Why Will a Loving God Exact Vengeance?

“God is love.”​—1 John 4:8.

1. What will help us to understand an apparent contradiction in our theme?

VENGEANCE? From a loving God? How can that be? Is not the thought of a loving God’s doing something vengeful a contradiction? It might seem that way. But let us consider the loving qualities that the Creator displays, and then we will understand more clearly how this relates to his vengeance.

2. Why can we say God’s love is superlative, and what are some of his loving provisions for which we should be thankful? (Ps. 136:1-6)

² When we talk about God’s love, we can say that it is superlative, that is, of the highest degree. And it has been expressed toward us in a multitude of ways. Consider, for example, the earth on which we live. The Bible says that the earth is ‘God’s gift’ to humans. (Ps. 115:16) And what a marvelous gift! Think how lovingly God prepared this globe for us. God placed it in the heavens for it to get just the right amount of heat and light from the sun, and clothed it with a lovely carpet of greenery, along with a wide variety of beautifully colored flowers. And out of God’s love, he stocked our earth with an abundance of animal, bird and fish life, and provided an overflow of grain and other foods.​—Ps. 104:1, 13-15.

3. How did God display love in creating us humans?

³ However, God’s love is expressed not only in the things he made for us; it is also expressed in the way he made us. He made us to enjoy his creations. How well the psalmist expressed it when he said: “O Jehovah, . . . I shall laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made”! (Ps. 139:1, 14) Out of his generosity and love, God gave us eyes to behold the beauty of the world about us. He gave us ears with which we could delight in different sounds such as music and human voices. He gave us a nose by which we could take in the aromas of food and the fragrance of flowers. And to top it all is the human brain, which reasons, remembers and coordinates the body’s actions. Really, we have to marvel at God’s rich endowment of our bodies. Truly, “God is love.”​—1 John 4:8.

God’s love to the rescue

4. How was God’s love expressed in the paradise of Eden?

⁴ When God created the first man, Adam, he placed him in the beautiful paradise of Eden. What pleasure Adam must have found in the abundance of God’s loving provisions around him! Later, God formed Eve and brought her to Adam. How delightful for Eve, on her first day of life, to be united with a husband and head who would cherish and guide her! Together they could look forward to carrying out God’s will in beautifying and populating the earth, and having loving dominion over the animal creation. What a grand future God placed before them!

5. (a) How did our first ancestors become unworthy of God’s love? (b) Yet how was God’s love extended to their offspring?

⁵ However, sad to say, that future was not to be, at least not for them. A rebellious spirit creature selfishly took himself out from under God’s love, making himself into Satan the Devil. This Devil persuaded Eve, and through her, Adam, to ‘do their own thing.’ Thus, they took a selfish course, independent of their Creator. But in doing this, they showed themselves completely unworthy of their Creator’s love. So God rightly passed the sentence of death on those willful sinners. Yet, out of his love for mankind, he permitted them to survive until they could produce children, otherwise we would not be alive right now. Moreover, though the human race had inherited sin and death from our first parents, the loving God provided a basis for hope.​—Gen. 3:16-23; Rom. 8:20, 21.

6. What pronouncements in Eden showed forth God’s love, and how?

⁶ In what way? Well, at the very onset of rebellion, God made known that he would raise up a ‘Seed,’ that is, an offspring. He would send this One forth from his own loyal heavenly organization to undo all the damage caused by the Devil, and Adam and Eve. However, back there in Eden, the loving God also declared that he would execute vengeance upon Satan and all others who would make themselves part of the offspring of Satan by turning from God’s love.​—Gen. 3:15; Rev. 12:9.

GOD OF LOVE, AND OF VENGEANCE

7. In line with Deuteronomy 32:43, what reasons do we have for gladness?

⁷ So the God of love declared himself also to be a God of vengeance. But his taking vengeance on his enemies would be right. Why so? Because it would clear the way for all persons who love God to be glad, to rejoice. Surely, we now can rejoice that God will clear the way for us to enjoy his provision of everlasting life. Notice what God inspired Moses to say: “Be glad, you nations, with his people, for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and he will pay back vengeance to his adversaries.”​—Deut. 32:43.

