p. 1 | The Dream of the Pope

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 8, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 14.

The Dream of the Pope.

BABYLON.

What Does It Mean?

THE human origin of the word “Babylon” is recorded in the brick volumes left by the early settlers in the plain of Shinar, in western Asia, and in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. The word was originally, Rawlinson, Geikie, and other scholars tell us, written Bab-il, the Gate of the God Il, or the Gate of God, or the Gate of Heaven. It was applied by those who had departed from God, to the city and town builded by them, by which they would preserve themselves from another flood, make to themselves a great name, and prevent themselves from being scattered abroad, the very thing that God commanded them to do. It was the first general scheme of man after the Deluge to save himself. It was the dream of man apart from God. See Gen. 11:3, 4.

The Gate of God, or Gate of Heaven, it will be seen, expressed man’s desire and purpose in himself for self-honor and self-salvation. The originator of all this daring assumption and blind rebellion was he whom Inspiration calls “the king of Babylon” (Isa. 14:4), whose original name was Lucifer, the light bringer,

now called Satan and Diabolus. He said: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; . . . I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” Verses 13, 14.

The Bible meaning of Babylon is God’s expression of just what man’s efforts apart from him amount to. Infinite Wisdom said that rebellious, selfish man’s “Gate of Heaven” meant “Babel,” “Babylon,” “Confusion,” utter and hopeless. (See Gen. 11:5–9.) This is forever true as regards both phases of the question. Man’s efforts and plans apart from God have always promised great things in his eyes. They have seemed to be great time-enduring monuments, mighty towers whose top reached to heaven, exalting man above the human. But God has forever said that all this is Babylon—Confusion.

Babylon, therefore, became the name not only of the great empire founded by the apostate Nimrod and his successors, but it became a comprehensive symbol of all those dreams and plans and schemes of men, however honest their promoters, which bring confusion into the work of God on earth. Babylon of old became the type of mystical Babylon in this dispensation.

Babylon Perpetuated.

Because those rebuked would not accept the reproof then given of God, confounded though their language was, they still perpetuated the principle of self-honor, self-salvation. They turned from God to earthly power and earthly government. They forsook God, their Father and Husband, and committed fornication with governments and organizations of earth, which they formed. That was the origin of all spiritual fornication; and therefore the prophet tells us that Babylon “made all the earth drunken; the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad.” Jer. 51:7. For in every nation since that time has been perpetuated and repeated on a lesser or greater scale the building of the towers and cities which men have called Gates of Heaven, Gates of God; but which the great God has denominated Babylon, daughters of Babylon—Confusion.

Cause of Confusion.

Confusion always exists where sin is, whether in Church or State, but this confusion is a hundredfold worse when and where Church and State unite; and it has been the aim of the devil, the king of Babylon, since the day that earthly government existed, to pervert the one by union with the other. Civil government is necessary and beneficial in its proper sphere in a sinful world to restrain evil-doers, to prevent incivility. A perversion always comes when men arrogate to themselves the office of God’s vicegerents, and assume to be teachers, dictators, rulers in a moral, religious, and spiritual realm. They may thus build great towers of folly, as did Babylon of old, Egypt, Pagan Rome, and other great empires, but God declares them to be Babylon—Confusion.

On the other hand, God designed that his church should be in the world, but not of the world, possessed of the normal life of God, preaching his Gospel, and ministering the life of Christ to dying mortals, gathering out those desiring a better life, even as the magnet gathers the particles of iron from among the grains of sand. Satan has ever sought to pervert that church by turning her eyes, her heart, her desires, and her hopes from Jesus Christ to the world and earthly governments. So he turned the daughter of Zion to Babylon, to Assyria, to Egypt, to Rome. He has deceived men into believing that if the State were ruled by the Church, instead of the Church by the State, as in the pagan empires, good would result; the one language would result in good; the great tower and city would prove the Gate of Heaven, and earth would become a paradise. But God has also in his prophetic word stamped such effort as Babylon—Confusion.

The Masterpiece of Satan.

