Page 6 - The Road from Babylon to Zion

them to not seek to leave until the appointed time, but rather to dwell and prosper
in the land and seek the welfare of their captors. Transitions are always difficult. It
is hard to hear the Spirit tell us to leave a familiar place where we have once seen
Him work, and to go to another place of which we know little. In this hour it is also
greatly difficult for many to leave the sheltering arms of Babylon when they have
known nothing else. Many are torn about leaving, especially when they see so many
of those they have known saying that things are still fine in Babylon and that they
have no intention of packing up and heeding the call to come out.

Yahweh has foreshadowed many things in the pages of scripture. Those who are
being called out of Babylon now can learn much from those who made the journey
many years ago. Once one heeds the call and determines to come out, the first perils
and difficulties have been passed, but more remain. When Ezra the priest made the
journey from Babylon to Zion with those who went with him, we are told that the
journey took four months and many perils lay along the way.

Ezra 8:21-23, 31
Then I proclaimed a fast there at the river of Ahava, that we might
humble ourselves before our God to seek from Him a safe journey for
us, our little ones, and all our possessions. For I was ashamed to request
from the king troops and horsemen to protect us from the enemy on the
way, because we had said to the king, "The hand of our God is favorably
disposed to all those who seek Him, but His power and His anger are
against all those who forsake Him." So we fasted and sought our God
concerning this matter, and He listened to our entreaty... Then we
journeyed from the river Ahava on the twelfth of the first month to go
to Jerusalem; and the hand of our God was over us, and He delivered
us from the hand of the enemy and the ambushes by the way.

In the time I have been on this journey from Babylon to Zion I have encountered
many ambushes along the way. The enemy seeks to defeat those who would set their
face toward Zion. If he cannot frighten them from taking this road, he will seek to
waylay them and in some means keep them from their destination. He would also
seek to get these pilgrims to become wearied of the way and confused about their
actual destination, to blur their vision of where they are going, that he might turn
them back to what is familiar.

This book is written to encourage those at all stages of the journey: those who are
just now hearing the call to come out and who are unsure of what they are to come
out of; those who are torn at leaving all that is familiar to them; those who have
begun the journey and who have been met by the ambushes of the enemy; and even
those whose foreheads are set like flint toward their destination and who have not
looked to the right or to the left, but have been pressing ever onward.