8, 9. (a) Out of his love, what two things does God purpose to do? (b) In expression of his love, what marvelous gift has God made?

⁸ Yes, our loving God purposes to vindicate the rightfulness of his rule, and to rescue those who love him from their adversaries. Why, he will even rescue us from the great enemy, death, that comes into our lives by inheritance from our first parents. (Rom. 5:12) But how does God do this? The Bible tells us that he does it by the gift of his Son: “God is love. By this the love of God was made manifest in our case, because God sent forth his only-begotten Son into the world that we might gain life through him. The love is in this respect, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent forth his Son as a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins.”​—1 John 4:8-10; 1 Cor. 15:25, 26.

⁹ So God provided his Son Jesus Christ to release us from the death that comes to us because of the sin inherited from Adam. Yes, as the Bible says at First Timothy 2:6, Christ “gave himself a corresponding ransom for all” who would exercise faith in him. Jesus could therefore say concerning his sheeplike followers: “I have come that they might have life and might have it in abundance,” yes, everlasting life.​—John 10:10.

10. (a) Why is the ‘God of love’ a God also of “vengeance”? (b) Why is it so important today that we know and obey God?

¹⁰ Yet, repeatedly, the Bible tells us that the ‘God of love’ is also a ‘God of vengeance.’ Why? Because God’s love cannot forever tolerate evil. (Nah. 1:2; Deut. 32:35, 41) That is why the apostle Paul writes about the “revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance upon those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.” (2 Thess. 1:6-9) How important it is, then, that we come to know God! In this mixed-up world of so many different religions, how vital it is, as the Bible says, ‘to seek the true God and really find him!’​—Acts 17:27.

BALANCING VENGEANCE WITH LOVE

11, 12. (a) What situation developed early in human history, calling for what action on God’s part? (b) How was God’s vengeance there balanced out with his love?

¹¹ However, let us return to the beginnings of human history. This will help us to understand better the relationship between God’s love and his vengeance. Lovingly, God had permitted the offspring of Adam to multiply. But wayward humans did not respond to that love. So, after some 500 years, Jehovah sent his prophet Enoch to pronounce divine judgment on wicked humans because of their ungodly deeds and the shocking things that they spoke against God. (Jude 14, 15) Another thousand years passed, and that ancient world reached its zenith of immorality and violence. Thus, God’s Word says, “the earth came to be ruined in the sight of the true God and the earth became filled with violence. So God saw the earth and, look! it was ruined.”​—Gen. 6:11, 12.

¹² Now, what would God do? Would he exact vengeance? Yes! But even in this, his quality of love came to the fore. Why do we say so? At that time, there was one family on earth devoted to doing God’s will. It was the family of Noah, the man who is called in the Bible “a preacher of righteousness.” Lovingly, Jehovah had Noah construct an ark “for the saving of his household.” Then came the global flood, which wiped out Noah’s wicked neighbors. (2 Pet. 2:5; Heb. 11:7) The entire earth was cleansed of ruinous violence and immorality, so that it again became a fit place for the families of mankind to multiply.​—Gen. 6:9, 22; 7:21-23; 8:15-17.

13. Was Jehovah’s judging of Sodom and Gomorrah unloving, and why do you so answer?

¹³ However, sinful tendencies inherited from Adam remained, and soon godless humans began to show bad traits again. (Ps. 51:5) Take, for example, the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, who dwelt in a district that was once “like the garden of Jehovah.” The Bible tells us that “the men of Sodom were bad and were gross sinners against Jehovah.” They were homosexuals, and were violent in seeking to gratify their lusts. (Gen. 13:10, 13; 19:4-11) The loving God, Jehovah, determined to destroy those cities. In this way righteous Abraham and his nephew Lot would no longer have to put up with such vile neighbors. As Genesis 18:25 says, the “Judge of all the earth,” Jehovah, did ‘what was right.’ He delivered Lot and his two daughters, but rained fiery destruction on Sodom and Gomorrah, decontaminating that entire district.​—Luke 17:29; Jude 7.

14, 15. (a) How innocent were the Canaanites? (b) Did God act rightly in executing vengeance on them?

