(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. (5) For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. (6) Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.
I think it more than probable, that this voice which John heard, and which he calls another, by way of distinction from the one before, was Christ. John doth not call him an Angel. And if he had, we know that Christ is not unfrequently called the Angel of the Covenant, Malachi 3:1. But he saith he heard another voice from heaven, from the Church. And it is not unlikely that it was Christ, because Jesus dwells in Zion. And he delights to make himself known to his people. He loves to call them so. And here the voice saith my people. Everything is endearing, where we can see Jesus, and hear Jesus.
But I must particularly beg the Reader, to attend to the sweet words themselves. Come out of her, my people. May we not suppose, that whenever the fall of Rome takes place, many of God's dear ones, both already called, and some as yet uncalled, will be there. Nay, may there not be many of Jesus's own, which are then unborn in nature, and therefore must be preserved in the loins, or bowels of their natural parents for the future purpose of regeneration! Destroy it not, there is a blessing in it! Isaiah 65:8. What a subject to the imagination doth this open. And how many of the Lord's hidden ones may be found there in that day, whom that day's judgment shall minister to their conversion? How many of God's timid ones, who, though secretly taught of God, like Lot, are living in the Sodom city, grieved as his soul was, with the filthy conversation of the wicked; but from various causes there remain? Psalms 120:5; 2 Peter 2:7. In all these and numberless other cases, that our imagination cannot form the voice to come out from among her, will be heard and obeyed, for the Lord saith as to Lot, haste thee, escape thither, for I cannot do anything till thou be come thither. And as it was then, so will it be in spiritual Sodom, and all similar destructions of the ungodly. It came to pass when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities, in the which Lot dwelt, Genesis 19:22-29
The separating from everything unsuitable to the faith of a child of God, is included in what is here said, and the recompensing the evil an ungodly conduct of infidels hath imposed upon the Lord's people, is perfectly consistent with the precept of not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing. For let the Reader observe, this is not an injury of a private and personal nature. This is the Lord's cause, and of public concern to the Church. As the whore hath burnt and destroyed, robbed and murdered the saints of God, for their adherence to Christ, so all that love Christ, must give no countenance to her heresies. No favor is to be shown on any account, to the cause of the whore, though to the persons of the ignorant, in the communion of her heresy, tenderness is to be manifested, if peradventure, God should give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, to recover them out of the snare of the devil, who ore taken captive by him at his will, 2 Timothy 2:25-26.