Daily Devotional For October 11, 2025
And the woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand filled with abominations and the unclean acts of her sexual immorality. A name was written on her forehead, “Mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth.”Rev 17:4-5.
Sixteen years ago I was attending a professional conference in Boston during the late stages of my wife’s last pregnancy. My flight home to Andrews University was scheduled for two in the afternoon on a Tuesday. At six in the morning the phone rang in my room at the Sheraton Boston. It was my wife. “Jon, come home quick, the contractions have begun!”
I dressed and packed with uncommon speed. Hurrying through checkout, I grabbed a cab and hurried to Logan Airport. Arriving at the United Airlines desk a little after seven I breathlessly announced the blessed event and asked if there was some way I could get home immediately. The woman behind the counter smiled and quickly put me on the eight o’clock flight to Chicago, with a two-hour layover before the next flight to South Bend.
Arriving in Chicago a little after nine, I went to the departure board and noticed that the earlier flight to South Bend was not scheduled to take off for ten minutes yet. But the gate was about a mile away in the vastness of O’Hare Airport. With the help of moving walkways and accommodating pedestrians (it’s amazing how accommodating people can be when a man is running wild hollering, “My wife is having a baby!”), I covered the mile in six minutes flat.
Running up to the gate, gasping for air, I waved my ticket and shouted, “My wife is having a baby! Can I get on this flight?” The attendant waved me on, glancing quickly at the ticket as I thundered by (the good old days before elaborate security).
I arrived in South Bend ten minutes before eleven Boston time (an all-time record for Boston to South Bend, I suspect). I hurried straight to a phone and called my wife, I was still breathing hard. “False alarm!” she announced cheerily! “They were false contractions. They stopped a couple of hours ago.” I slumped into a chair and decided to wait until my baggage arrived that afternoon.
Things are not always what they seem! A beautiful woman is dressed in clothing reminiscent of Israel’s High Priest (see highlighted text above). But the appearance deceives. She is Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes. Not everyone who names the name of God is serving Him. We should never place our full trust in human beings and institutions. God’s Word is our safest guide.
Lord, give us clear discernment to know the difference between truth and error.