WE are now to begin a study of that wonderful period preceding the first advent of Christ, when God set His people to the special task of restoring and rebuilding the city and temple of Jerusalem. Because of the idolatry of God’s chosen people, He had allowed them to be carried captive to Babylon. He had appointed seventy years for their captivity; but when these seventy years were fulfilled, true to His word, the message was given for them to return to their home land.
And when the time came for God’s people to go forth from Babylon, it was just as imperative for them to go as it was before necessary for them to enter that city.
At the appointed time, through His prophets, the Lord gave the proclamation for them to leave the city of the Chaldeans and return to the city which He had chosen: “Go ye forth of Babylon, flee ye from the Chaldeans, with a voice of singing declare ye, tell this, utter it even to the end of the earth; say ye, The Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob.” Isa. 48:20. “In those days, and in that time, saith Jehovah, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together; they shall go on their way. . . . They shall inquire concerning Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come ye, and join yourselves to Jehovah in an everlasting covenant that shall not be forgotten. My people have been lost sheep. . . . Flee out of the midst of Babylon, and go forth out of the land of the Chaldeans. . . . Behold, I will punish the king of Babylon and his land, . . . and I will bring Israel again to his pasture, and he shall feed on Carmel and Bashan, and his soul shall be satisfied upon the hills of Ephraim and Gilead.” Jer. 50:4-6, 8, 18, 19.
Those who remained behind at such time in the city of Babylon, did so at their peril. The providence of God at last opened the way for the chosen people to return to their own land; and those who for riches, possessions, business considerations, remained behind, failed thereby in walking in the opening providences of God. Sooner or later they would be engulfed in the ruin of the ill-fated city of Babylon.
So to-day there is a great call for God’s people to come out of Babylon. This proclamation is represented under the vision of an angel making the mighty call to the chosen ones: “I saw another angel coming down out of heaven, having great authority; and the earth was lightened with his glory. And he cried with a mighty voice, saying, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, and is become a habitation of demons, and a hold of every unclean spirit, and a hold of every unclean and hateful bird.” “And I heard another voice from heaven, saying, 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.” Rev. 18:1-5.
This proclamation pertains to that mystic Babylon of the apocalypse of John, and is acknowledged by Christian people generally to represent the apostate church. Since that vision was given to John, the old city of Babylon, in Chaldea, has had no important place in the history of the world. But this mystic Babylon is the place where there are still some of God’s chosen people, some honest souls; and the proclamation to them is, “Come out of Babylon,” come out of her confusion of doctrines, her babel of false teachings, out of her sins and her iniquities.
He who remains in Babylon after hearing this proclamation, does so at his own peril. For the word is to flee, “that ye have no fellowship with her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” And so to-day there is a call, similar to that call of old out of Babylon. God’s people are now to flee from the mystic city of confusion; they are to set their faces Zionward. They are to go forward in the path that leads them not to the old city in the land of Palestine; but they are to fix their eyes upon the city which has foundation, whose builder and maker is God,—the glorious New Jerusalem. The gates of that city are soon to open to admit the nation that keeps the truth. “Blessed are they that do His commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.”
And so this call now out of Babylon to the heavenly Jerusalem, is a work of reformation, just as that work back there under Josiah and Zerubbabel, Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi was also a work of reformation. When God calls for His people to walk in His opening providences, He asks them to line up their lives with the true principles of righteousness.
And so, after the seventy years of captivity, God’s people were to go back to the city of Jerusalem to raise up the foundations that had fallen down, to build the walls and the temple that had fallen into decay. And similarly, God calls on those living in the last days to become restorers, repairers. “And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in. If thou turn away thy foot from the Sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day.” Isa. 58:12, 13.
The temple now to be completed is the great soul temple of Christ’s body, the church. This spiritual temple is to be completed and to stand forth in all its transcendent beauty before our Lord shall come. As in that time God’s people were to prepare the temple and the city for the first advent of the Messiah, so God’s people now are to restore and rebuild the great temple of truth for the second coming of the King of Glory.
Can you doubt, therefore, the importance of knowing the history and the lessons of that pre-advent reformation? God help us to study the time, and gain lessons that we need in these days, and to know the work that He has for each of us to do.