This attempt, the Church dominating the State, was left by the arch deceiver till Christ had died and risen again, and his church, infused with new life, was strong against all opposition, so that the mightiest pagan empire of the world tottered before the cross of Christ, and hard hearts everywhere among the peoples of earth yielded to the love of the Crucified. “You see,” suggested the enemy, “the power of the church. You see her pure doctrines, her mighty influence; connect her with the State; let her rule in all things, religious and civil; let only Kings that will hear her voice sit on the thrones of earth, and triumph will be complete.” And he set himself to accomplish his purpose. Again the world was deceived. The brew of Babylon again made the world drunken. The wine of her fornication, the errors sown in the field of truth, bore abundant fruit, and the fourth century of the Christian era witnessed the erection of a mighty system far exceeding the brick tower of ancient Babylon.

The new Babylon was the old spiritualized. The bricks were the doctrines of pagan philosophy baked in the oven of a rapidly apostatizing Christianity. The slime for mortar was perverted Jewish and Christian teaching. The builders and leaders were “fathers” in the Catholic Church, many of whom still retained their paganism. The structure that they reared is called “the sheepfold of Christ,” “the spouse of Christ,” etc., but God has called it Babylon. (See Rev. 14:8; 17:1–8 and 18.) The masterpiece of this great spiritual structure is the Papacy, the head of which is the pope, who claims to be ruler in both Church and State, to be possessed by right of both temporal and spiritual power. But God’s Word calls the system Babylon.

Not against Men but Principles.

By this we would not be understood as directing what we may have to say against Roman Catholics. We have naught against a single soul of them. We take it for granted that they are sincere in their belief. Many of them have lived and died Christians, accepted of Jesus Christ, not because of the papal system, but in spite of it. Just as gleams of light and truth from God’s ineffable glory shine through a nature perverted by sin, so through a perverted gospel rays of light reach the soul longing for a Saviour that all the forms and ceremonies could never give. The Gospel came, was received not because of the ceremonies, the system, the ornate ritual, but notwithstanding all these things. God works over and above insuperable obstacles. The X rays of divine truth shoot many times through the opaqueness of error to the longing but darkened mind. But the light does not come because of the intervening body, but in spite of it. The light would have been clearer if the body had not intervened.

The Church of Rome counts within her fold many Christians and saints whom God may count otherwise. She claims to have done much for the conservation of light, learning, and liberty, for the preservation of the Scriptures, etc.; but the judgment will reveal that it was not the great papal system to which the credit was due, but to God’s providence overruling in spite of the system. Altho Darius commanded Daniel to be brought from the den of lions, he could hardly be said to have preserved him from their jaws.

The Claims of Rome.

Rome claims power in both the spiritual and temporal worlds. Said Gregory VII. to the bishop of Metz:—

We will demonstrate that Christ, in giving to the apostle power to bind and loose men, excepted no one. The Holy See has absolute power over all spiritual things; why should it not also rule temporal affairs? God reigns in the heavens; his vicar should reign over all the earth. The name of king was invented by human pride; the title of bishop was instituted by Christ.

Gregory’s power was demonstrated in the abject humbling of Henry IV. at Canossa. Again the same pontiff declared (Cormenin, vol. I, p. 377, quoted by R. W. Thompson, “The Papacy and the Civil Power,” p. 407):—

God is a Spirit; he rules matter; thus the spiritual is above the temporal power. The pope is the representative of God on earth; he should, then, govern the world. To him alone pertain infallibility and universality; all men are submitted to his laws, and he can only be judged by God; he ought to wear imperial ornaments; people and kings should kiss his feet; Christians are irrevocably submitted to his orders; they should murder their princes, fathers, and children if he commands it; no council can be declared universal without the orders of the pope; no book can be received as canonical without his authority; finally, no good or evil exists but in what he has condemned or approved.

The Pope’s Dream—The Arbiter of the World.

Pius IX. and Leo XIII. have builded upon the foundation of Gregory VIII. and other “illustrious predecessors.” While not now possessed of temporal power, it is still claimed, and the demand for its restoration is widespread and insistent. Nay, more, the Papacy is continually set before us as the arbiter and mediator of nations, the one court from which there should be no appeal, the Supreme Tribunal of the world. The pope claims this power spiritually now. All may not recognize it; but the Papacy claims it. The Papacy also claims by right, as did the popes of the Dark Ages, power to rule over kings, to set up or depose rulers,—those who will not submit to “the faith” to be excommunicated, and given over to the conquest of those rulers who do. The pope’s dream is to thus sway all power. By the cross, the perverted emblem of the spiritual power he exercises over the minds of men, and by the cannon-ball, the emblem of civil power, the aid of the State, he hopes to rule the world, a god upon earth.

