Undoing the Work of Babel by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 12, 1913

Undoing the Work of Babel

By C. M. S.

ONE has said that the translation of the Bible into the many languages of earth is undoing the work of Babel. That is true in more than one sense. It is indeed teaching the nations to speak a common language, the language of Canaan, and to think the thoughts of our common Father after him. But the circulation of the Bible, filled as it is with the gospel of salvation from sin through Christ, is undoing the work of Babel in the sense of making the many nations one again in Christ.

The selfish ambition manifested in the Babel experience brought confusion into the family of mankind and scattered them to the ends of the earth, with hatred and suspicion in their hearts toward one another.

The gospel of Christ, built upon unselfishness and manifesting that unselfishness in the sacrifice on Calvary, dispels the confusion, brings in harmony and oneness, and draws men from the ends of the earth with love and trust in their hearts toward one another, in the place of hatred and suspicion.

Babel put a gulf between man and his Maker and drove a wedge of suspicion between man and man. But the Bible, bearing the gospel to the ends of the earth, bridges the gulf between man and his Maker, withdraws the wedge driven between man and man, and unites again the disrupted family. It does more than merely to undo the work of Babel. It puts something in its place,—the work of God,—and stretches out before the view of smitten humanity the long vistas of eternity in a kingdom where love rules, and where sin, suffering, and sorrow find no place.

The contagion of apostasy that ran out into all the earth as a result of the Babel experience culminates in the idolatrous exaltation of spiritual Babylon in the end of the age. Drunken with that exaltation, and with the blood of the saints that have perished at her hand, she sits on the throne of the world to receive the worship and adoration of all mankind. That object she will attain; but so certainly as she attains it, so certainly does she seal her doom. The same Bible which is undoing the work of Babel in teaching the people a common language, proclaims the overthrow of that power. “Fallen, fallen, is Babylon the great. . . . For by the wine of the wrath of her fornication all the nations are fallen. . . . Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues: for her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. . . . With a mighty fall shall Babylon, the great city, be cast down, and shall be found no more at all. . . . After these things I heard as it were a great voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, Halleluiah; Salvation, and glory, and power, belong to our God: for true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great harlot, her that corrupted the earth with her fornication, and he hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.” Rev. 18: 2 to 19: 2.

Is it not a wonderful coincidence that the last book of the Book of God should deal with the overthrow of Babylon? But it is more than a coincidence. Spiritual Babylon has been the personification of the dogmas and doctrines of a counterfeit Christianity which has usurped the place of the true gospel in the world and has exalted the creature in place of the Creator. Being in opposition to the true God, it has necessarily advanced the interests of the adversary of souls; and when all that has opposed God and aided the adversary is wiped out, Babylon must go. When Babylon goes out, the tragedy of sin will be finished, and the curtain will fall for her. But when that curtain falls, there is drawn aside the curtain that hides human eyes from eternal realities.

All this the blessed Book makes known. No wonder the leaders of spiritual Babylon oppose its circulation and burn it to ashes when they can; but there will come a time when they who burn it to ashes will, unless they repent, be themselves ashes under the feet of the redeemed. Seventh-day Adventists, knowing as they do the blessed promises of that Book, should do all in their power to scatter its pages and make known its promises to the ends of the earth.

C. M. S.