THE FALL OF BABYLON

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Feb 13, 1907

THE FALL OF BABYLON.

Numbered—Weighed—Divided.

BABYLON the Great! Babylon, the beginning of kingdoms! Babylon, the mightiest and grandest city of earth, "the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency"! Babylon, the greatest religio-political conglomeration the world has ever known! Babylon, in whose lap has been poured riches and magnificence without stint! Babylon, the mighty tree in whose branches gather fowl of every kind! Babylon, the great drag net which gathers of every kind of fishes! Babylon, the mother of confusion! Babylon, who has made "all the earth drunken," "the nations have drunk of her wine" of fornication! Babylon, in whose merchandise is found "the bodies and souls of men"!

SPIRITUALLY, Babylon stands for organized perversion and corruption of the truth and work of God. It is not unreligious, but religious; but Babylon's religion is perverted and apostate, and therefore confuses. We find Babylon in the first book of the Bible and in the last book,—her earthly beginning and doom. Over and over are we told in the Bible of her power and the tremendous extent of her influence. Frequently is she symbolized as a woman, and designated as "the lady ["the mistress,"] of kingdoms." She is a seemingly successful rival of the "daughter of Jerusalem."

THE origin of Babylon is suggested by the prophet Isaiah in the fourteenth chapter. He there calls Lucifer, the apostate angel, "the king of Babylon." Verses 4-14. How he became the king of Babylon is revealed in his unholy ambition to dispossess God of His throne, and himself reign universally. In this he introduced a wrong standard into God's universe. That standard was not against worship; it set up the worship of itself. It put force in the place of love; expediency in the place of right; "might-is-right" in the place of "right-is-might." Had he succeeded, confusion and chaos and destruction would have reigned, and the universe would have become an eternal void. Many followed the false standard; many held to the true; and in the mixture, confusion — Babylon — has continued and grown apace to the present.

BABYLON'S first organized perversion of truth and right is recorded in Genesis 11, and there it is of politico-religious character, as it has ever been since, endeavoring to control both bodies and souls of men. God directed Noah and his descendants to scatter abroad, and "multiply, and replenish the earth." The followers of "the king of Babylon" 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." It was organized

perversion of God's plan; it was self-salvation and self-exaltation. And then they named it, as their very bricks of which they builded it read, Bab-Il, the "Gate of God," or the "Gate of Heaven." But Jehovah looked upon the whole selfish scheme and called it what it truly was, Babylon—confusion.

THERE began the Empire of Nimrod in the building of Babylon. Diversified indeed is her career, overthrown, humiliated, conquered, by rival kingdoms, yet her principles, her religion of self-exaltation and self-salvation, her purpose of overweening ambition to control Church and State, her perversion of truth, corrupted all the kingdoms of earth from that day to the present with the wine of her fornication. Thus she became the mother of all later schemes and organizations of like kind. That first great Babylon reached her acme of glory under one of earth's truly great rulers, Nebuchadnezzar. But even before that, God had declared by His prophet that "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah." Isa. 13:19. Time went on, and the city increased in riches and magnificence. God warned her mighty ruler by a dream of an image in which Babylon, the head of gold, should be succeeded by inferior kingdoms symbolized by silver, brass, and iron, and iron and clay. Nebuchadnezzar denied the prophecy and warning by building an image to Babylon all of gold, and demanding universal homage to Babylon's greatness, magnificence, power, perpetuity.

WAS Babylon true? or God? Would her perverted principles of right stand and she endure upon them? or would God's truth abide, and she find in her confusion of error her destruction? Twoscore years pass. Babylon has upon her throne Belshazzar the weak, the dissolute, the riotous, the idolatrous blasphemer of God, the worshiper of Babylon and her deities. He holds high festivals over her greatness. He demands the choicest libations of the costliest vintage in the rarest chalices. He calls for the sacred vessels of gold and silver of which Babylonian cupidity had plundered the holy temple at Jerusalem. He drinks from them to Babylon's gods of gold and wood and stone. But even while he drinks, a shining hand writes upon the wall of the banqueting room the mystical and awful words, Numbered, numbered; Weighed; Divisions. God's prophet makes known the fulfilment of God's predictions, and the fruitage of Babylon's sowing: "GOD HATH NUMBERED THY KINGDOM AND FINISHED IT. "THOU ART WEIGHED IN THE BALANCES, AND ART FOUND WANTING. "THY KINGDOM IS DIVIDED, AND GIVEN TO THE MEDES AND PERSIANS." And before the frightened king had risen from the banquet, half-crazed messengers were speeding to him with the cry, "Babylon is taken on every quarter," and the frightened populace raise the frantic recital, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen." No might or scheme or power or wealth of man could save a city or nation from destruction which sowed within herself the seeds of error, confusion, destruction, death. See Daniel 5; Jeremiah 50 and 51; Isaiah 47.

THAT history God has given as a lesson for all the nations and peoples which would follow Babylon. It is a lesson for rulers and statesmen and politicians. It is a lesson for popes and prelates and preachers and teachers. It tells the mighty truth, burke it as we may, that the nation, the city, the church, that is not builded on the principles of God's righteousness, be the greatness and power and wealth what they may, is doomed to fall.

THE endurance, the safety, the worth, of a church, is not to be measured by numbers, or wealth, or ornate service, or priestly succession, or great claims, or hoary traditions, or sacred places, or multitudinous shrines, or lists of canonized saints, or connection with the State; but by her life-union with God, as manifest in fruits of righteousness, by her living witness to His word, by separation from the principles which mold the world, by repudiation of all union with the State, by a humble walk with God at all times, holding forth the word of life in all places. The worth, the endurance, of a State is not her extent, her wealth, her power in battle-ship or army, her world influence, her great scholars and universities, but in the principles of righteousness fostered in public and private life by her sons and daughters. The endurance and worth of a city is not to be measured by her great public buildings, her banks, her commerce, her schools, her boulevards and parks, her public libraries; all these are mere shams, hollow machines when the ulcers and cancers of dishonest officials, of intemperance and dissipation, of robbery and oppression, of dens of vice and infamy, are eating at her very heart and sapping her very life blood. And all the above principles have their application to the individual soul.

THE great Judge of all is weighing worth and character. Who is fittest to survive? Who is worthy of eternal existence? He sees not as man sees. No earthly glamor binds to the rottenness beneath. No surface plating shuts from His all-piercing eye the base metal. No whited sepulcher hides the corruption. No mass or ceremony or official robes can hide the base and selfish heart. According to deeds, secret or heart-cherished, will the judgment be. To-day men go on in their pleasure, lust, and pride, to-morrow they may read their doom, "Weighed in the balances and found wanting." Nor England's nor America's greatness will save them any more than did Babylon's. The profession, nor the power, nor the wealth, nor the ritual, nor the priestly succession, nor one nor all of great churches will save them unless the garments be white, washed in the blood of the Lamb, and the heart be wholly obedient to God. "We would have healed Babylon" was God's desire; but the sad truth is, "she is not healed." "Forsake her," flee unto God. There is refuge in Him. "What then shall one answer the messengers of the nations? That God hath founded Zion, and in her shall the afflicted of His people take refuge."