This ambition, this dream, this purpose of the Papacy to rule the world, has been set forth so frequently by devout adherents to the system that we need not take space to quote from their writings. They believe it to be both its duty and destiny. This is well expressed

in the Catholic World, of New York, for March, 1894, in an article entitled “The Dawning of the Twentieth Century.” The period predicted had been preceded by a war which had eliminated Portugal from the map of nations, made Spain and Italy republics, and involved all Europe in internecine and fratricidal strife. The writer says:—

There was a war within a war. Not only was every country at war with its neighbor, but was at the same time waging a fierce internecine strife within its own borders. Anarchy made war upon government and society, while government endeavored to grapple with the foreign foe. The terrible character of this vast international conspiracy, more deadly in its working than cholera, or Black Death, was the fact which at last opened the eyes of the passion-blind combatants, and disposed them towards the peace which the Sovereign Pontiff, at the first moment that his voice could make itself heard amid the roar of battle, counseled. . . .

The word “arbitration” was upon every tongue, and all eyes were turned instinctively towards the illustrious occupant of the Vatican. His was the only voice in the whole world which would have a chance of being listened to in that pandemonium of passion and universal horror. The word was spoken, and was at length listened to. . . . The patrimony of the church has been restored, and the government of the city [Rome] and territory [States of the Church] is placed in the hands of commissioners chosen by the Holy Father. Florence is the capital of the republic [of Italy], and Rome once more the capital of Christendom. . . . The head of the Catholic Church is at last free to deal without let or hindrance with every portion of his wide-spreading domain. . . . The pope once more is free.

The “More Sure Word of Prophecy.”

It is not a wholly fancy picture, an empty dream. The “more sure word of prophecy” declares that Babylon the great, the mystical Babylon of the Apocalypse, the professed church of Christ, which has committed fornication with the kings of the earth, will again be given world-wide power and triumph, and received by a sin-blinded world as one worthy of worship.

1. That system in Revelation 13 is symbolized under the figure of a beast, which runs his career as a persecutor for 1,260 years. It then receives a deadly wound. But that wound is to be healed, and then all the world shall wonder after the beast and worship it. The Papacy was a persecutor from A.D. 538 to 1798. Then its persecuting power was broken, and has not since been possessed. But the prophecy declares that the deadly wound was healed. The Papacy will again be a dominant power.

2. In Revelation 17 the same fact is predicted. The beast, the persecuting union of Church and State, under the Papacy will again exist, and the deceived nations will again place the beast in control. Verses 8, 11–13.

3. In chapter 18 this great religious system, Babylon—the chief and leader of which is the Papacy—is represented as becoming again triumphant. Now the Papal Church mourns her widowhood. She is shorn of her temporal possessions, separated from the secular government; but in the light of the prophecy, the time will soon be here when she will say, as the powers of earth return to her again, “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.” Verse 7.

There are still other prophecies which point out the seeming triumph of the Papacy, but these will suffice. God would call men back from the worship of the human, the human schemes, the glory of men, to “fear God, and give glory to him,” and to turn from the perverted worship of tradition to the true worship of the Creator of heaven and earth. (See Rev. 14:6, 7.) To heed this message would heal Babylon. It would eliminate her creed idols, banish her errors, destroy her pagan traditions and institutions, and exalt God in her midst. But while God would by his word have healed Babylon, she would not be healed. Jer. 51:9. And therefore she fell. Rev. 14:8. Then comes the last solemn message from God, warning men against her deadly errors, her enforced worship and dogmas, and calling them out of her midst. Rev. 14:9–11; 18:1–4.

The End of Human Effort.

But, blinded by sin, the deceived nations exalt once more in the place of God as arbiter of nations, the apostate Babylon, the pope of Rome, the self-assumed vicar of Christ. He sits enthroned once more above the nations. Babylon says, “I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow.” The world cries, “Peace and safety.” But while Babylon exalts herself, while the deceived nations laud the great Babylon made with human hands, the voice of doom falls from heaven (Dan. 4:30, 31), the cry of “Peace and safety” ends in destruction (1 Thess. 5:3), and Babylon’s “plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire; for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her” (Rev. 18:8).

Reader, which will you choose, the great Babels of men, or the simple Gospel of Jesus Christ? The choice you must make for yourself.