“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.” Its chronology. This message belongs to the last days; for 1. We have shown that the first message which immediately precedes it, has been brought before the world in the great Advent movement of the present generation. A second in any series of events cannot go before the first. This message follows the first, and is fulfilled in connection with it. 2. When this message is given, the plagues and utter destruction of Babylon, which come under the seventh vial, are immediately impending. Rev. 18: 1–10; 16: 17–21. This is just before the coming of Christ. Therefore the generation that shall be alive when the destruction of Babylon comes, is the one to which this message is addressed. Meaning of Babylon. This word signifies “confusion.” It is derived from Babel, a name given to a certain place in the land of Shinar, because God there confounded the language of men. Gen. 11: 9. As it is not applied in the Revelation to a literal city, the term is doubtless chosen with especial reference to its signification, and we may therefore expect to find among the elements that compose the Babylon of the Apocalypse, confusion and jargon in sentiment the same as there was confusion and jargon in language, when language was confounded at Babel. Babylon is not the whole world. In Rev. 17, it is represented by the symbol of a woman seated upon a scarlet-colored beast. If the woman, Babylon, represents the whole world, what does the beast represent? The same chapter represents69her as a great city reigning over the kings of the earth. With these kings therefore she must not be confounded, for she does not include them. Babylon is not the city of Rome. This is evident from the following considerations: 1. Rome is the seat of the beast, Rev. 13: 2, and is not therefore the woman, Rev. 17: 3, seated upon the beast. 2. Rome, the seat of the beast, receives the fifth plague. Rev. 16: 10; but great Babylon receives the seventh. Verse 19. Therefore they are not the same. 3. When Babylon is destroyed, it is a terrible blow to commercial interests; Rev. 18: 11–19; but Rome is not a commercial city. 4. Babylon, at one time contains the people of God, as a body; Rev. 18: 4; but this has never been true of Rome; and is especially far from being true at the time this message is given. 5. If Babylon is Rome, the fall of Babylon is the destruction of Rome; but it is not till after Babylon’s fall that the people of God are called out. To call Babylon Rome, therefore, involves the double absurdity, first, of supposing that the people of God are at any one time as a body in Rome, and, secondly, that they are called out after the city is destroyed! Babylon is the universal worldly church. It is presented under the symbol of a woman; and a woman is the symbol of a church. Rev. 12; Eze. 16. The woman of Rev. 17, represents one ecclesiastical body, doubtless the Romish church, called pre-eminently, mystery, Babylon the great. But this is not all there is of Babylon; for this one bears the title of mother. She must therefore have daughters, which belong to the same family. And inasmuch as the influence of Babylon has affected all nations, it can symbolize nothing less than a universal church, composed of all denominations in whose ways and worship there is more of the spirit of the world, than of the Spirit of Christ. It is no gratification to us to find evidence in any professedly religious denomination that they are a constituent part of this great worldly church. But wherever facts exist, they demand that we do not ignore them; and who does not feel compelled to admit that war, oppression, conformity to the world, love of pleasure, and the like, show with too sad and faithful accuracy, that the great body of the Protestant churches help to compose this mystical “city of confusion”? This application does not rest on our assertion. Men of acknowledged position as teachers in the religious world have given solemn utterance to the same sentiments. The Catholic Christian Instructed speaks as follows of the church of England:— “If the church of Rome were ever guilty of idolatry in relation to the saints, her daughter, the church of England, stands guilty of the same, which has ten churches dedicated to Mary, for one dedicated to Christ.” Wm Kinkade, in his “Bible Doctrine,” p. 294, says:— “I also think Christ has a true church on earth, but its members are scattered among the various denominations, and all are more or less under the influence of Mystery Babylon, and her daughters.” Alexander Campbell says:— “The worshiping establishments now in operation throughout Christendom, increased and cemented by their voluminous confessions of faith, and their ecclesiastical constitutions, are not churches of Jesus Christ, but the legitimate daughters of that mother of harlots, the church of Rome.” Lorenzo Dow, in his Life, p. 542, says of the Romish church:— “If she be a mother, who are the daughters? It must be the corrupt national established churches that came out of her.” In the Religious Encyclopedia, art. Antichrist, we read:— “An important question, however, says Mr. Jones, still remains for inquiry: ‘Is antichrist confined to the church of Rome?’ The answer is readily returned in the affirmative by Protestants in general; and happy had it been for the world were that the case. But, although we are fully warranted to consider that church as the ‘MOTHER of harlots,’ the truth is, that by whatever arguments we succeed in fixing that odious charge upon her, we shall by parity of reasoning, be obliged to allow all other national churches to be her unchaste daughters, and for this plain reason among others, because in their very condition and tendency, they are hostile to the nature of the kingdom of Christ.” Further on in the same article, we read again:— “The writer of the book of the Revelation tells us he heard a 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,’ Rev. 18: 1–4, an address which obviously could have no meaning, if none of Christ’s people were in her. But if such persons are to be found in the ‘mother of harlots,’ with much less hesitation may it be inferred that they are connected with her unchaste daughters, those national churches which are founded upon what are called Protestant principles.” Dr. Cumming, D.D. of England, says:— “Then what is our duty? To call to all that are at this moment in the church of Rome, whether sprinkled by her baptismal waters, or inhabiting within another church her forms, her ceremonies, her pomp, and her grandeur, to come out of her, lest, partaking of her sins, they receive also of her plagues.”—The End, p. 241. U. S.