BABYLON has had much to do with the people of God in all ages. Her name appears no less than two hundred sixty-four times in the sacred Volume. With her history is inextricably intertwined the history of the church of God from earliest times, and it will continue so to be until that church shall triumph over all the powers and deceptions of great Babylon, the ensnaring enchantress of the ages.
The long-buried bricks that babble of the glories of ancient Babylon tell us what her character was—and just as truly what modern Babylon's is. God named her when the bolt of His displeasure smote the head of her great tower; when He drove the wedge of a confused speech into her organization. That bolt of His disapproval, like a meteor fallen in the sea, sent wave on wave of humanity in concentric circles widening and expanding to the confines of the earth, with Babylon, "the beginning of kingdoms," the center of the radiation; but wherever they went, they carried with them that distinguishing element of Babylon—confusion. That character persists. It has worked out along different lines in different lands, but the result is the same, tenacious, insistent, persistent, unchanging—confusion.
God did not leave man in ignorance as to the creation of the various forms of life that exist upon the earth. We have the record of it in His Word; Adam had it from God's own lips; and the world had Adam for the space of nine hundred and thirty years to testify truly concerning the creation of man; and that true testimony was handed down by his posterity. Nevertheless, Babylon from earliest times taught a pantheistic evolution, a doctrine of the emanation of the human from the divine substance. The historian says of Babylon upon this point:5
The fundamental ideas of the pantheistic and emanative theories which were the basis of all religion in Chaldea and Egypt, as well as in India, left everything uncertain as to the creation of mankind. Men, as well as all other created beings, were supposed to have issued from the very substance of the Deity . . . and they came into being spontaneously.
Evolution, pantheism, agnosticism, and infidelity—these are not inventions of modern times or modern genius. They are as old as Babylon; they spell confusion; they were all germinant in the character and teachings of the Babylon of old.
God gave to man explicit instruction in regard to the order of creation, the distinction between the various species. But great Babylon must confuse the minds of men upon this point also. So we have among the fragments of the writings of Berosus the following account of the condition of things in the new-created world, as believed in Babylon:
There was a time in which there existed nothing but darkness, and an abyss of waters, wherein resided most hideous beings, which were produced of a twofold principle. There appeared men, some of whom were furnished with two wings, others with four and with two faces. They had one body but two heads—the one that of a man, the other that of a woman—and likewise in their several organs both male and female. Other human figures were to be seen with the legs and horns of goats; some had horse's feet; while others united the hind quarters of a horse with the body of a man resembling in shape the hippocentaurs. Bulls likewise were bred there with the heads of men; and dogs with fourfold bodies, terminating in their extremities with the tails of fishes. In short, there were creatures in which were combined the limbs of every species of animals.
Here again are the teachings of Babylon spelling out in plainest letters that name which God gave to that system as well as to that system's great monument—confusion.
Situated at the junction of upper and lower Asia, within reach of the two great rivers communicating with the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the city of Babylon became the depot for caravans from the East and the West, as well as the port for ships arriving from Africa, Arabia, and India. "Everything proves," says the historian, "that this great city was from remotest antiquity, one of the chief commercial centers of the East." International highways radiated in all directions from Babylon, and the most precious fabrics and products from all countries were exchanged there. She manufactured the most gorgeously colored cloths of woollen and linen; and while Babylon fondled the nations upon her knees, she taught them the secrets of her traffic in virtue. "Everything proves," again says Lenormant, "that the most unbounded and shameless naturalism played a great part in the worship of the Babylonians. . . . Belit had a magnificent temple in the center of Babylon, where an infamous custom compelled every woman once in her lifetime to give herself up to a stranger. . . . At Cutha, Nana or Zarpanit was worshiped under the name of Succoth Benoth, a name referring to the prostitutions in honor of that goddess."
Knowing these things, what a striking meaning there is in these words of the Revelator, picturing the iniquities of spiritual Babylon in the doings of her prototype, Babylon of old:
"I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stone and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations, even the unclean thing of her fornication, and upon her forehead a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of the Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." Rev. 17:3-6. "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, that hath made all the nations to drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." Rev. 14:8. "For by the wine of the wrath of her [Babylon's] fornication all the nations are fallen; and the kings of the earth committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness." "And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more; merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stone, and pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet; . . . and merchandise of horses and chariots and slaves; and souls of men." "Thy merchants were the princes of the earth, for with thy sorcery were all the nations deceived. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all that have been slain upon the earth." Rev. 18:3, 11-13, 23, 24.
As Babylon of old sat at the gate of the nations dispensing delicacies, soul corruptions, and doctrines of confusion to all corners of the earth, so sits spiritual Babylon to-day with the same influence over the nations, disseminating dogmas of confusion, trafficking in the "souls of men," the pages of her history red with the blood of martyrs; arrayed in purple and scarlet and silk and fine linen and precious stones, but stall-feeding in her heart the lion of an undying lust for the lives of those who deign to serve God as they believe God requires, untrammeled by her trappings and unswerved by fear of her anathemas.
As Babylon of old turned aside from the laws of God and trampled upon their precepts and brought confusion into the ways of men and nations, so has spiritual Babylon opposed herself to the law of God, set up rites and ceremonies of her own, and exalted herself even above the God she professes to serve. Babylon of old sought to seat herself in the sky by building a tower that would place her there; and in harmony with that persistent character we find the leader of spiritual Babylon denominated in holy writ "the son of perdition," who "opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." 2 Thess. 2:3, 4. This thing spiritual Babylon has done in declaring the pope above all law, able to grant indulgences and forgiveness for sin, able of the wrong to make right, and able to change even the law of the Most High. Her boast is that she never changes. How true it is! Every step in the history of spiritual Babylon was taken, before she took it, by her temporal prototype, and every such step in every age has spelled her name CONFUSION.