Modern Babylon

Excerpt from Daniel and Revelation - by Uriah Smith

Revelation-


Verse 8 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.


The Second Angel's Message.--The time of this message is determined to a great extent by that of the first message.

It is therefore a part of that religious movement which takes place in the last days with special reference to the coming of Christ.


The inquires therefore follow: What is meant by the term "Babylon"? What is her fall? How does it take place? As to the meaning of the word, we learn something from the marginal readings of Genesis 10: 10 and 11: 9. The beginning of Nimrod's kingdom was Babel, or Babylon. The place was called Babylon, meaning "confusion," because God there confounded the language of the builders of the tower. The name is here used figuratively to designate the great symbolic city of the book of Revelation, probably with special reference to the significance of the term and the circumstances from which it originated. It applies to something on which, as specifying its chief characteristics, may be written the word "confusion."


There are but three possible things to which the word can be applied. These are the apostate religious world in general, the papal church in particular, and the city of Rome. In examining these terms, we shall first show what Babylon is not. Babylon is not confined to the Roman Catholic Church. That this church is a very prominent component part of great Babylon, is not denied. The descriptions in Revelation 17 seem to apply particularly to that church. But the name which she bears on her forehead, "Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth," reveals other family connections. If this church is the mother, who are the daughters? The fact that these daughters are spoken of, shows that there are other religious bodies besides the Roman Catholic Church which come under this designation. Again, there is to be a call made in connection with this message, "Come out of her, My people." Revelation 18: 1-4. As this message is located in the present generation, it follows, if no other church but the Roman Catholic is included Babylon, that the people of God are now found in the communion of that church, and are to be called out. But this conclusion, no Protestant at least will be willing to allow.


Babylon is not the city of Rome. The argument relied upon to show that the city of Rome is Babylon of the Apocalypse runs thus: The angel told John that the woman which he had seen was the great city which reigned over the kings of the earth, and that the seven heads of the beast are seven mountains upon which the woman sits. Then, by taking the city and the mountains to be literal, and finding Rome built upon seven hills, the application is made at once to literal Rome.


The principle upon which this interpretation rests is the assumption that the explanation of a symbol must always be literal. It falls to the ground the moment it can be shown that symbols are sometimes explained by substituting for them other symbols, and then explaining the latter. This can easily be done. In Revelation 11: 3, the symbol of the two witnesses is introduced. The next verse reads: "These are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks standing before the God of the earth." In this case the first symbol is said to be the same as another symbol which is elsewhere clearly explained. So in the case before us. "The seven heads are seven mountains," and "the woman is that great city;" and it will not be difficult to show that the mountains and the city are used symbolically. The readers attention is directed to the following:


We are informed in Revelation 13 that one of the seven heads was wounded to death. This head therefore cannot be a literal mountain, for it would be folly to speak of wounding a mountain to death.


Each of the seven heads has a crown upon it. But who ever saw a literal mountain with a crown upon it?


The seven heads are evidently successive in order of time, for we read, "Five are fallen, and one is, and the other is not yet come." Revelation 17: 10. But the seven hills on which Rome is built are not successive, and it would be absurd to apply such language to them.


According to Daniel 7: 6, compared with Daniel 8: 8, 22, heads denote governments, and according to Daniel 2: 35, 44, and Jeremiah 51: 25, mountains denote kingdoms. According to these facts, a literal translation of Revelation 17: 9, 10 removes all obscurity: "The seven heads are seven mountains on which on which the woman sitteth, and are seven kings." It will thus be seen that the angel represents the heads as mountains, and then explains the mountains to be seven successive kings. The meaning is transferred from one symbol to another, and then an explanation is given of the second symbol.


From the foregoing argument, it follows that the "woman" cannot represent a literal city, for the mountains upon which the woman sits being symbolic, a literal city cannot sit upon symbolic mountains. Again, Rome was the seat of the dragon of Revelation 12, and the dragon transferred it to the beast. (Revelation 13: 2.) Thus it became the seat of the beast; but it would be a singular mixture of figures to make the seat, which is sat upon by the beast, and a woman sitting upon the beast refer to the same thing.


Were the city of Rome the Babylon of the Apocalypse, what nonsense should we have in Revelation 18: 1-4, for in this case the fall of Babylon would be the overthrow and destruction of the city, in fact, its utter consumption by fire, according to verse 8. But mark what takes place after the fall. Babylon becomes "the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird." How can this happen to a city after that city is destroyed, even being utterly burned with fire? Again, after this a voice is heard, saying, "Come out of her, My people." Are God's people all in Rome?--Not to any great extent. How many can we suppose to be there to be called out after the city is burned with fire? It is not necessary to say more to show that Babylon cannot be the city of Rome.