¹⁴ Years afterward Jehovah again did ‘what was right’ toward his people, Israel. How? In arranging to drive away the Canaanites from the Promised Land. (Deut. 18:9-12) ‘But was that not unfair to those innocent Canaanites?’ someone may ask. Innocent Canaanites? By no means were they innocent! Those Canaanites had become disgusting in their practices of incest, sexual uncleanness, adultery, sacrificing of children, homosexuality and bestiality. For example, in the worship of their false gods they sacrificed their children by throwing them alive into the fire. Also, they had female and male temple prostitutes.a Therefore, Jehovah gave these instructions to his people: “Do not make yourselves unclean by any of these things, because by all these things the nations whom I am sending out from before you have made themselves unclean. Consequently the land is unclean, and I shall bring punishment for its error upon it, and the land will vomit its inhabitants out.”​—Lev. 18:1-25.

¹⁵ Again, it was out of love for his own people that Jehovah commanded Israel to clear out those wrongdoers. Their filthy way of life endangered God’s people. It was as the Bible puts it, “something detestable to Jehovah.” Rightly, then, God’s vengeance blazed against them.​—Ps. 106:34-40; Deut. 18:12.

16. How were God’s love and patience expressed toward Israel?

¹⁶ On the other hand, how did God deal with the people of Israel? Jehovah expressed a most tender love toward them. Moses described it in these beautiful words at Deuteronomy 32:11 and 12: “Just as an eagle stirs up its nest, hovers over its fledglings, spreads out its wings, takes them, carries them on its pinions, Jehovah alone kept leading him, and there was no foreign god along with him.” But, alas! In time, foreign gods did intrude into Israel’s worship. Thus, the God who had declared that he would pay back vengeance to their adversaries was compelled to exact vengeance from his own people. But how patient Jehovah was toward Israel! Why, for 900 years he endured their waywardness! During all that time, Jehovah extended his hand of mercy toward them. “I take delight,” declared Jehovah God, “not in the death of the wicked one, but in that someone wicked turns back from his way and actually keeps living. Turn back, turn back from your bad ways, for why is it that you should die, O house of Israel?”​—Ezek. 33:11.

17. (a) What warning did God give Israel? (b) How was God’s executing of vengeance on Israel tempered by his love?

¹⁷ Time and again, God warned his people of the consequences of their idolatry, their immorality, and their shedding of innocent blood. But, at last, Jehovah was compelled to exact vengeance from Israel by allowing King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon to destroy Jerusalem and their temple. The survivors were carried off to Babylon. However, after 70 years God maneuvered the overthrow of Babylon so that an appreciative Israelite remnant could return to their own land and resume pure worship there.​—2 Ki. 24:3, 4; 2 Chron. 36:12-21; Ezra 1:1-3; Heb. 12:6.

JESUS SPEAKS OF LOVE AND VENGEANCE

18. What expressions did Jesus make concerning (a) God’s love, and (b) his vengeance?

¹⁸ What did Jesus Christ have to say about this matter of God’s love and vengeance? For one thing, he spoke warmly of his Father’s love, saying: “God loved the world [of mankind] so much that he gave his only-begotten Son, in order that everyone exercising faith in him might not be destroyed but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16) But did he hesitate to speak of God’s vengeance? Why, no! For the Bible says that Jesus, just like his Father, ‘loved righteousness, and hated lawlessness.’ Jesus in particular hated the lawlessness and bloodguilt of the religious leaders. (Heb. 1:9; Ps. 11:5, 7) He never minced words when he spoke to, or about, the Jewish clergy of his day. Three times in his Sermon on the Mount, he called them “hypocrites.” (Matt. 6:2, 5, 16) He told those clergy: “You are from your father the Devil,” thus linking them with ‘the seed of the serpent.’ (John 8:44; Gen. 3:15) Then, just three days before he was murdered, Jesus denounced those Jewish religious leaders publicly, saying: “Serpents, offspring of vipers, how are you to flee from the judgment of Gehenna?”​—Matt. 23:13-33.

19. (a) Why were Jesus’ attitude and warning message most loving? (b) But how did Jehovah act rightly?

