Come out of Babylon

Application of the Fall of Babylon.--


To come now more particularly to the application of the prophecy concerning the fall of Babylon, let us see how the religious world stood with reference to the possibility of such a change when the time came for the proclamation of such a change when the time came for the proclamation of this second message in connection with the first about the year 1844. Paganism was only apostasy and corruption in the beginning, and is so still. No spiritual fall is possible there. Roman Catholicism had been in a fallen condition for many centuries. But the Protestant churches had begun the great work of reformation from papal corruption and had done noble work. They were, in a word, in such a position that with them a spiritual fall was possible. The conclusion is therefore inevitable that the message announcing the fall had reference almost wholly to the Protestant churches.


The question may then be asked why this announcement was not made sooner, if so large a part of Babylon had been so long fallen. The answer is at hand: Babylon as a whole could not be said to be fallen so long as one division of it remained unfallen. It could not be announced, therefore, until a change for the worse came over the Protestant world, and the truth through which alone the path of progress lay, had been compromised. When this took place, and a spiritual fall was experienced in this last branch, then the announcement concerning Babylon as a whole could be made, as it could not have been made before--"Babylon is fallen."


It may be proper to inquire further how the reason assigned for the fall of Babylon--that she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication--would apply to the Protestant churches at the time in question. The answer is, It would apply most pertinently. The fault with Babylon lies in her confusion of the truth and her consequent false doctrines. Because she industriously propagates these, clinging to them when light and truth which would correct them is offered, she is in a fallen state.


With the Protestant churches, the time had come for an advance to higher religious ground. They could accept the proffered light and truth, and reach the higher attainment, or they could reject it, and lose their spirituality and favor with God, or, in other words, experience a spiritual fall.


The truth which God saw fit to use as an instrument in this work was the first angel's message. The hour of God's judgment come, and with it the imminent second advent of Christ, was the doctrine preached. After listening long enough to see the blessing that attended the doctrine, and the good results that accrued from it, the churches as a whole rejected it with scorn and scoffing. They were thereby tested, for they then plainly betrayed the fact that their hearts were with the world, not with the Lord, and that they preferred to have it so.


But the message would have healed the evils then existing in the religious world. The prophet exclaims, perhaps with reference to this time, "We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed." Jeremiah 51: 9. Do you ask how we know this would have been the effect of receiving the message? We answer, Because this was the effect with all who did receive it. They came from different denominations, and their denominational barriers were leveled to the ground; conflicting creeds were shivered to atoms; the unscriptural hope of a temporal millennium was abandoned; false views of the second advent were corrected; pride and conformity to the world were swept away; wrongs were made right; hearts were united in the sweetest fellowship; and love and joy reigned supreme. If the doctrine did this for the few who did receive it, it would have done the same for all if all had received it, but the message was rejected.


Everywhere throughout the land the cry was raised, "Babylon is fallen," and, in anticipation of the movement brought to view in Revelation 18: 1-4, those proclaiming the message added, "Come out of her, My people." Thousands severed their connection with the various denominations as the result.

A marked change then came over the churches in respect to their spiritual condition. When a person refuses the light, he necessarily puts himself in darkness; when he rejects truth, he inevitably forges the shackles of error about his own limbs. Loss of spirituality--a spiritual fall--must follow. This the churches experienced. They chose to adhere to old errors, and still promulgate their false doctrines among the people. The light of truth therefore left them.


Some of them felt and deplored the change. A few testimonies from their writers describe their condition at that time, The Christian Palladium, in 1844, spoke in the following mournful strain: "In every direction we hear the dolorous wound, wafted upon every breeze of heaven, chilling as the blast from the icebergs of the north, settling like an incubus on the breasts of the timid, and drinking up the energies of the weak, the lukewarmness, division, anarchy, and desolation are distressing the borders of Zion." [15]


In 1844, the Religious Telescope used the following language: "We have never witnessed such a general declension of religion as at the present. . . . When we call to mind how 'few and far between' cases of true conversion are, and the almost unparalleled impenitence and hardness of sinners, we almost involuntarily exclaim, 'Has God forgotten to be gracious? or is the door of mercy closed?' " [16]