What Does Babylon Signify?--


Babylon signifies the universal worldly church. After seeing it cannot either of the other two possible things to which it could be applies, it must mean this. But we are not left to this kind of reasoning on this subject. Babylon is called "a woman." A woman, used as a symbol, signifies a church. The woman of Revelation 12 was interpreted to mean a church. The woman of Revelation 17 should undoubtedly be interpreted as also signifying a church. The character of the woman determines the character of the church represented, a chaste woman standing for a pure church, a vile woman for an impure, or apostate church. The woman Babylon is herself a harlot, and the mother of daughters like herself. This circumstance, as well as the name itself, shows that Babylon is not limited to any single ecclesiastical body, but must be composed of many. It must take in all of a like nature, and represent the entire corrupt, or apostate, church of the earth. This will perhaps explain the language of Revelation 18: 24, which represents that when God makes requisition upon great Babylon for the blood of His martyrs, in her will be found "the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all" that have been slain upon the earth.


Through the centuries practically every country of Europe has had its state church, and the most of these countries to the present day have their established religions, and zealously oppose dissenters. Babylon has made all nations drunken with the wine of her fornication, that is, her false doctrines. It can therefore symbolize nothing less than the universal worldly church.


The great city Babylon is composed of three divisions. So the great religions of the world may be arranged under three heads. The first, oldest, and most widespread is paganism, separately symbolized under the form of a dragon. The second is the great papal apostasy, symbolized by the beast. The third is the daughters, or descendants from that church symbolized by the two-horned beast, though that does not embrace them all. War, oppression, conformity to the world, religious formalism, the worship of mammon, pursuit of pleasure, and the maintenance of very many errors of the Roman Catholic Church, identify with sad and faithful accuracy the great body of the Protestant churches as an important constituent part of this great Babylon.


A glance at some of the ways in which the Protestant church has deported herself will still further show this. When Rome had the power, she destroyed vast multitudes of those whom she adjudged heretics. The Protestant church has shown the same spirit. Witness the burning of Michael Servetus by the Protestants of Geneva with John Calvin at their head. Witness the long-continued oppression of dissenters by the Church of England. Witness the hanging of Quakers and the whipping of Baptists even by the Puritan fathers of New England, themselves fugitives from like oppression by the Church of England. But these, some may say, are things of the past. True, yet they show that when persons governed by strong religious prejudice have the power to coerce dissenters, they cannot forbear to use it--a state of things which we look for in this country under a further fulfillment of the closing prophecy of Revelation 13.


It was the will of Christ that His church should be one. He prayed that His disciples might be one, as He and the Father were one; for this would give power to His gospel, and cause the world to believe in Him. Instead of this, look at the confusion that exists in the Protestant world, the many sectional walls that divide it into a network of societies, and the many creeds, discordant as the languages of those who were dispersed at the tower of Babel. God is not the author of all these. It is this state of things which the word "Babylon," as a descriptive term, appropriately designates. It is evidently used for this purpose, and not a term of reproach. Instead of being stirred with feelings of resentment when this term is mentioned, people should rather examine their position, to see if in faith or practice they are guilty of any connection with this great city of confusion. If so, they should separate at once therefrom.


The true church is a chaste virgin. (2 Corinthians 11: 2.) The church that is joined with the world in friendship, is a harlot. It is this unlawful connection with the kings of the earth that constitutes her the great harlot of the Apocalypse. (Revelation 17.) Thus the Jewish Church, at first espoused to the Lord (Jeremiah 2: 3; 31: 32), became a harlot (Ezekiel 16). When this church apostatized from God, it was called Sodom (Isaiah 1), just as "the great city" (Babylon) is so called in Revelation 11. The unlawful union with the world of which Babylon is guilty, is positive proof that it is not the civil power. That the people of God are in her midst immediately before her overthrow is proof that she is professedly a religious body. For these reasons, it is very evident that the Babylon of the Apocalypse is the professed church united with the world.


"Babylon Is Fallen."--


The fall of Babylon will next claim attention. After learning what constitutes Babylon, it will not be difficult to decide what is meant by the declaration that Babylon is fallen. As Babylon is not a literal city, the fall cannot be a literal overthrow. We have already seen what an absurdity this would involve. Besides, the clearest distinction is maintained by the prophecy itself between the fall and the destruction of Babylon. Babylon "falls" before it is with violence "thrown down," as a millstone cast into the sea, and utterly burned with fire." The fall is therefore a spiritual fall, for after the fall the voice is addressed to the people of God who are still in her connection, "Come out of her, My people." The reason is immediately given, "that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Babylon therefore still exists in sin and her plagues are still future after the fall.


Those who make Babylon apply exclusively to the papacy, claim that the fall of Babylon is the loss of civil power by the papal church. Because of the fall of Babylon, she becomes the hold of foul spirits and hateful birds; but such is not at all the result to Rome of the loss of civil power.


The people of God are called out of Babylon on account of her increasing sinfulness resulting from the fall, but the loss of the temporal power of the papacy constitutes no additional reason why the people of God should leave that church.