¹⁹ Did this mean that Jesus was unloving? Not at all, for while Jesus knew that those Jews were about to add to their bloodguilt by killing him, yet he went on to say, in Matthew chapter 23: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the killer of the prophets and stoner of those sent forth to her,​—how often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks together under her wings! But you people did not want it. Look! Your house is abandoned to you.” (Matt. 23:37, 38; Acts 3:13-15) Thirty-seven years later Roman armies sacked Jerusalem and destroyed its temple. This was a calamity in which 1,100,000 of its rebellious people died! Then, at that time, the full force of Jesus’ prophetic words became clear. Rightly, Jehovah had exacted vengeance!

20. In connection with love and vengeance, what interesting features are to be found at Isaiah 61:1, 2?

²⁰ Centuries earlier, Isaiah, one of the prophets reportedly murdered in ancient Jerusalem, spoke these words: “The spirit of the Sovereign Lord Jehovah is upon me, for the reason that Jehovah has anointed me to tell good news to the meek ones . . . to proclaim the year of goodwill on the part of Jehovah and the day of vengeance on the part of our God; to comfort all the mourning ones.”​—Isa. 61:1, 2.

21. (a) What may have been Jesus’ reason for quoting Isaiah 61:1, 2 only in part? (b) What question arises, involving Isaiah 2:2-5?

²¹ Jesus read this prophecy, in part, at the start of his earthly ministry and applied it to himself as the Chief Anointed One of Jehovah. (Luke 4:18-21) However, when Jesus quoted those words of Isaiah he stopped short of mentioning the day of God’s vengeance. Why? Apparently the major emphasis on proclaiming the day of God’s vengeance would come “in the final part of the days,” as Isaiah chapter 2 puts it. Have we now reached that time?

[Footnotes]

Is God’s Day of Vengeance Near?

“Jehovah has a day of vengeance.”​—Isa. 34:8.

1. Does Luke 21:25, 26 have its application today?

JESUS CHRIST foretold that the time for God to execute vengeance would be identified by “anguish of nations, not knowing the way out” because of the problems agitating human society. He said that men would “become faint out of fear and expectation of the things coming upon the inhabited earth.” (Luke 21:25, 26) Do we see this situation as we pass into 1981?

YES! WE CERTAINLY DO!

2. (a) What indicates that Revelation 11:15, 18 began its fulfillment in 1914? (b) To what are these events a preliminary?

² The present world crisis is the outgrowth of distresses that have multiplied among mankind since the nations first became locked in total warfare in the year 1914. According to the prophecy of Revelation chapter 11, that year when “the nations became wrathful”​—1914—​also marked the time when rightfully “the kingdom of the world did become the kingdom of our Lord [Jehovah] and of his Christ.” (Rev. 11:15, 18) This enthroning of Christ with authority to rule is a preliminary step that paves the way for the execution of vengeance.

3. Where do Christendom’s churches stand with regard to God’s message of vengeance and comfort?

³ Today, is anyone commissioned by God’s spirit to proclaim the day of Jehovah’s vengeance and to comfort all who mourn? Yes, but it is not the churches of Christendom. They have no message of real comfort; nor do they want Jehovah as their God. Not only do they avoid the use of Jehovah’s name, but they persecute true Christians who do honor that name.

4. What reasons do we have to be glad?

⁴ However, Jehovah’s Witnesses are happy to bear God’s name, the greatest in the universe! They are glad to be called Jehovah’s Witnesses. They are overjoyed that, since the Kingdom’s being established in that eventful year 1914, they have been privileged to declare Jehovah’s “day of vengeance” in all the earth. Indeed, they are determined, as Micah 4:5 puts it, to “walk in the name of Jehovah [their] God to time indefinite, even forever”! And they are delighted that millions of mourning ones have listened to their message, have been comforted and have flocked to the side of God’s incoming kingdom.

GOD’S VENGEANCE​—IS IT DESERVED?

5. (a) Of what are these “critical times” the final fruitage? (b) In fulfillment of Paul’s prophecy on “the last days,” what conditions do we now see in Christendom?