About that time, proclamations of fasts and seasons of prayer for the return of the Holy Spirit were sent out in the religious papers. Even the Philadelphia Sun, November, 1844, had the following: "The undersigned, ministers, and members of various denominations in Philadelphia and vicinity, solemnly believing that the present 'signs of the times'--the spiritual dearth of our churches generally and the extreme evils in the world around us--seem to call loudly on all Christians for a special season of prayer, do therefore hereby agree, by divine permission, to unite in a week of special prayer to Almighty God, for the outpouring of His Holy Spirit on our city, our country, and the world." [17]


Charles G. Finney, well-known evangelist, said in February, 1844: "We have had the facts before our minds, that, in general, the Protestant churches of our country, as such, were either apathetic or hostile to nearly all the moral reforms of the age. There are partial exceptions, yet not enough to render the fact otherwise than general. We have also another corroborative fact--the almost universal absence of revival influence in the churches. The spiritual apathy is almost all-pervading, and is fearfully deep; so the religious press of the whole land testifies. . . The churches generally are becoming sadly degenerate. They have gone very far from the Lord, and He has withdrawn Himself from them."


In November, 1844, the Oberlin Evangelist remarked editorially:


"Some of our religious journals deplore, and all attest the fact that revivals have almost ceased in our churches. It is long since a period of so general dearth has been known. There is a great revival of political spirit, and of zeal in all the departments of business operations: but alas! decline and death sit like an incubus on the bosom of Christian activity and of holy love for God as for souls. The external forms of religion are sustained, the routine of Sabbath duties goes on: but those seasons of 'refreshing from the presence of the Lord,' in which fearfulness surprises the hypocrite, conviction fastens on the sinner, and humble hearts cleave to the promises and wrestle for the conversion of souls--those seasons are known only as they [are] held in sweet remembrance--days that were, but are no longer." [18]


Not only did the churches suffer a distinct loss of spirituality in 1844, but the decline since then has been marked and continuous.


The Congregationalist said in November, 1858: "The revived piety of our churches is not such that one can confidently infer, from its mere existence, its legitimate, practical fruits. It ought, for example, to be as certain, after such a shower of grace, that the treasuries of our benevolent societies would be filled, as it is after a plentiful rain that the streams will swell in their channels. But the managers of our societies are bewailing the feebleness of the sympathy and aid of the churches.


"There is another and sadder illustration of the same general truth. The Watchman and Reflector recently stated that there had never been among the Baptists so lamentable a spread of church dissension as prevails at present. . . . Even a glance at the weekly journals of our own denomination will evince that the evil is no means confined to the Baptists." [19]


The leading Methodist paper, the New York Christian Advocate, in 1883 contained an article from which we copy these statements:

"1. Disguise it as you like, the church, in a general sense, is spiritually in a rapid decline. While it grows in number and money it is becoming extremely feeble and limited in its spirituality, both in the pulpit and pew. It is assuming the shape and character of the church of Laodicea.

"2. . . . There are thousands of ministers, local and conference, and many thousands of the laity, who are dead and worthless as barren fig-trees. They contribute nothing of a temporal or spiritual nature to the progress and triumphs of the gospel throughout the earth. If all these dry bones in our church and its congregations could be resurrected and brought into requisition by faithful, active service, what new and glorious manifestations of divine power would break forth!" [20]


The editor of the Western Christ Advocate in 1893 wrote the following of his church:

"To the Church of Methodists, Write, the great trouble with us today is, that the rescue of imperiled souls is our last and least consideration. Many of our congregations are conducted on the basis of social clubs. They are made centers of social influence. Membership is sought in order to advance one's prospects in society, business, or politics. Preachers are called who know how to

" 'Smooth down the rugged text to ears polite, And snugly keep damnation out of sight.'

"The Sunday services are made the occasion of displaying the elegancies of apparel in the latest fashions. Even the little ones are tricked out as though they were the acolytes of pride. If the 'Rules' are read, it is to comply with the letter of a law whose spirit has long since fled. The class-books are filled with names of unconverted men and women. Official members may be found in box, dress-circle, and parquet of opera and theater. Communicants take in the races, and give and attend cardparties and dances. The distinction between inside and outside is so obscure that men smile when asked to unite with the Church, and sometimes tell us that they find the best men outside.

"When we go to the masses, it is too often with such ostentatious condescension that self-respect drives them from us.

