Revelation Chapter 18 THE DECLINE AND FALL OF BABYLON (Rev 18:1-24) Introduction to This Chapter It should be said from the outset that Chapter 18 of Revelation has an uncanny resemblance to Volume Four of Studies in the Scriptures. It seems most probable that the “voice from heaven” in Rev 18:4 is the Seventh Messenger to the Church, Charles T. Russell — the same as is symbolized in Rev 17:1 as “one of the seven angels who had the…
BABYLON, THE GREAT CITY It is not to be expected that either the Mother or the daughters, who are now claiming to reign with Christ, who are now claiming that His Kingdom is already set up (that Christ’s kingdom is represented in them), who are now claiming that their union with the kingdoms of this world is legitimate, can have the bridegroom’s approval. It is not to be expected that they realize their true condition–that they are disloyal to the…
“Declare you among the nations, and publish; set up a standard; say, Babylon is taken.”—Jer. 50:2. While our message for today is “meat in due season” to the Household of Faith, and in every way important to be understood, it is, nevertheless, a subject difficult to treat without giving offense, without seeming harsh. Bear with me, then, while expressing what I believe to be the Divine Message in as kindly a manner as I know how. The Scriptures which I…
Babylon’s Doom continued We continue with what the prophet Isaiah had to say in respects to the daughter of Babylon in Isa 47: “Therefore, hear now this, thou that art given to pleasures; that dwellest carelessly; that sayest in thine heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children. But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of…
Babylon’s Doom continued “The horrible decrees of Papacy–the reproach and reward of which Protestantism also is incurring by her present compromising association with her–for the burning, butchering, banishing, imprisoning and torturing of the saints in every conceivable way, executed with such fiendish cruelty in the days of her power by the arm of the State (the dragon), whose power she demanded and received, await the full measure of just retribution; for she is to receive “double for all her sins.”…
Babylon’s Doom “Upon the prophetic page we may clearly read the doom of Babylon, Christendom; and it is none the less clearly expressed in the signs of the times. That her destruction will be sudden, violent and complete is thus forcibly stated: “And a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus, with violence, shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.”…
Babylon–Mother and Daughters continued “The claims of apostolic succession and clerical authority are almost as presumptuously set forth by some of the Protestant clergy as by the Papal priesthood. And the right of individual private judgment–the very fundamental principle of the protest against Papacy, which led to the Great Reformation–is now almost as strenuously opposed by Protestants as by Papists. Yet Protestants are fully aware that it was in the exercise of the right of private judgment that the Reformation…
Babylon–Mother and Daughters continued “Let it not be forgotten that while the various reformation movements did valuable work in the “cleansing of the sanctuary,” yet only the temple class, the sanctuary class, has ever been the true Church, in God’s reckoning. The great human systems called churches, have never been more than NOMINALLY the Church. They all belong to a false system which counterfeits, misrepresents and hides from the world the true Church, which is composed only of fully consecrated…
Babylon–Mother and Daughters “Now some sincere Christians, not yet awake to the decline of Protestantism, and who do not realize the relationship of the various sects to Papacy, but who perceive the unrest and the doctrinal upheavals in all the religious systems, may still be anxiously inquiring— If all Christendom is to be involved in the doom of Babylon, what will become of Protestantism, the result of The Great Reformation? This is an important question; but let the reader consider…
“THE DOOM OF BABYLON”–“CHRISTENDOM” continued “In symbolic prophecy a “city” signifies a religious government backed by power and influence. Thus, for instance, the “holy city, the new Jerusalem,” is the symbol used to represent the established Kingdom of God, the over-comers of the Gospel Church exalted and reigning in glory. The Church is also, and in the same connection, represented as a woman, “the bride, the Lamb’s wife,” in power and glory, and backed by the power and authority of…