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We fully recognize the
heartening fact that a host of true followers of Christ are scattered all
through the various churches of Christendom, including the Roman Catholic
communion. These God clearly recognizes as His own. Such do not form a part
of the "Babylon"
portrayed in the Apocalypse. The matter of loyalty or disloyalty to truth is,
in the ultimate, a question of personal relationship to God and the
fundamental principles of truth. What is denominated "Babylon," in Scripture, obviously
embraces those who have broken with the spirit and essence of true
Christianity, and have followed the way of apostasy. Such are under the
censure of Heaven.
1. Historical Background Imperative.—In order to set forth what
Seventh-day Adventists believe on this point, it is essential first to get
the background of historical applications that reach back some eight hundred
years. The earliest application of the symbolic term
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"Babylon" to the Papacy, or the Roman
Catholic Church, appears in the writings of the twelfth-century Waldenses and
Albigenses. But along with their identification of the dominant
ecclesiastical apostasy of their day as the organization portrayed in the
Bible prophecies, they also stated that many of God's children were still in
papal Babylon.
And these they were constrained to "call out," or urge to separate,
from her apostasies. A long list of spiritual-minded medieval Catholics
follow in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—including pseudo-Joachim,
Olivi, Eberhard, Wycliffe, Huss, and Savonarola—all boldly asserting that
"Babylon" represents the corrupted church of Rome, and warning of
her coming retribution. And for this some even went to the stake.
2. Used by Protestant Founders.—During the Protestant
Reformation all leaders taught essentially the same, from Luther, in 1520,
onward. These men were scattered over Germany,
Switzerland, France, and England. In Britain were men like William Tyndale, Bishops
Ridley and Hooper, Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Bale, Jewell, and Coverdale,
and John Knox and Lord Napier in Scotland. Ridley's farewell
letter before his martyrdom, in 1555, repeatedly referred to "Babylon," and called for separation from Rome.
3. Continued in Post-Reformation.—In post-Reformation times
some thirty prominent expositors maintained the same position, including such
famous men as King James I, Joseph Mede, Sir Isaac Newton, Bishop Thomas
Newton, Methodism's founder John Wesley, and Johann Bengel and various other
Continentals. Even in Colonial America, John Cotton,
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Roger Williams,
Increase Mather, Samuel Hopkins, and more than a score of others, down to
President Timothy Dwight of Yale in 1812, made similar applications. One was
the noted Baptist historian Isaac Backus, who in 1767 wrote: " 'She
['the church of Rome'] is the mother of harlots, and all churches who go
after any lovers but Christ, for a temporal living, are guilty of playing the
harlot.' " (See Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vol. 3, p. 213.)
Earlier, Roger Williams had complained to the British Parliament about
Protestants' clinging to the spirit and doing the deeds of papal Babylon.
Meanwhile, several Old World Protestant writers had noted that Babylon, the
"mother" of Revelation 17, had "daughters" that bore the
same family name. And believing that certain other Protestant bodies had
retained some of the characteristics and errors of the Papacy, they began to
include them under the family name "Babylon." Among these writers were
such non-conformists as Browne, Barrow, and John Milton.
4. Babylon, Mother and
Daughters.—In the early nineteenth-century Old World Advent
awakening, Lacunza, from within Catholicism, called Babylon
"Rome on the Tiber."
And various Anglican and non-conformist leaders—such as Cuninghame, Brown,
M'Neile, and Ash—pressed the application. The Protestant Association,
organized in Exeter Hall in 1835—with such men as Croly and Melvill—in 1839
sounded the "out of Babylon"
call, including both Protestantism and Popery.
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And the Dublin Christian Herald, edited by Anglican
Rector Edward N. Hoare, asserted in 1830 that the abominations of papal Babylon, the mother,
"covered all Christendom." Alexander Fraser, of Scotland, and Anglican David Simpson, of England, held
similar views. Fraser said that all churches were tinged with the spirit of Babylon. And Simpson
declared that Protestant churches, of "whatever denomination,"
which partake of the same spirit and doctrines and circumstances, must be
considered daughters.
In North America, passing Elias Smith and Lorenzo Dow, who wrote strongly on
the Protestant daughters as related to Rome,
Disciples churchman Samuel M. McCorkle declared that Protestantism had been
befuddled by the wine of Babylon,
and insisted that the "mother" church had Protestant daughters. And
prominent Baptist clergyman Isaac T. Hinton (1799-1847) plainly hinted that
nationally established Protestant churches are, because of church-state union
and compromise, daughters of Babylon.
5. Employed in Advent Awakening.—Then, during the Second Advent
Movement in America in the 1830's and 1840's, there was growing proscription
among the larger Protestant bodies against those who held premillennialist
views, and increasing ecclesiastical opposition to emphasis on the Second
Advent—particularly among the Methodists and Congregationalists of New
England—forbidding the dissemination of Adventism. This opposition led to the
sounding of the call to "come out" from the churches that rejected
the Second Advent message and that clung to the tainted doctrines of Babylon. That was how
the "call" came to be sounded at that time. It was not a
condemnation of the host of godly individuals in the various Protestant
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churches, but of the
official attitudes and actions in rejecting the vital Second Advent truth. (A
historical record appears in Prophetic Faith of Our Fathers, vols.
1-4.)
6. A Thousand Years of Precedent.—In the light of the
historical record of a thousand years, there is nothing new or strange about
Adventist employment of the term that had constantly been used by other bodies,
as they felt that light and truth had been rejected and opposed. And the
application of the term "daughters" of Babylon has similarly been used for some
three hundred years.
Groups and organizations such as the Fundamentalists, the International Council
of Christian Churches, and the National Association of Evangelicals have
withdrawn from the older organizations because of what they believed to be
modernist apostasy entrenched in the controlling leadership of various
denominations.
7. Evidence of Departure.—Such are the historic precedents.
Adventists believe that the term "Babylon,"
referred to in Revelation 17, has been rightly applied to the Papacy. Great Babylon, however,
according to verse 5, is mentioned as a "mother." So the term
"Babylon"
rightly belongs to others also. We therefore believe that wherever there are
individuals, or groups of individuals, that hold to and advocate the
unchristian doctrines, practices, and procedures of the papal church, such
may justifiably be denominated "Babylon"—hence,
part of the great apostasy. Wherever such conditions obtain, Adventists, with
others, believe that the guilty organizations may rightly be denominated
"Babylon."
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8. Matter of
Personal Relationship.—We believe that conditions in the religious
world will worsen, not improve, as we approach the world's climax (1 Tim.
4:1, 2; 2 Tim. 3:1, 5). And the gulf between apostasy and fidelity to truth
will become wider and wider as prophecy fulfills before our eyes. But our
statements regarding Babylon
do not have the defamatory character that some would impute to us. They are
uttered in sorrow, not for invidious comparisons.
We are conscious of the fact that membership in any church is not, in itself,
evidence either of fellowship with Christ or of fidelity to the fundamentals
of the gospel. As was the case of Israel of old, the Christian
church throughout the centuries has been plagued by the presence of a
"mixed multitude" (Ex. 12:38; Num. 11:4; Neh. 13:3). And this is
particularly true of these latter times, when many have departed from the
faith, as clearly foretold in Bible prophecy (1 Tim. 4:1; 2 Tim. 4:3, 4). We
firmly believe that God is calling today for His children to break with
everything that is alien to the fundamental, apostolic principles of truth.
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