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BABYLON IS FALLEN

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 24, 1904

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 30, No. 8.

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"BABYLON IS FALLEN."

By W.

THE fall of the tower of Babel, so graphically and vividly portrayed in our illustration, was a prediction in object-lesson of the fall of the city and empire of Babylon, builded centuries later by Nabopolassar and his greater and more renowned son, Nebuchadnezzar. The doom of the one forefigured the doom of the other.
THE fall of Babylon the great before the conqueror Cyrus is an object-lesson in prophecy of the fate that shall befall mystical Babylon of the age in which we live. The fall of the second Babylon was as much greater than the first as the city exceeded the tower. The ruin of mystical Babylon will be as much greater than the fall of ancient Babylon by the Euphrates as the world exceeds the city and the empire. In the career of the one may be read the career of the others.
The folly and fall of Babel are lessons for the ages.
WHAT do I mean?—Just this: The building of that ancient tower, the spirit that conceived it, the mad ambition which fostered it, the purpose of its building, the principles involved, and its utter overthrow, are types of human ambition and folly from that day to this.
GOD is one, the Creator of the heavens and the earth. There is one only Saviour, Christ Jesus the Lord. There is one moral standard, the holy law of God, proclaimed by His own voice amid the burning glories of Sinai, and manifested in still greater glory in the teaching, the life, the character of Jesus Christ. There is only the one life that saves; not that which comes by generation, but by regeneration, given by the mighty Spirit of God through His Word. Such has always been God's standard of conduct, God's means of salvation. Such was the case when God created man, gave him the earth for his home, and told him to multiply, scatter abroad, and make the whole earth like the Garden of the Lord. Such was God's standard of conduct and means of salvation when, after the Flood, God gave the same command. But man's rebellion brought Babylon; and this is the record of the response of unbelief:—
The Fall of Babel.
The Fall of Babel.
"And they said one to another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and bitumen had they for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name; lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Gen. 11:3, 4.
AND so they builded, and, according to their brick records, called the mighty structure they were rearing for themselves, for their own glory, Bab-il, the "Gate of God." It was their perverted plan of salvation. God, in His goodness, frustrated their efforts, broke down their tower, confounded their language, and called their effort, what all such efforts have ever proved to be, "Babel,"—confusion.
BABYLON of old stood for the same self-glorification, the same perversion of God's plans. She erected in the world a false system of government, a false system of education, which perverted the whole world, and which persists to the present time. She has made all the world drunken.
THE principle is as true now as then. God's standard is still the same. His Gospel is still "the power of God unto salvation." His Book is the guide, the standard, the creed, the ensign of His people. It is the one gathering, life-giving source of inspiration and soul-saving work in aggressive Christianity. Dowling's cry needs often to be repeated: "The Bible, I say, the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants. Nor is it of any account in the estimation of the genuine Protestant, how early a doctrine originated, if it is not found in the Bible." Tho you are a professed Christian, if, on the banner you are carrying or following, God alone is not glorified, you are bringing confusion among men. If you have, as a standard of conduct, erected a human creed which stands only for the Bible, the creed is not needed. If it varies in one essential from that Book, it is a standard of Babylon; it is exalting the human to the throne of the divine. If you have another means of salvation other than the unmerited grace in Christ Jesus our Lord, you are exalting a fraudulent saviour, and are bringing confusion to men."GATHER together" is God's call to His children, not to some country or city, but to Him, to His truth, His Word, His Gospel. He would heal His people of the wounds that have been gotten in Babylon. He would restore the primitive unity. He would sweep away the "refuge of lies," whether in human creed or scheme or plan; He would bring men again to the one God, the one Saviour, the one Gospel, the one Book, the one Life.
HE pities His people in Babylon. Many, nay, most of them, are there in ignorance. God knows it. He has saved them, and kept them, in spite of Babylon. But now He calls them. He tells them over and over again that "Babylon is fallen," and that certain destruction awaits, even tho she embrace the whole world. He calls men back from her creeds, her worship of the human. "Come forth, My people, out of her, that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues: for her sins have reached even unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities." See Rev. 18:1–5. But God not only calls us out of Babylon and away from her errors; He also calls us to the glorious salvation of "the everlasting Gospel." "Fear God, and give Him glory; for the hour of His judgment is come: and worship Him that made the heaven and the earth and sea and fountains of waters." Rev. 14:6, 7. Our God is worthy of all reverence and worship.