers.
• 1 Pet. 2:9. "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" — the identity in full, and its verb: a people CALLED OUT — of darkness into light — for the purpose of witness. The come-out class exists to shew forth His praises, not to hide.
• 1 Pet. 2:10. "Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy" — the "my people" of Rev. 18:4 defined: made a people by mercy, not by blood or city; no one is born inside it, and no one still yoked to Babylon is outside its reach.
• 1 Pet. 2:11. "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" — the pilgrim confession bound to appetite: the very "eating and drinking" indulgence that marked the heedless antediluvian class wars against the pilgrim soul (see “The Days of Noah — the Institutions of Eden Under Attack”).
• WitnessCD 379.2. White: "Our habits of eating and drinking show whether we are of the world or among the number whom the Lord by His mighty cleaver of truth has separated from the world. These are His peculiar people, zealous of good works" — the separation made visible at the table; Titus 2:14 and 1 Pet. 2:9 joined to a real, present distinction, and the "cleaver of truth" is the Lord's own.
• WitnessAA 109.4. White: the members of God's church are "to be zealous of good works, separating from worldly ambition and walking in the footsteps of Him who went about doing good" — set apart FOR good works, not merely apart.
• WitnessCG 449.3. White: "Our only safety is to stand as God's peculiar people... making no compromise with its corrupt and idolatrous practices" — the peculiar identity as the ONLY safety: no inch yielded — the come-out call lived out daily.

Two cities end the study — one thrown down, one coming down — Rev. 18:20-21; 21:2:

• Rev. 18:20. "Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her" — heaven's verdict on the city that persecuted the pilgrim class from righteous Abel forward (see “Cain and Abel — the Two Worships”): avenged.
• Rev. 18:21. "And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all" — the end of the first city: the city-system Cain began and Nimrod raised again at Babel is "found no more at all." This is the urgency of the call — the city cannot be reformed, only left.
  • the two cities = the two destinations of the two classes: Babylon, the end-form of the city of Cain, "become the habitation of devils" and thrown down to be found no more; and the New Jerusalem, the city God "hath prepared" for the pilgrims, coming down from God out of heaven (Rev. 18:2; Rev. 18:21; Rev. 21:2; Heb. 11:16). Defined in full in the Symbol Dictionary.
• Rev. 21:2. "And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband" — the end of the second city: the pilgrims who sought a country receive a city; "he hath prepared for them a city" (Heb. 11:16) kept to the letter. Note the directions: Babylon is thrown DOWN; the New Jerusalem comes DOWN — one city falls by judgment, the other descends as a gift.
• WitnessCOL 152.1. White: "The Pharisee and the publican represent two great classes... Their first two representatives are found in the first two children that were born into the world" — the thesis of the whole study confirmed at its close: from the first two children born to the last two cities standing, there are two classes, and only two; the come-out call is where the reader chooses between them.