Babylon and God's Law by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 25, 1912

Babylon and God's Law

By C. M. S.

God, in the last days, warns his people against an institution which he calls Babylon. Literal Babylon was the mother of idolatry. Spiritual Babylon of the last days is a faithful follower of that idolatrous mother, and so God says of her, while seeing through the centuries of her history, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.” But in the overthrow of Babylon, there is the overthrow of everything that goes to make up Babylon—all the institutions, all the influences, all the men and women who have accepted its principles, all the nations that have forgotten God.

God's law condemned idolatry. Babylon, both literal and spiritual, broke that law, and taught men to bow down to wood and stone, to images of gold and silver, to pictures, and to human beings.

God's law established the Sabbatic institution, and commanded its observance. Babylon has taught the world—and is still teaching it—to trample upon that institution and choose another to take its place. God indicated his way in this matter; Babylon chose her own way; and God, in his last warning message to this world, is calling men out of Babylon and back to his appointed way. “I heard another voice from heaven, saying, Come forth, my people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” Rev. 18:4.

The law of God, then, is the great test to tell who is Babylon and who are of Babylon; for God condemns her because of her attitude toward his law. “Her sins,” he says, “have reached even unto heaven,” and he plainly declares that “sin is the transgression of the law.” As he condemns her for her attitude toward his law, so will he condemn us if we allow ourselves to be deceived into taking that same attitude toward that law. God has only one truth for the world, only one gospel, only one light, only one way, only one law, only one Saviour.

It is possible to be judged as keeping the law of God in spirit, when we, through ignorance, have broken its letter. Many who have witnessed for God with their lives have broken the letter of the fourth commandment; but the sins were of ignorance God passed over. They had never seen the light of that requirement. It is the attitude that God looks upon, the willingness of heart to do what he requires regardless of temporal consequences; but he to whom light has come has not that cloak to cover his failure. He must stand or fall according to the attitude which he has assumed toward God's law. Babylon falls because she opposes that law; but this is what the psalmist says of those who have not followed in her way: “Blessed are they that are perfect in the way, who walk in the law of Jehovah.” Ps. 119:1. It is not a matter of small consequence, then, whether we obey God or obey our own desires and inclinations. Our eternal destiny hangs upon our attitude toward God's law. The fall of spiritual Babylon is but a type of our own fall if we choose to follow in her footsteps.

C. M. S.