"And yet we have so spread out, under the inflation of the rich and ungodly, that they are a necessity to us. The enforcement of the unmistakable letter of Discipline for a single year would cut our membership in half, bankrupt our Missionary Society, close our fashionable churches, paralyze our connectional interests, and leave our pastors and bishops unpaid and in distress. But the fact remains, that one of two things must happen--the Discipline must purge the church, or God's Holy Spirit will seek other organized agencies. The ax is laid at the root of the tree. The call is to repentance. God's work must be done. If we are in the way, He will remove us." [21]


The New York Independent of December 3, 1896, contained an article from D. L. Moody, from which the following is an extract:

"In a recent issue of your paper I saw an article from a contributor which stated that there were over three thousand churches in the Congregational and Presbyterian bodies of this country that did not report a single member added by profession of faith last year. Can this be true? The thought has taken such hold of me that I can't get it out of my mind. It is enough almost to send a thrill of horror through the soul of every true Christian.


"If this is the case with these two large denominations, what must be the condition of the others also? Are we all going to sit still and let this thing continue? Shall our religious newspapers and our pulpits keep their mouths closed like 'dumb dogs that cannot bark' to warn people of approaching danger? Should we not all lift up our voice like a trumpet about this matter? What must the Son of God think of such a result of our labor as this? What must an believing world think about a Christianity that can't bring forth any more fruit? And have we no care for the multitudes of souls going down to perdition every year while we all sit and look on? And this country of ours, where will it be in the next ten years, if we don't awake out of sleep?" [22]



The state of spiritual declension into which the churches generally had "fallen" as a result of their rejection of the first angel's message led to their acceptance of erroneous and corrupt doctrines. In the latter part of the nineteenth century a marked change was to be seen in the attitude of both leaders and people of the Protestant churches toward the basic doctrines of the Scriptures of truth. Having rejected the true, they accepted the false. The theory of evolution accepted by many church leaders in the words of one great religious writer "turned the Creator out of doors." A religious apologist for the theory declared that "prayer is communion with my inner racial self."


The effects of the evolution theory on the faith of the churches is so apparent that public comments upon the situation are commonplace. A professor of philosophy in a great university remarks:

"Today it seems that the great Hebrew-Christian moral tradition, the most ancient part of our heritage, is crumbling to pieces before our very eyes. . . . The faith in science has grown so strong, so self-sufficient, so deeply rooted in the processes of our society, that many of those who feel it have lost all desire to combine it with any other. . . . The man who trusts a physical science to describe the world finds no conceivable place into which to fit a deity. . . . The philosophies that express their [men's] basic interests today are no longer concerned, as they were in the nineteenth century, with vindicating a belief in God and immortality. Those ideas have simply dropped out of any serious attempt to reach an understanding of the world. . . . The present conflict of religious faith with science is no longer with a scientific explanation of the world, but with a scientific explanation of religion. The really revolutionary effect of the scientific faith on religion today is not its new view of the universe, but its new view of religion." [23]


What that new view of religion is, is frankly stated by a spokesman of modern liberalism:

"Liberal Protestants have abandoned belief in the verbal infallibility of the Bible." [24] "We believe that Jesus was a human being, not a supernatural being different from all other men in quality. We believe that he was born in the normal way, and that he faced the problems and the difficulties of life with no secret reinforcements of miraculous power. . . . To us Jesus' death is, in essence, no different from the death of other heroes." [25] "Today the ancient belief that Jesus will reappear in the sky, inaugurate a dramatic world judgment, sentence Satan and the demons to hell, and lead the angels and the Christians into paradise, has dwindled from a universally accepted and enormously influential Christian conviction to the esoteric doctrine of a minority. Once a modern man accepts what historians tell him about the age of the universe, and once he accepts what scientists tell him about the nature of evolutionary process, he cannot believe that there will ever be any such spectacular wind-up of the world's affairs as the one which the early Christians believed would presently take place." [26] "We propose to take from the Christianity of the past the elements which seem of abiding value, combine with them the religious convictions and the ethical insights which have emerged during the recent times, and from this composite material shape a new formulation of the Christian message. We frankly admit that our gospel is not the 'old gospel,' or even the modified version of the old gospel which is now proclaimed in conservative pulpits. Ours is, we confess, a 'new gospel.' " [27]



The acceptance by Protestantism of the first angel's message would have enabled the church to become a light to "all nations." But betraying her trust by her rejection of the message, she left the nations without the witness of present truth that they might have had, to grope in the darkness of error and superstition resulting from the intoxicating and stupefying influences of the system of false doctrines she had built up and refused to relinquish.