⁵ However, is the world today really so bad that it must meet up with God’s vengeance? Listen to the inspired words of the apostle Paul. He said: “Know this, that in the last days critical times hard to deal with will be here.” These critical times are the final fruitage, the end result of the failure of people to respond to the preaching of the truth. (2 Tim. 2:23-26) Even in the realm of Christendom we now see a frightening increase in crime and violence, the breakdown of the family, disrespect for authority, and loss of morality. At the root of it all are selfishness and greed, the lack of genuine love. Paul goes on to say: “Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, . . . without love of goodness, . . . lovers of pleasures rather than lovers of God.” (2 Tim. 3:1-5) Well, do we see this prophecy being fulfilled throughout the earth today? Yes, indeed. It is being fulfilled in precise detail.

6. What situation has developed in fulfillment of Matthew 24:12?

⁶ Jesus himself, in prophesying of the “sign . . . of the conclusion of the system of things,” said: “Because of the increasing of lawlessness the love of the greater number will cool off.” (Matt. 24:3, 12) How true this is even of Christendom, as well as of the entire world today! As each Christmastime comes around, there is much talk in Christendom about love, about peace and goodwill among men, but do the nations of Christendom practice such things? Significant are the words of Britain’s prime minister, spoken just one week before Christmas, 1979. She said: “We face a new decade​—I have called it ‘the dangerous decade’—​in which the challenges to our security and to our way of life may, if anything, be more acute than in the 1970’s.”

7, 8. (a) What doomsday situation do we now find? (b) What assurances does Jehovah give, and how do these involve “love” and “vengeance”?

⁷ How are the nations responding to such challenges? By intensifying their war preparations. Think of it! This loveless world is spending about one million dollars a minute on armaments, more than 500 billion dollars a year! All of this escalates a doomsday situation for which the world can find no solution. According to information published by a group of physicians, scientists and others in the New York Times of March 2, 1980, if a nuclear war were to break out tomorrow, it could, in just one hour, destroy most life on earth​—thousands of millions of people. Yet the nations are working feverishly to produce even more diabolical superweapons.

⁸ Now, then, will our loving God, the Creator of this beautiful earth, permit wicked nations to burn it to a cinder? Never! For he plainly states in his Word: “This is what Jehovah has said, the Creator of the heavens, He the true God, the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited: ‘I am Jehovah, and there is no one else.’” His peerless name Jehovah stands as guarantee that He, as loving Creator and Sovereign Lord of the universe, will not permit the desolating of our globe. Divine love demands that God exact vengeance from those who desecrate our earth and who would annihilate his human creation.​—Isa. 45:18; Jer. 10:10-12.

9. Since the nations refuse to disarm, what does Jehovah propose to do, and why?

⁹ Since the first world war broke out in 1914, this earth has been drenched with the blood of tens of millions of innocent persons. Why, World War II alone took 55 million lives! And now the prospect of a nuclear holocaust is even more fearsome. So, since the nations refuse to disarm, then our loving God declares that shortly he will disarm them, in his own effective and permanent way. He says: “Come, you people, behold the activities of Jehovah, how he has set astonishing events on the earth. He is making wars to cease to the extremity of the earth.” (Ps. 46:8, 9) Yes, it is Jehovah’s loving purpose to do what the nations will never do​—pulverize all their war equipment, even to defusing all their nuclear missiles. As Jehovah says: “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” (Rom. 12:19; Zeph. 3:8, 9) Does not our loving God’s promise that he will exact vengeance make us glad? It should!

SORROWS MULTIPLY

10. The wars of this century have brought what shocking consequences?

¹⁰ The wars fought since 1914 have helped to bring in their wake horrible consequences. Among these are unbridled indulgence in sex, resulting in epidemics of venereal disease and unwanted pregnancies. These unwanted pregnancies have brought with them a tidal wave of abortions. It is estimated that now, worldwide, about 30 to 40 million unborn children are aborted, murdered, every year! That is the most extensive murder of innocents the world has ever seen, dwarfing the deaths in the worst year of any war in history.

