The Closing Messages of the Gospel

THE SECOND MESSAGE.—"And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Rev. 14:8.

The term, Babylon, comes from Babel, and signifies mixture, confusion. It originated from the fact that when the descendants of Noah attempted to build a tower whose top should reach to Heaven, God confounded their language so that they could not understand one another's speech, and thus put an end to their impious work, and they were scattered abroad in the earth.

In the book of Revelation this ancient city, with its significant name, is taken as a symbol to represent a church corrupted from the simplicity of the truth and filled with errors, darkness, and confusion of creeds. The term does not represent the non-professing world; but an apostasy from the truth and true worship of God. Babylon is a professor of religion. She is spoken of as a city, and also as a woman. As Zion, or Jerusalem, is used as a representative of the true church of God, so Babylon is used to represent a false and apostate church; and as the woman of Rev. 12 is the symbol of the church in her purity, so the woman of Chap. 17 is the symbol of a church that has become corrupt by unlawful intercourse with worldly governments. She should be the chaste spouse of the Lord, to whom she professes love and obedience as a wife to her husband; but by her alliance with earthly governments, looking to them for protection and support, she has become a harlot. She has committed lewdness with the kings of the earth, and the nations have become drunken with her wine, that is her false doctrines, so that the people are not prepared to listen to the solemn truths of the word of God.

Says the prophet, "Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken; the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad." Jer. 51:7. Again, "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed: forsake her." Verse 9. The Heaven-sent message concerning the judgment and the coming of Christ would have healed Babylon, had it been received; but the people, being drunken with false doctrines, rejected it.

Babylon professes to be the true church, a city built for a habitation of God through the Spirit; but after her fall she becomes "the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Rev. 18:2. As a church she should be joined to Christ alone, looking to him for protection and support, as a wife looks to her husband; but instead of this, she has by worldly conformity and seeking the aid and protection of earthly rulers "committed fornication with the kings of the earth," and thus become a harlot. And by the aid of civil power thus obtained, she becomes the persecutor of the truly good, "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." Rev. 17:6.

It will be admitted by Protestants that the Roman church with its papal hierarchy answers the description given of Babylon. That by the aid of emperors and kings she has been a persecutor, drunken with the blood of the martyrs; and is therefore entitled to the appellation of "the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth." But if she who professes to be "the mother church" is the mother of harlots, it follows of necessity that she has daughters bearing her character and guilty of the same great crimes. That the term does not apply to the Roman church alone is manifest from several considerations.

1. The meaning of the term, Babel, confusion, cannot so well apply to a single church, as to the confusion of the various and conflicting systems of a divided church.

2. If the Roman church be the mother of harlots, she certainly has daughters of this

character.

3. "All nations have drunk" of the wine of Babylon. This wine must signifiy the false doctrines received from Rome's pagan ancestors and disseminated among all the nations; not only where the authority of the Roman church is acknowledged, but even where that authority is utterly repudiated; as where the Greek church or protestantism prevails.

4. The people of God are in Babylon till her plagues are imminent and her destruction is near; for they are called out of her, that they may escape those judgments. Now Protestants will be slow to admit that even a great portion of the people of God are now in the Roman church. But the people of God are in Babylon just before the wrath of God comes upon her, because that "her sins have reached unto heaven;" and they are called out that they "be not partakers of her sins," and "receive not of her plagues."

From such considerations we conclude that Babylon includes not only the mother church, but all who follow in her footsteps, teaching her false doctrines, and seeking the aid of civil power to enforce the doctrines and commandments of men, which when obtained always results in the oppression and persecution of those who dissent for conscience sake. This subject will be better understood a little in the future, when it will be more clearly seen by all the good, that the churches have rejected the commandments of God, and are seeking civil legislation to enforce the precepts of men in their stead. Forsaking God and uniting with the State is the distinguished characteristic and crime of Babylon. Persecution is always the result.

After the announcement is made that Babylon is fallen, as in Rev. 14:8, her character and fallen condition becomes more apparent than before, and an angel of great power comes down, the earth is lightened with his glory, and he repeats the cry with emphasis, "Babylon is fallen; is fallen;" and adds that which has been recently more clearly developed as the result of her fall, that she has "become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." Rev. 18:1, 2. This will be made clear, when we come to refer to facts in the fulfillment.

