Babylon is Fallen by Alonzo T. Jones

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 4, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 46.

"Babylon is Fallen."

By Alonzo T. Jones

[THE following picture of the condition of the Christian world, was given by Rev. Arthur T. Pierson in a sermon before the Ministerial Convention of Philadelphia, in September, 1884. This is only a part of the sermon however. We have selected some of the most striking portions; but in what is here given, as well as in much more that might be given, there is food for much solemn reflection by all. And in view of it who will say that the Third Angel's Message is out of place, in calling upon the people to come out of her, and keep the "commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus"?]

Our church-life is undermined by worldliness. Between the church and world no line of separation exists, except in the fact of church-membership. When our Lord bids us "keep ourselves unspotted from the world," and "hate even the garment spotted with the flesh," he means that in close contact, not to say conformity, there is contagion; the infection of a worldly spirit, caught by the church, infests her whole life, and is fatal to spiritual power.

It is not enough to be conformed, we must be transformed; these are the Bible conditions of true life and power. In how many disciples do we find them? In the church are thousands who, like Ananias, defraud the Lord of his dues; like Simon the sorcerer, estimate spiritual gifts on a money basis; like Demas, forsake Christ through love of this present world, or like Diotrephes, love to have pre-eminence. Our Lord, even at a marriage festivity, did not lose his character as the Son of God, but there manifested his glory and won disciples to believe on him. Church-members drop their character, as Christians, at the door of the gaieties of the world, as easily as an oriental guest shuffles off his sandals, and mingle indiscriminately with the devotees of fashion and frivolity!

The god of this world incloses our foot in his most ingenious snare, when he secures from the Lord's disciples the recognition of his favorite beguilements. Certain institutions have always been used by Satan to ruin souls; for example, the theater, opera, card-table, horse-race, and dance. The theater appeals, in a pure-minded man, to a normal, histrionic appetite; but the theater, as an institution, caters to our lower propensities, and cannot be sustained without ministering to vice. Booth himself sunk $150,000 in New York City, in trying to establish a dramatic school for good morals! And, as a fact, the theater shows itself a putrid carcass by the drinking saloon, gambling saloon, and brothel, the vultures that gather round it. A game of cards may be innocent, but, for centuries, has been filthy with the defiling touch of gamblers and pickpockets. The horse-race may attract, as a simple exhibition of the beauty and speed of the noblest of all animals; but as an institution it is an open door to hell. The dance may be conducted by innocent maids and stainless men, but as it exists in society, it deserves but one name, "lascivious."

And yet Satan, by his wiles, secures from intelligent disciples a sanction if not an apology for these gilded gateways to perdition, and even persuades some ministers to lend sanction to the traps by which he takes the feet of the young.

Separation from the world there must be. The Roman soldiers, after a night's revel, at day-dawn cast off the works of darkness, put on the soldier's armor, and became sober; so from the moment of conversion, the course of this world is to be put away as among the works of our unregenerate life, and the armor of light to be put on, never to be taken off. Like Daniel in Babylon, we must present a perpetual contrast to our surroundings, and be isolated and insulated spiritually, in order to be filled and charged with the life of God. By our fruits we must be known, and as the chestnut oak is not a chestnut, because, though having bark and leaf like that tree, it bears acorns, so no outward resemblance makes a disciple.

The New Testament puts the heaviest stress upon an unworldly life. Yet in the church we find a few decided lovers of God, thousands of decided lovers of the world, and thousands more vainly trying to compromise between two principles and courses of life, as utterly at war as light and darkness. The bulk of professing Christians are not consecrated men and women; they belong to the "worldly holy" or "wholly worldly." With thousands upon thousands, there is a vain dependence upon a dead faith, or dead works, or connection with a State church, instead of the righteousness of God wrought in them by the Holy Spirit.

A worldly church prevents conversion of sinners. More and more the eyes of men become blinded and sealed to the value of divine things, and our own unworldliness presents no contrast. More and more eternal things are practically disregarded; the awful warnings of God's word and providence are unheard and unheeded, like the earthquake when Hannibal fought the Romans at Thrasymene. We thunder in the ears of men the terrible truths of God, but they are deaf and dead, and the very church itself so grieves and quenches the Spirit by fellowship with evil that there is no power in the Lord's people to convert souls. The witness of a separate and sanctified life is gone, and the witness of the tongue of fire is gone with it!