11. In what ways are ‘wicked men advancing from bad to worse’?

¹¹ Also, in recent times, we have seen drug addiction, divorce, delinquency and lawlessness of all types on a frightful scale. Today, the homosexual community boasts that it has 20 million adherents in the United States alone. Recently, one homosexual set a modern record by the shocking murder of 33 young men he had sexually assaulted. Yet homosexuality is only one aspect of the immorality increasingly practiced in Christendom and throughout the earth. It is just as Second Timothy chapter 3 says about these “last days,” that “wicked men . . . will advance from bad to worse.”​—Vs. 13.

12. What indications do we have that this wicked world has reached its end?

¹² Viewing the immoral world around us, we are compelled to exclaim: How like Noah’s day! How like the time of Sodom and Gomorrah! How like the depraved Canaanites and the backsliding Israelites! As this present world sinks ever deeper into the mire of immorality, we are reminded of the warning of the apostle Paul that “those practicing such things are deserving of death.” (Rom. 1:18, 26-32) No, the loving God will not much longer tolerate the horrendous wickedness of this system of things. Instead, he will bring to ruin those who make his earth filthy.​—Rev. 11:18.

IDENTIFYING A “FAMOUS PROSTITUTE”

13. What is meant by ‘spiritual adultery’?

¹³ However, the Bible speaks also of spiritual immorality. This is indulged in by those who claim to be practicing pure religion, but who get mixed up in the affairs of Satan’s world. The Bible says: “Adulteresses, do you not know that the friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever, therefore, wants to be a friend of the world is constituting himself an enemy of God.” (Jas. 4:4) Such friendship​—spiritual adultery—​on the part of those who claim to be God’s servants provides another major reason for Jehovah’s exacting vengeance. Why do we say so?

14. Identify the “famous prostitute” and the “many waters” on which she sits.

¹⁴ It is because of what is said in Revelation chapter 17. There we read of “the great harlot who sits on many waters.” What does this mean? The “many waters” are clearly identified for us at verse 15 as meaning “peoples and crowds and nations and tongues.” But who is this “great harlot” that exercises power over the people? The Jerusalem Bible, a Catholic translation, refers to her as the “famous prostitute.” What has she done to make her so famous? Revelation 17:5 provides a clue, stating: “Upon her forehead was written a name, a mystery: ‘Babylon the Great, the mother of the harlots and of the disgusting things of the earth.’”

15. What happened to Babylon, but what legacy did she leave?

¹⁵ So the “famous prostitute” has a name, “Babylon the Great.” This links her with the Babylon of ancient history, in the time of King Nebuchadnezzar, which history reveals was full of depraved sex worship and corruption. (Dan. 4:28-30) Today, Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon is no more. Her site in modern Iraq is a desolation, “as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah.” (Isa. 13:19-22) However, ancient Babylon did leave a legacy for mankind. And what is that? Her idolatry​—her religion!

16. (a) How did a world empire of false religion develop? (b) What judgment does God pass on Babylon the Great, and why?

¹⁶ From earliest times following the Flood, Babylon was identified with false religion. It was there that men, in defiance of Jehovah, built a city and a religious tower with its top in the heavens. And when Jehovah confused their language, it was from Babylon that they scattered over all the earth, taking their false religion with them. In the fourth century, apostate Christians fused the doctrine and ceremonial practice of Babylon into the religious system that exists to this day in the various sects of Catholicism and Protestantism. Thus, there has developed a world empire of false religion, “Babylon the Great,” embracing “Christian” and nonChristian religions. Because of the involvement of “Babylon the Great” in the persecutions, violence, and even the world wars of history, God passes judgment on her, saying: “In her was found the blood of prophets and of holy ones and of all those who have been slaughtered on the earth.”​—Rev. 17:5, 6; 18:24; Gen. 10:8-10; 11:1-9.

