Behold, the Lord makes the earth empty and makes it waste,
Distorts its surface
And scatters abroad its inhabitants.
And it shall be:
As with the people, so with the priest;
As with the servant, so with his master;
As with the maid, so with her mistress;
As with the buyer, so with the seller;
As with the lender, so with the borrower;
As with the creditor, so with the debtor.
The land shall be entirely emptied and utterly plundered,
For the Lord has spoken this word.

The earth mourns and fades away,
The world languishes and fades away;
The haughty people of the earth languish.
The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,
Because they have transgressed the laws,
Changed the ordinance,
Broken the everlasting covenant.
Therefore the curse has devoured the earth,
And those who dwell in it are desolate.
Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned,
And few men are left.

Isaiah 24: 1-6

As we look at these verses, it would appear that the earth itself becomes “defiled under its inhabitants” who transgress God’s “laws,” who change the “ordinance,” and who break “the everlasting covenant.”

Isaiah adds a new meaning by saying “therefore the curse has devoured the earth, and those who dwell in it are desolate.” What is the curse? Does this not take us back to the Garden of Eden, where God informed Adam that by eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil he had brought a curse upon the earth? Don’t we then see that this curse has a direct connection to the Tree that the Serpent peddled to Eve?

At this point, the reader may ask: does this relate to Jesus’ vomiting Laodicea out of His mouth? Aren’t we taking this a bit too far? The answer to the first question is, yes, and to the second is, no. We are not taking this too far. We can definitely glean a spiritual application out of Leviticus 18. After all, doesn’t the Bible itself do that? Isn’t spiritual corruption compared to sexual corruption even in the book of Revelation itself? Take a look:

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

So he carried me away in the Spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written:

MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT,
THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS
AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS
OF THE EARTH.

I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement.

Revelation 17: 1-6

Babylon is the “mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.” These abominations are not only theological falsehoods, but also literal sexual issues, as seen in Leviticus 18. We know that Babylon will suffer the same fate as that of Egypt and Canaan because it too has become defiled  and “transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Therefore the land will also vomit it out. Because of Babylon’s infidelity to the only true God, “the curse” is devouring the earth right before our eyes, “and those who dwell in it are desolate.” Why are they desolate? Desolate because God is gradually departing from it as He is gradually rejected, just as Jesus, when He was rejected by Jerusalem said:

O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! See! Your house is left to you desolate; for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, ‘Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”

Matthew 23: 39.

If Laodicea is about to be vomited out of Jesus mouth, then Laodicea is a  daughter of Babylon, who is “the mother of harlots.” This seventh angel of the churches, ie. the seventh messenger of good news, has defiled herself with the abominations, falsehoods and deceptions of Babylon. Lukewarm Laodicea is mixed, unclean, poluted, impure, contaminated, corrupted. It has “transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” While Jesus, our Heavenly High Priest, is cleansing, purifying the Sanctuary, Laodicea is backsliding and moving away from Jesus’ cleasing work.

The poison that permeates Laodicea is so toxic in Jesus’ stomach that it causes Him to vomit. This is very serious imagery. The Psalmist describes their poison as the “poison of asps”—serpents:

Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men;
Preserve me from violent men,
Who plan evil things in their hearts;
They continually gather together for war.
They sharpen their tongues like a serpent;
The poison of asps is under their lips.

Psalm 140: 1-3

Now Paul quotes this Psalm in Romans chapter 3, when he describes the condition of the entire human race, that “there is none righteous, no, not one:”

As it is written:

“There is none righteous, no, not one;

There is none who understands;

There is none who seeks after God.

They have all turned aside;

They have together become unprofitable;

There is none who does good, no, not one.”

“Their throat is an open tomb;

With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;

“The poison of asps is under their lips”;

“Whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.”

“Their feet are swift to shed blood;

Destruction and misery are in their ways;

And the way of peace they have not known.”

“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Romans 3: 10-18

We may well ask the question then: If all human beings are like this, as described above, then why would Jesus find fault with Laodicea? 

We believe Jesus finds fault with Laodicea for two main reasons, and the first has to do with vomiting, again!

First, as the last of the seven churches, laodicea has received the most light of all the churches. This is so, not only because it is the last church and therefore it has a vast amount of cumulative knowledge at its fingertips, but because, as mentioned earlier, Laodicea has received special revelation.  Laodicea was once enlightened, it once knew the difference between God and Baal, it once knew Jesus and was once saved by His grace, but now it has returned to its former lost condition under the curse of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—a corrupted tree, because of its mixture of good and evil. It has returned to the worship of Baal, it has returned to its own vomit—the teachings of the serpent! Take a look:

As a dog returns to his own vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.

Proverbs 26: 11

The second reason Jesus finds fault with this church is that not only has it returned to its own vomit, but it is leading its flock to return to its own vomit as well! Laodicea, you were an annointed messenger and teacher of good news, but now you have become a Pied Piper!

We entreat the reader to read the entire second chapter of 2 Peter. In there, Peter addresses destructive doctrines, describes the doom and the depravity of false teachers, and ends with these words, regarding their deceptions:

For when they speak great swelling words of emptiness, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through lewdness, the ones who have actually escaped from those who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are slaves of corruption; for by whom a person is overcome, by him also he is brought into bondage. For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them. But it has happened to them according to the true proverb: “A dog returns to his own vomit,” and, “a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire.”

2 Peter 2: 18-22

Laodicea speaks great swelling words of emptiness, it beguiles its hearers through what their carnal nature is itching to hear. The Laodicean teachers promise liberty but cannot deliver it because they themselves are slaves to the principles of corruption—the corruption, the mixture of light and darkness, the duality of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They knew Jesus’ message that God was only light and that in Him there was no darkness at all, but they have gone back to believing and teaching a dualistic God of love and violence. 

Laodicea has not only defiled the land, it has defiled God’s name. Its own special teacher is no longer the Jesus of the Tree of Life, but Satan, of the defiled Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Therefore, Jesus will vomit Laodicea out of His mouth unless it repents. It will no longer be His mouthpiece, His chosen and annointed messenger unless it has a metanoia experience, as we shall soon see. And there is no partiality with God.