"Four-fifths of the nominal membership of our churches add nothing to their real power; they are either a dead weight or a positive hindrance to the advance of the gospel; they help to fill up the gulf between the churches and the world, and break down the distinction between the truly regenerate and the enemies of God and the truth." How can we expect God to permit rapid and wide diffusion of a low grade of religious life? As it is, he selects the few, the advance guard of Christians, to carry the cross into the enemies' country. He permits difficulties and dangers to face them, that turn back all but heroic, devoted souls. In the race for worldly treasure and pleasure, in the worship of mammon, in the loss of a vivid sense of the reality and verity of spiritual things, in the awful lack of power to prevail in prayer, in the absence of that grand concurrent witness of an unworldly life, more weighty than any testimony of the lips, we also lose all true power to go forth conquering and to conquer. Zion is not fair as the moon nor clear as the sun, and cannot be terrible as an army with banners.

One of the most startling facts of our church-life is the absence of personal service in saving souls. Service, with the bulk of nominal disciples, seems lost sight of in salvation, which is itself sought with but feeble and spasmodic effort. I have been wont to urge upon disciples a systematic seeking of souls, putting the question pointedly: "Do you know that you have ever been instrumental in leading one soul to Christ"? only to be met in hundreds of cases with the sad confession that there has been no effort put forth in that direction.

Where are the marks of consecrated capital, of property acquired and administered by disciples as stewards of God? Pounds to mammon; pence to God! Money enough in the superfluities of rich Christians to supply the necessities of a world's poor, and carry the gospel to every unsaved soul.

In the light of the New Testament, the question may be raised whether it is right for a disciple to be rich. Paul and James warn not only against dishonest gains and selfish or sensual indulgences, but against the lust of accumulation, the curse of canker and rust which gathers about hoarded treasure. Moses turned his back at once upon the three lusts—ambition, appetite, and avarice, when in one heroic resolve he forsook the court of Pharaoh, the pleasures of sin, and the treasures of Egypt. During Old Testament times, when the doors of the gospel had not been thrown open to the whole world, the avenues for the use of money in works of charity and mercy, were comparatively few and narrow, and the flood of wealth accumulated. But now, with a thousand millions crying for the light of God, how can they who love Christ hoard wealth? Whichever way we look, the pleading hand of God confronts us, in the thousand demands for temporal and spiritual relief, and that hand can hold and use every spare dollar or dime of the Christian world. How can disciples grow rich but by shutting their eyes and ears? In 1875, $1,500,000,000 were spent in the liquor traffic—one dollar for every soul of the world's great host—while Christendom expended less than ten millions to evangelize the world! I knew one Christian man who spent for his own house, grounds furniture, and articles of ornamentation, five times as much as the American Board in all its missionary operations for a year. In the homes of disciples in this city, the value of pictures, statues, silver plate, etc., more than exceeds all that the churches jointly give to spread the gospel among the unsaved.

I have been restrained for years from the frank expression of these deep and growing convictions by the cowardly fear of being misunderstood and called a "croaker." But let us have done with a temporizing policy. Where would the great Reformation have been if Luther and others had been kept from their bold assault on church corruption by the cry of pessimism? Where had been the mighty host of heroes that swept, like pioneers, to the very frontiers, if John Wesley had not dared, at risk of life, to set up a new standard of piety, demanding of his followers separation from the worldly fashions and follies of the Anglican Church?

In our reaction from the papal priesthood, we have swung to the other extreme. The entire loss of the sacerdotal idea of the ministry has left our divine vocation to be regarded as a mere profession. A congregation hires a man to preach; he is a hireling, to be directed and dismissed at will; the trustees and spiritual officers are his board of directors—to tell him what he shall do and say in his official capacity. The sublime scriptural conception that he is the "ambassador of Christ," "steward of the mysteries of God," accountable only to his Master, bound to declare the whole counsel of God whether men will hear or forbear—that idea exists no longer.

Brethren, much of the responsibility of all this low state of piety lies at our own door. Is our preaching what it ought to be, as to matter and manner? Do we preach self, poetry, philosophy, science, history, politics, or Christ? Can we say with Paul, "I have kept back nothing that is profitable to you; I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God?" Have we ever modified or qualified our message from motives of fear or favor? or boldly said to the Herods who sit in our church pews, "It is not lawful for thee to have her"?

When we have preached the whole truth, has it been in a godly manner, like Paul "beseeching men by the meekness and gentleness of Christ"? Oh, for that chrism, that holy unction, that makes the whole man fragrant, that imparts that divine manner that fitly accompanies divine matter, that, even in touching the most terrible truths, the guilt and ruin of sin, and the wrath of God, leaves on them a golden glory, an awful beauty!