The Second Angel's Message—The Fall of Babylon

Notes

1. Babylon means confusion. The term originated at the time of the building of the tower of Babel, when the language of mankind was confounded. Babylon stands not only for confusion, but for self-exaltation and all the spirit of the world. As old Chaldea led in perverting God's truth, nearly all the false doctrines that have cursed the world have their roots in Babylon of old. The Papacy succeeded to the place of old Chaldea as the power ruling over the minds of men, and, through it, human traditions and the spirit of self-exaltation have permeated Christendom. Modern Babylon sums up the whole spirit of worldliness, carnality, and the substitution of man's way for God's way that to-day is found in the world. Out of this the Lord calls His people. Rev. 18:1-5.

2. The result of rejecting light is a moral fall into darkness and error. As noted in last week's lesson, the message of Revelation 14 is a gathering into one great system of truth all the light of past ages. It was also noted that the great testing truth of this message is the fourth commandment of the decalogue. Therefore the fall of Babylon must be a fall from the principles and teaching of that law; not from the outward formal recognition of the law merely, but from the living principle,—the law in Christ Jesus within the heart. "The first angel's message of Revelation 14, announcing the hour of God's judgment, and calling upon men to fear and worship Him, was designed to separate the professed people of God from the corrupting influences of the world, and to arouse them to see their condition of worldliness and backsliding. In this message God had sent to the church a warning, which, had it been accepted, would have corrected the evils that were shutting them away from Him."

"If God's professed people would receive the light as it shines upon them from His Word, they would reach that unity for which Christ prayed, that which the apostle describes, 'The unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.' 'There is,' he says, 'one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism.' Such were the blessed results experienced by those who accepted the Advent message. . . . If this doctrine did this for the few who did receive it, it would have done the same for all, if all had received it."

3. The ten commandments are many times referred to as the Lord's way. Note a few other expressions: "They also do no iniquity; they walk in His ways." "Make me to understand the way of Thy precepts." "I will run the way of Thy commandments." "Teach me, O Lord, the way of Thy statutes." "Make me to go in the path of Thy commandments." "But they also have erred through wine, and through strong drink are out of the way; the priest and the prophet have erred through strong drink, they are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink; they err in vision, they stumble in judgment."

4. The law of God is a great wall of protection to those who walk therein. A breach has been made in that law. The Sabbath has been torn from its place in the bosom of the law, and the "man of sin" has built up a wall of Sunday-keeping in its place. Others have daubed this wall with "untempered mortar" by trying to bolster up an unscriptural institution for which there is no "thus saith the Lord."

5. When Jerusalem of old rejected the light sent by the Lord's prophets, it was declared, "As a cage full of birds, so are their houses full of deceit; therefore they are become great, and waxen rich." Jer. 5:27. And the call came to come out of her: "O ye children of Benjamin, gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa." Jer. 5:27; 6:1. So also the rejection of light in the days of Christ and the apostles led to a moral fall that filled Jerusalem again with every evil, and brought upon it swift doom. Those times find their parallel in the last days. As Jesus wept over Jerusalem's rejection of light, looking down to the last generation, he "saw the world involved in deception similar to that which caused the destruction of Jerusalem. The great sin of the Jews was their rejection of Christ; the great sin of the Christian world would be their rejection of the law of God, the foundation of His government in Heaven and earth. The precepts of Jehovah would be despised and set at naught. Millions in bondage to sin, slaves of Satan, doomed to suffer the second death, would refuse to listen to the words of truth in their day of visitation. Terrible blindness! strange infatuation!"—Great Controversy, page 23.