That it may be seen that we are not alone in our view of what constitutes the Babylon of Revelation, we quote the declarations of a few others.

The Tennessee Baptist says "This woman [Popery] is called the mother of harlots and abominations. Who are the daughters? The Lutheran, the Presbyterian and the Episcopalian churches are all branches of the [Roman] Catholic. Are not these demonstrated 'harlots and abominations' in the above passage. I so decide. I could not with the stake before me decide otherwise. Presbyterians and Episcopalians compose a part of Babylon. They hold the distinctive principlecs of Papacy in common with Papists."

Alexander Campbell says: "The worshiping establishments now in operation throughout Christendom, increased and cemented by their respective voluminous confessions of faith, and their ecclesiastical constitutions, are not churches of Jesus Christ, but the legitimate daughters of that mother of harlots—the church of Rome."

The Religious Encyclopedia, (Art. Anti-christ,) says: "Is Anti-christ confined to the church of Rome? The answer is readily returned in the affirmative by Protestants in general; and happy had it been for the world were that the case. But although we are fully warranted to consider that church as "the mother of harlots," the truth is that by whatever arguments we succeed in fixing that odious charge upon her, we shall by parity of reasoning be obliged to allow all other national churches to be her unchaste daughters; and for this very plain reason among others, because, in their very constitution and tendency, they are hostile to the nature of the kingdom of Christ." "Such national churches therefore, though they may be purged from many of the grosser evils of the Romish church, yet being constituted upon similar principles, . . . can only be allowed to differ from the Romish church, as a grain of arsenic differs from an ounce.

"The writer of the book of Revelation tells us he heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Come out of her my people, that ye partake not of her sins, and receive not of her plagues.' If such persons are to be found in the 'Mother of Harlots,' with much less hesitation may it be inferred that they are connected with her unchaste daughters, those national churches which are founded upon what are called Protestant principles."

Dr. John Cummings, of England, says: "If all visible ecclesiastical organizations—church of England, church of Scotland, church Independent, Wesleyan, and Baptist—are to be broken up in order to give place to a nobler, that man cannot make, etc., . . . let us think less of being Churchmen, or being Dissenters, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Baptists; and be more anxious to be what was first at Antioch, and shall be last on earth—Christians or followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. We have seen that great Babylon is to be broken up and destroyed. If this be the case, and it is to be consumed, what should it teach us? What course of conduct should we pursue? First, surely it is not our duty to support it. This is neither our duty, nor will it lengthen the existence of Babylon a single day. Nor, secondly, is it our duty to persecute it; that would be to take weapons from her armory as unchristian as her own. Then what is our duty? To call to all that are at this moment in the church of Rome, whether sprinkled by her baptismal waters, or imitating within another church her forms, her ceremonies, her pomp and her grandeur, to come out of her, lest partaking of her sins they receive also of her plagues." —The End, p. 241.

The following extracts are from the Commentary of the learned Jameison and Fausset of Scotland, and Brown of England.

"The whore is the apostate church, just as the woman, (chapter 12,) is the church while faithful." "It cannot be Pagan Rome, but Papal Rome, if a particular seat of error is meant, but I incline to think that the judgment (chapter 18:2) and the spiritual fornication (chapter 18:3) though finding their culmination in Rome, are not restricted to it, but comprises the whole apostate Church, Roman, Greek, and even Protestant, so far as it has been seduced from its first love to Christ."

We conclude that Babylon, in its broadest sense, comprises all that is false in religion. God is one. His moral requirements are always the same. Truth is a unity; it is always, in all its parts in perfect harmony with itself. But apostasy from God and truth has, in all ages, brought confusion—lords many, gods many, systems of religion many and conflicting. Jesus prayed that his disciples might be one. John 17. They were so at first, and we believe they will be again. But apostasy has brought confusion. Out of this God determines to bring his people. Babylon may be defined,—the universal worldly church. And every part of this church depends upon human laws and civil rules to sustain it. It always seeks, and must have, some Jeroboam the son of Nebat, or Jezebel the wife of Ahab, to enforce its claims.