Robert M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago, in speaking of our spiritual condition, said: "We do not know where we are going, or why, and we have almost given up the attempt to find out. We are in despair because the keys which were to open the gates of heaven have let us into a larger but more oppressive prison house. We think [thought] those keys were science and the free intelligence of man. They have failed us. We have long since cast off God. To what can we now appeal?" [28]


In its issue of May 24, 1941, the Philadelphia Inquirer editorially attempts to analyze our condition: "We appear to have reached one of those portentous periods in history when civilization halts and stands aghast in the presence of forces too complex and too terrible in their potentialities accurately to be appraised. Confronted by problems that can be disregarded by none but lighthearted children and lightheaded fools, we have reached the crossroads where every signpost points to bafflement. For years there have been increasingly bitter assaults upon religion. We have felt it was not our concern if 'the old faiths loosen and fall.' It would seem that in this, as in past civilizations when they were nearing their inevitable end, we--and by 'we' is meant mankind in general--have grown too cocksure of ourselves. . . .


"We have watched, many of us with scant misgivings, the growth of queer cults and the recrudescence of pagan philosophies. Unperturbed, we have witnessed the rise of modern Humanism, with its denial of a power greater than our own; its exalting of man to equality with his Maker. Now, when civilization may be dying on its feet, the barrage balloons of our self-sufficiency are in process of being blasted out of the sky. Human creatures at last are beginning to discover that they are not little gods--but only little men." [29]


But as the popular churches depart farther and farther from God, they at length reach such a condition that true Christians can on longer maintain a connection with them; and then they will be called out. This we look for in the future, in fulfillment of Revelation 18: 1-4. We believe it will come, when, in addition to their corruptions, the churches begin to raise against the saints the hand of oppression.


*******


Today many don't belong to any known church. There are more break offs from churches than ever before. People are forming more and more home churches. People are searching for truths themselves and seeking to follow them without any church authority involved. However, along with all the sincere truth seekers Satan raises his own believers and more and more the lies are infiltrating the truths and corrupting so much.


Wherever there are truths there will be lies to counteract that truth. People being called to come out of Babylon, the apostate, Satan's ruled. Think about it, if-- as history proves God's prophecy has unfolded. The prophecy's were opened- the little book that was to be closed until the end was opened and understood and it made those who received it disappointed- bitter in their bellies. This happened, this is factual. The prophecies were opened and God's people called to prophecy again. Christ didn't come in 1844 like they believed it meant by the cleansing of the sanctuary, instead eyes were directed to the heavenly sanctuary and the work being wrought there. The Day of Atonement, the cleansing of the sanctuary was begun and as the Bible describes it was a lengthy ceremony, the common people were to afflict their souls on the Day of Atonement, fasting and praying while the priests and especially the high priest were very busy making the atonement. They'd cleanse the Most Holy Place, then the Holy Place, and then the outer court. The same will happen for us on a grand scale that brings us to the moment in time where all that will be cleansed have been cleansed and Christ's work will be over as High Priest and He will come again to redeem those that have been sealed as His.


The truth of this message was given in 1844, a small group of people formed a church that worked to spread the gospel message, the three angels messages to the world. This was God's appointed church. As with Israel of old (they became apostate choosing to follow fables of men rather than God truth in Jesus and after a time the message was no longer sent to the Jews, but went to the Gentiles) so too has the church given the message to be spread in 1844 become apostate. There is much proof of this - much proof and the cry to them has gone out to come out of Babylon- the apostate church. So yes, the cry has gone on and on and as the Bible tells us this is prior to the coming of the Lord. All His true people, His true followers, His believers in heart and mind will hear the call to come out and they will be ready.


May God bless and keep us in Him, true of heart, true of spirit in Him blessed, called, chosen...ready for Him when He returns.


By His grace and by His will, by His love, by His mercy now and always.


Amen