Babylon and Its Fall by George I. Butler

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 11, 1909

Babylon and Its Fall

By George I. Butler

GEORGE I. BUTLER

OUR last article introduced the second angel’s message, and inquired into the reasons why the term Babylon was used in symbolic prophecy. We found that the original name signified “confusion,” “mixture,” and, as applied to religious matters, a confusion of religious ideas—error mixed with truth, and heathenism mixed with Christian doctrines; pride, bigotry, persecution, politics, united in a system with Christian profession.

Rev. 17:3-6 was quoted. Here a woman, gaudily dressed in purple and scarlet, is introduced as riding upon a scarlet-colored beast with seven heads and ten horns. This seven-headed and ten-horned beast can be none other than the Roman empire, described in other passages in this same prophecy. In many scriptures a woman is used in symbolic prophecy as a symbol to represent a church: a pure woman represents a pure church, a corrupt woman a corrupt church. This woman riding on the seven-headed and ten-horned beast must therefore represent the apostate church ruling over Rome, as it has done for many centuries. This woman is called “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.”

No term could more fitly describe the papacy than this term Babylon, “confusion,” “mixture.” To every candid seeker after Bible truth, with the facts of history before him, the conclusion is inevitable that the Roman Church is the result of an apostasy from the pure religion of Christ and his apostles. Great corruptions came in during the first two hundred years of church history, but especially was this true after Constantine’s time, when they increased till there was little resemblance between the church which the humble Nazarene founded and the apostles built up, and the church ruled by the papacy. She became the “mother of harlots,” “drunken with the blood of saints,” and her persecutions caused the death of millions upon millions of the humble disciples of Christ, who would not affiliate with her or accept her authority.

In the great Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, Luther, Calvin, and many others came out from her, and founded various other religious bodies. Some of them were state-and-church bodies; others had no such connections with the state. While these churches continued in the pathway of true reformation, God abundantly blessed them, and he was with them to a greater or lesser degree, according to their faithfulness to the teachings of his Word. The Catholics themselves professed to accept the Bible as their authority, yet according to their own teachings they preferred above it their own traditions and the authority of their councils and popes. In the Protestant Reformation far greater respect was accorded to the Scriptures, though many of the Protestants, especially the church-and-state bodies, still had much respect for human traditions. Yet all the so-called Protestant bodies which left the Roman communion brought with them more or less of tradition not authorized by the Scriptures. We will enumerate a few of these traditions:—

The keeping of Sunday in the place of the seventh-day Sabbath, which God appointed at the creation of the world. This Sunday-keeping practise has not one single text of Scripture for its support. The seventh-day Sabbath originated at creation by the example and appointment of the Creator himself. The patriarchs kept it. God commanded its observance from Mount Sinai, and

wrote it in his holy law. It was kept by his people for fifteen centuries, and by all his prophets; yea, by Christ himself and every one of his apostles, and by the early church, till the change was gradually made by the corruptions which came in after Christ’s ascension. The Protestant churches nearly all chose to keep the day of Catholic tradition rather than the Sabbath of the decalogue.

The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, taught first by Satan in the garden of Eden, when he declared to Eve, the mother of the human race, “Thou shalt not surely die,” after God had declared they should surely die if they ate the forbidden fruit, thus plainly disputing the word of the Creator, and attributing falsehood to God; then accepted in that hotbed of idolatry, Egypt; thence taught among the Greek and Roman idolaters, and from them received by the great apostasy into the Roman Catholic Church, and passed on to the Protestant Reformers, with all its train of fables. Not a passage of Scripture can be found stating that the soul of man, or any part of man, or man himself, is immortal. But his mortality is proclaimed all through its sacred pages.

Many other errors are taught by the leading Protestant churches. The grand old statement, “the Bible, and the Bible alone,” is a statement which should characterize all Protestants. But, alas! this truth has not always been lived up to. The grand Reformation of Luther and his associates has been a wonderful blessing to the world, but that Reformation has not been complete. It never will be complete till every vestige of false tradition is eliminated: Bible truth alone is the foundation upon which God’s people will stand.

The term Babylon is a descriptive term—truth with error intermingled. The Protestant churches came out of the old mother church of Rome. They carried with them some of its errors, therefore “confusion,” “mixture,” must apply to the daughters in a measure, as well as to their mother. This fact is made clear by another scripture: “After these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried mightily with a strong voice, saying, Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird. . . . And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, ‘Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.’”

We wish to call attention to but one point in this scripture in this article; namely, to the fact that in the last days, just before the coming of Christ, there goes forth a special message to God’s people to come out of Babylon, lest they partake of the seven last plagues of God’s wrath. Therefore, the conclusion is inevitable that Babylon exists in the last days, and that the great body of God’s people are in Babylon, and are called out of her prior to her destruction.

The Roman Church fell into apostasy of sin ages ago. We are forced, then, to the conclusion that the Protestant churches are a constituent part of Babylon, because a large portion of God’s people are in Babylon, and are called out just before the coming of Christ.

Bowling Green, Fla.