Babylon - rejocing in or mourning her fall?

The Young Adult/Seeker class I have been attending off and on here is going through Revelations. We have some unchurched seekers in the class, which makes for some interesting questions from people taking things literally: "The four living creatures are covered with eyes. . . Are those on their t-shirts?"
"Who is the Bride of Christ?" . . . "Uh, Mary Magdalene?" (Thank you, Dan Brown).

[Just for the record, I am certainly not a scholar on the end times and don't even know if I am a pre-, post- or a-millenialist.]

This past week in Sunday school, we were in Revelations 18 which talks about the fall of Babylon. One guy said, "Now wait a minute. . . Babylon is a city and now it's a prostitute? I don't understand". I think I got the guy to understand that Babylon was like a prostitute, leading the people of the world astray.

It wasn't until later that I realized that a good way to explain Babylon in revelations was as a symbol of a system. It is not uncommon for us to do this with cities and places representing a much broader system:

• Hollywood (representing the entire entertainment industry, including films and other content made all around the world): "the evils of Hollywood" or "Hollywood is serving up a lot of good fare this summer." 
• Washington (representing the government of the United States): "Washington is out of touch with America." "Washington is destroying the economy." - Those are from a google search I just did of "Washington is"
• Wall Street (representing the stock market and wider trading system): "Wall Street needs to be reformed." We're not talking about tearing up the street and redoing it. Here's another headline I found: "Washington is annoyed at Wall Street's failure to panic".

Now what got my writing, though, was thinking about what sort of world system Babylon could actually entice all the leaders of the world and the enrich the merchants of the world while selling the rest of us on luxuries.

For all the nations have drunk
the maddening wine of her adulteries.
The kings of the earth committed adultery with her,
and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”(Rev 18:3)

Babylon can not represent a single city or even country, but rather an entire system - a multinational economic and entertainment and information system that bundles up hollywood and the cult of celebrity, the internet, google searches, multinational companies spanning the globe and often abusing people in one part of the world so we can have bottled water and ipads and chocolate and cheap goods.

11 The merchants of the world will weep and mourn for her, for there is no one left to buy their goods. 12 She bought great quantities of gold, silver, jewels, and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth; things made of fragrant thyine wood, ivory goods, and objects made of expensive wood; and bronze, iron, and marble. 13 She also bought cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses, chariots, and bodies—that is, human slaves. [e.g. Human Trafficking, and the sex trade]
14 “The fancy things you loved so much
are gone,” they cry.
“All your luxuries and splendor
are gone forever,
never to be yours again.”

But what struck me the most was that the church is called to COME OUT of Babylon, and then to REJOICE at her downfall.

4 Then I heard another voice calling from heaven,
“Come away from her, my people.
Do not take part in her sins,
or you will be punished with her.


20 Rejoice over her fate, O heaven
and people of God and apostles and prophets!
For at last God has judged her
for your sakes.

This sounds easy, of course, but what if the downfall of Babylon means all the things we have become so accustomed to are gone? 

• What if it means a massive fall of the stock market so that what is happening now looks like a boom? Will we we in the church be rejoicing or moaning and looking for economic solutions? 
• What if all those cheap goods at the "Buy More" and the "Stuff Mart" are no longer available? 
• What if the internet crashes and is gone, no more to bring us valuable information but also no more to lead us astray? (I asked THAT question in Sunday School and got a rather surprised  "What?? The Internet will be gone?" question from one guy.) 
• What if the whole transportation system breaks down and we are stuck with only what we get locally? No more lattes with Indonesian Coffee and chocolate from slave labor in Ivory Coast. 
• What if there are no more updates on Charlie Sheen,  and Justin Bieber and Brangelina on TMZ? 
• What if there are no more films out of Hollywood, no more songs out of Nashville? 
• What if my android apps are suddenly gone and your ipad suddenly non-functional? 

What then? (see this great song by Greg X. Volz entitled "What then?"

It really got me thinking whether we'd be rejoicing or mourning the fall of Babylon.

“Come away from her, my people.
Do not take part in her sins,
or you will be punished with her.  (Rev 18:4)