The Works of Babylon the Second
By C. L. Emerson
THE THREE BABYLONS. No. II.
The Works of Babylon the Second.
The church having left the Word of God and taken their own way, must develop the same works that Babylon the first developed. This they did, as we will shortly show. The devil, gaining wisdom by experience, shaped another apostasy that could do greater work against the truth of God than the former. Let us see briefly what was developed, and then how he sought to make the apostasy permanent. As the church had left the power of God, they had no power to regenerate the hearts of men so that they would of themselves stop sinning. They were, therefore, never entirely successful in getting men to leave off their heathen ways till they instituted other ways very much like them. For the mysteries of the ancient religions they instituted mysteries; baptism and the Lord’s supper were made to act as such mysteries. And as the “blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us” not “from all sin,” since the Word was left, they concluded that the baptismal waters cleansed them. One needs to be cleansed entire, so no one who was able was allowed to be baptized in any other way than to entirely unrobe. Do we not know what effect it would have on men and women whose only cleansing was that which water could give, to be initiated into religion by unrobing in each other’s presence? Such an effect it had there. Baptism was performed on Easter and whit Sunday, and on the vigils of Easter and whit Sunday things not fit to speak of were done, if we may believe the historian. Instead of hero-worship, the worship of the heathen gods, the church instituted martyr-worship. The martyrs were worshiped in different ways, but the worshipers were allowed to worship the martyrs in the way they had worshiped their gods; that is, they were allowed to get drunk, commit adultery, etc. It came to be thought that martyrs had more righteousness than they really needed, and so prayers to the dead were begun. A man who needed righteousness sought some martyr for it instead of obtaining it from God. It was thought that a martyr was sure of heaven, so many sought martyrdom as a means of washing away their sins and exalting self. But if prayers could be offered to the dead, why not for the dead? This led to the idea of purgatory. It is a good device to fill the coffers of the church, but a poor way to be saved. This excessive veneration for martyrs led to the idea that their bones were sacred. So the bones of the martyrs, or even a hair, was highly prized, and veneration of relics came in. The church had left the Word of God and accepted heathen philosophy. Did they profit thereby? Philosophy taught them that it was right to lie, and so bones of any one, even of murderers, were sold as the bones of martyrs! But the deception did not stop here. Monks traveled around the country and deceived the multitudes into believing that they were working all kinds of miracles. Besides this, hundreds of spurious books were written, and the name of some holy man of apostolic days appended. This was to give currency to erroneous ideas that were thought to be right. Such books are those attributed to Barnabas, Ignatius, the Apocryphal Gospels, and many others. Images of Jesus, Mary, and various saints were also brought into the church and worshiped, instead of the images of the heathen gods. I know the church did not claim to worship the image, but neither did the heathen nation ever claim to worship the image. It is always what it represents. As a person could be better than the Lord required, it was decided that a celibate, a man who was never married—who lived a single life—was more holy than one who married. Hence arose celibacy of priests, monks, and nuns. From this also came into the church the idea of spiritual marriage. So we see the church had other gods, would lie, cheat, commit adultery, and do everything that heathenism ever did, with one exception. They never burned people as a sacrifice to Molech. But even that was yet to come. Now notice how Satan tried to make this apostasy more enduring than the former one. In the first, he got men to give up the Word of God in profession, but when it was again preached, it knocked his structure into atoms. He now purposes to guard against that by perverting the Gospel, and get men to think they are very loyal to the Word, while they are loyal only to their own opinions of the Word. The allegories of their own vain imaginations instead of the Word were their standard. Then, as long as one should take the church’s interpretation of the Word, there could be no danger of their being led right. But some might not follow the church. He therefore devised and carried out the plan of having the church domineer the State, so that if one was obstinate enough to think for himself instead of as the church said, he was compelled to recant, or yield his life as a forfeit. So, as long as a man followed the church, he was held in darkness, and as soon as he refused to follow the church, he was killed. Surely, thought Satan, “I have it so I can control things now.” And he would eternally have had his own way among men had there not been One in the heavens who could counterwork all his finely-laid schemes. But in this scheme for the suppression of the Word, the devil brought that murder which was in the ancient heathenisms to a greater development than he ever did in Phœnicia. So Babylon the second was worse than Babylon the first, in that it enforced its apostasy. When it had apostatized, it was simply Babylon; but when it enforced its apostasy by means of civil law, it became the beast. Any people who leave the Word of God and yet keep up a church organization and profess to be Christian, can not fail to develop a beast or a beast’s image. Proof later.