The Hunger and Thirst for World Empire
By A. O. Tait
BABYLON reached the height of her glory and strength in world dominion and grandeur in the days of her greatest king, Nebuchadnezzar. This king believed that the gods of his empire had rendered him invincible, and he would not rest content till every petty kingdom on earth had acknowledged him as the great king over all. When the king of Babylon had laid all the world in tribute at his feet, he strolled forth amid the costly and glittering palaces of his great capital to meditate upon his own majesty and power. On all sides of him were the massive works of his empire. His capital city was one of the greatest that earth had ever seen. Her walls, her gates of brass, her world-famed hanging gardens, were the pride of his heart. He had built, in honor of his favorite god, one of the most majestic buildings that had ever enshrined the breathless image of any heathen deity. And while surveying all these imposing works, and feeling secure in his overweening power, he found a vent for his high-tension feelings in the words, "Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?" Babylon gave to the world a mighty and brilliant example of universal dominion. She left her impress upon the world so strongly that each of the three nations that immediately succeeded her would not rest content until they like Babylon of old had obtained world dominion. The most celebrated of the Grecian kings is said to have even wept, when he had conquered the world, because there were not more worlds to conquer. The influence of Babylon has been permanent, otherwise the vision given to John would not have shown her as a symbol of the power that would reign in the very closing moments of time. Over and over again in the book of Revelation is Babylon mentioned as a symbol of the great active power of the very last days. The old nation of Babylon as such had long passed away when John wrote the Apocalypse, and he knew that it was so. But there had been implanted in the minds of men principles that would endure till the end of time. And hence, as his language clearly shows, John used her as a symbol of the proud-hearted, ambitious powers that would struggle for world dominion among the last generation of men. Babylon fittingly represented the splendors, the pride, the vanity, and the despotism of the nations of this earth. Satan had said in his heart, "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the Most High." Isa. 14:13, 14. And in the hearts of Babylon's kings he had implanted his doctrines and principles as he had not, perhaps, been able to implant them anywhere else. He had determined to be "like the Most High," and this meant to usurp the prerogatives of the Deity and enshrine himself in the minds of men instead of Jehovah. Babylon, then, had an invisible tutor to inspire her with a determination to rule every individual in all the world. The arch-enemy who had said in his own heart, "I will be like the Most High," was seeking to spread the principles of his kingdom among men by leading them to impersonate his ambitions. When Satan said, "I will be like the Most High," that was equivalent to saying, I will be the object of worship, and will set the God of the universe to one side. The idea seems preposterous, but there is no avoiding the conclusion that to be "like the Most High" is to become an object of worship. Hence we find the idea of worship, of domination in religious matters, a basic principle in the despotic sway of Babylon. Throwing the three Hebrew children into the fiery furnace, and Daniel into the den of lions, was done to test the relative power of the gods of Babylon and the great Creator that the Hebrews worshiped. World dominion in matters of religion was at the very foundation of spreading the dominion of the State into every part of the world. Many of the bloodiest battles that were fought were for the purpose of showing that the gods that had been adopted by Babylon were more powerful than any gods that could be brought against them. This idea of the supremacy of the national gods was perpetuated among the nations that arose on the ruins of the old Babylon. In fact the succeeding nations borrowed or inherited their ideas from the Babylon which had gone before and marked out the way. Not that this idea originated with Babylon; but the person who had said, "I will be like the Most High"—I will be an object of worship myself—had brought his ideas of counterfeit worship to a higher degree of endorsement and acceptance than ever before. Time and experience had enabled the great adversary of all true worship to advance toward his demonic perfection as the days advanced. Medo-Persia succeeded Babylon, and she in turn was succeeded by Greece. And in each of these great kingdoms were these same ideas of world dominion in worship carried out. But it remained for the empire of Rome to succeed Greece and bring the system to its height of perfection. Rome built herself into empire strongly. She remained at the height of power for several centuries, and it took her several other centuries to decay and crumble into ruins. Rome permitted the peoples in different parts of her great domain to worship the gods that seemed most to their liking, but these must first be placed in the catalog of gods that it was permissible for a Roman citizen to worship. To worship a god that was not endorsed by the Roman State, was one of the most reprehensible crimes. Coming down the centuries, the idea had been gaining in strength that men who had done mighty deeds, particularly in battle, were gods upon earth. And hence these men would be apotheosized, or placed in the calendar of the gods. This system of making gods out of human beings was brought to a zenith in the noontime splendors of the power of the empire of Rome. A blazing comet (supposed by modern astronomers to have been Halley's) appeared in the heavens at the time of the death of Julius Caesar, and it was seriously believed to have been a heavenly chariot sent to take the soul of the departed emperor to the abode of the gods. It was the Roman emperor who stood at the head of the religion of the empire. He was the pontifex maximus, the supreme head of religion as well as the supreme head of the State. In his person both of these high offices were blended. And thus do we see that a religious despotism has been the foundation of all the great despotisms of history. Sometimes kings went to war to test the strength of their adopted gods. If they succeeded, their gods were with them, and were very powerful; if they failed, it was because their gods were too weak or too indifferent to save them. Real tyranny, despotism, has false ideas of religion at the bottom of it. Men to-day will curse the czar of Russia for his tyrannies; but it is not the czar as a civil ruler that is a tyrant. It is the tyranny of the church Russia is under that is the cause of all her sufferings of despotism. And regardless of all the object-lessons of the past and present, men seem to be determined to try over and over again the experiment of compelling uniformity in matters of worship, and to make this a fundamental principle in the State. Last week a number of prophetic scriptures were given, showing that this idea of a world-wide religious despotism is to be a great feature of the last generation of men. Satan will make his supreme effort to delude men in this respect as one of his last great strokes. We have seen in the foregoing paragraphs how the nations of antiquity have tried to dominate the minds of men in matters of religion, and that the empire of Rome borrowed the system from Babylon, and perfected it. In a succeeding article or two we will follow this system as it developed into the "Holy Roman Empire," and see how, in harmony with the prophetic texts given in this department of the paper last week, the foundation is already strongly laid for the great religious despotism that will mark the close of time, and call for the second coming of Christ to put an end to it.