Babylon meets with this spiritual fall "because she made all nations drink of the wine of wrath [not anger, but intense passion] of her fornication." There is but one thing to which this can refer, and that is false doctrines. She has corrupted the pure truths of God's word, and made the nations drunken with pleasing fables.


In the form of the papacy she has supplanted the gospel by substituting for it a false system of salvation:

Through the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception she denies that God in Christ dwelt in human flesh.

She has sought to set aside the mediation of Christ and has put another system of mediation in its place.

She has attempted to take away the priesthood of Jesus and substitute an earthly priesthood.

She has made salvation dependent upon confession to mortal man and thus has separated the sinner from Jesus, the only one through whom his sins can be forgiven.

She condemns the way of salvation through faith as "damnable heresy," and substitutes the doctrine of salvation by works.

Her crowning blasphemy is the doctrine of transubstantiation, or the idolatrous sacrifice of the mass, which is declared to be "one and the same as that of the cross" and which, in "some senses," is said to have "the advantage over Calvary," for by it "the work of our redemption is carried out."


Among the doctrines she teaches contrary to the word of God, may be mentioned the following:

The substitution of tradition and the voice of the church as an infallible guide in the place of the Bible.


The change of the Sabbath of the fourth commandment, the seventh day, into the festival of Sunday as the rest day of the Lord and a memorial of His resurrection, a memorial which has never been commanded, and can by no possible means appropriately commemorate that event. Fathered by heathenism as "the wild solar holiday of all pagan times," Sunday was lead to the font by the pope, and christened as an institution of the gospel church. Thus an attempt was made to destroy a memorial which the great God had set up to commemorate His own magnificent creative work, and erect another in its state to commemorate the resurrection of Christ, for which there was no occasion, as the Lord Himself had already provided a memorial for that purpose in baptism by immersion.


The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. This also was derived from the pagan world, and the "Fathers of the church" became the foster-fathers of this pernicious doctrine as a part of divine truth. This error nullifies the two great Scripture doctrines of the resurrection and the general judgment, and furnishes an open door to modern spiritism. From it have sprung such other evil doctrines as the conscious state of the dead, saint worship, mariology, purgatory, reward at death, prayers and baptisms for the dead, eternal torment, and universal salvation.


The doctrine that the saints, as disembodied spirits, find their eternal inheritance in faraway, indefinable regions, "beyond the bounds of time and space." Thus multitudes have been turned away from the Scriptural view that this present earth is to be destroyed by fire at the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men, and that from its ashes the voice of Omnipotence will evoke a new earth, which will be the future everlasting kingdom of glory, and which the saints will possess as their eternal inheritance.


Sprinkling instead of immersion, the latter being the only Scriptural mode of baptism, and a fitting memorial of the burial and resurrection of our Lord, for which purpose it was designed. By the corruption of this ordinance and its destruction as a memorial of the resurrection of Christ, the way was prepared for the substitution of something else for this purpose--the Sunday rest day.


That the coming of Christ is a spiritual, not a literal event, and was fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem, or is fulfilled in conversion, at death, or in spiritism. How many minds have by such teaching been forever closed against the Scriptural view that the second coming of Christ is a future definite event, literal, personal, visible, resulting in destruction of all His foes, and everlasting life to all His people!


The doctrine of a temporal millennium, or a thousand years of peace and prosperity and righteousness all over the earth before the second coming of Christ. This doctrine is especially calculated to shut the ears of the people against the evidences of the second advent near, and will probably lull as many souls into a state of carnal security leading to their final ruin, as any heresy which has ever been devised by the great enemy of truth.

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Remember the time this was written in... the late 1800's, early 1900's revised. More then a hundred years later we have such grand ideas as the 'Left Behind' Series which does exactly what has been noted here. People believing in something other than the truth. When you believe in something other than the truth what are you beliving in? LIES. If you are believing in lies you are being DECEIVED. What will happen at the end, all but the very elect will be DECEIVED.


Take your beliefs and hold them up against the word of God in its entirety. Study for yourself, do not listen to others. Take your Bible and get on the internet and search out historical facts. Before I would have said go to your library but honestly the internet with it's many search engines is a huge library.


We should be very wary of anything that is thrown at us these days, wary that it might just be another deception of the Devil's meant to take as many from Christ as He can before Christ returns.


Some might ask how do I know what is truth and what isn't? Saying to me, what is truth to one might not be to another and yes... who's to say we're right? All I say is study! Study!


Isaiah {8:20} To the law and to the testimony:
if they speak not according to this word, [it is] because
[there is] no light in them.


John {17:17} Sanctify them
through thy truth: thy word is truth.


Yes, the word can be twisted and will be twisted and used for deception that is why you shouldn't take ANY one's word or interpretation at your own-- study it out for yourself! If they present facts look those facts up. If they're adding their own interpretation and not letting the Bible speak for itself you'll know.


May God bless and keep us in Him and in all TRUTH in Him through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! All mercy and grace from Him.


Amen.