17. What is the “scarlet-colored wild beast,” and how has it fulfilled prophecy?

¹⁷ Babylon the Great’s adulterous “friendship with the world” goes even farther. It includes her domineering relationship with a symbolic “beast.” For she is described at Revelation 17:3 as also “sitting upon a scarlet-colored wild beast that was full of blasphemous names.” In the Bible, “beasts” are often used to symbolize political nations. (Dan. 7:2-8; 8:5-8, 20, 21; Rev. 13:1-18) But here the prophecy speaks of a grotesque combination “beast” having “seven heads and ten horns.” Modern history shows that this “beast” first appeared in 1920. It was a combine of the nations​—the League of Nations. It took a plunge into temporary inactivity during World War II. But​—in fulfillment of prophecy—​it appeared again as the United Nations in 1945. Shortly, it “goes off into destruction.”​—Rev. 17:8-11.

18. How will Babylon the Great’s religious-political intimacies end?

¹⁸ False religion, “Babylon the Great,” has tried to give a guiding hand to both the League of Nations and the United Nations. But God’s Word shows that all such religious-political intimacies by popes and other religious leaders will soon come to an end. At a time when the “famous prostitute” thinks she is sitting pretty God will cause the symbolic “ten horns” of the United Nations “beast” to turn their militarized might against her. They will get her off their back, devastate her, destroy her completely, as if by fire.​—Rev. 17:16, 17.

“GET OUT OF HER, MY PEOPLE”

19. How does God now express his love to all sincere religious persons?

¹⁹ As that hour of judgment approaches, how is God expressing his love? In this way: to all sincere Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus​—to people of all false religions who want to become God’s people—​God extends the urgent invitation recorded in Revelation 18:4, 5: “Get out of [Babylon the Great], my people, if you do not want to share with her in her sins, and if you do not want to receive part of her plagues. For her sins have massed together clear up to heaven, and God has called her acts of injustice to mind.”

20. Why is it high time to get well away from Babylon the Great?

²⁰ Without a doubt, the execution of God’s judgment draws ever closer! Antireligious nations already wield great power in the United Nations. Oil-hungry militaristic countries threaten the Moslem world as well as those nations long regarded as the bulwark of Christendom’s religions. That is why it is now high time for all lovers of truth and righteousness to get well away from the “famous prostitute,” yes, to flee to God’s kingdom.

21. What is Armageddon, and when do the nations find themselves there?

²¹ What follows the devastation of “Babylon the Great,” the world empire of false religion? The Scriptures indicate that the “ten horns” of the “beast” will turn against true religion, as represented on earth by Jehovah’s Witnesses. But when that happens, those nations will find themselves fighting against God at Armageddon! And Armageddon is not just a small corner in the land of Palestine. Rather, Armageddon is a worldwide situation that calls for vengeance in “the war of the great day of God the Almighty,” the greatest conflict of all time!​—Rev. 16:14, 16; 17:12-14.

22. How do the Scriptures show Armageddon to be a righteous war?

²² The Bible says that God uses Christ Jesus with the armies of heaven to ‘judge and carry on war in righteousness.’ Yes, Armageddon will be a righteous war. Righteous? How so? In that it will bring deserved vengeance upon the nations and peoples of earth that have chosen not to know God and who oppose his right to rule. It will be selective in its destruction. It will destroy the wicked, but bring salvation to all who “obey the good news about our Lord Jesus,” says the apostle Paul. Thus, Armageddon will balance out God’s vengeance with God’s love.​—2 Thess. 1:8; Ps. 145:20; Rev. 19:11-21.

23. (a) What kind of God is Jehovah, as shown by Psalm 145:17-21? (b) Why, then, does this ‘God of love’ bring vengeance? (c) What action should we take with regard to the approaching “day of vengeance”?

²³ Do we not appreciate, then, why the ‘God of love’ must be also a God of vengeance? It is because he loves righteousness and hates wickedness, and so should we. (Ps. 145:17-21) How necessary it is that Jehovah’s great name and purposes be vindicated! How necessary that our earth be cleansed of all the bloodguilt, corruption and immorality that have sullied this beautiful creation of God over the past millenniums! Only then will the earth become the global paradise that God has purposed for mankind. So, first, the matchless ‘God of love’ must clear the way by inflicting vengeance upon his enemies. Are we not glad that his day of vengeance is now at hand? Let us, then, be among those who accept Jehovah’s loving invitation: “Be glad, you nations, with his people, for he will . . . pay back vengeance to his adversaries.”​—Deut. 32:43.