The Midnight Cry
“Modern Babylon mixes church and state while opposing real biblical truth.”
The second angel’s message says: “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication” (Revelation 14:8).
The Bible speaks about two Babylons: one literal and one spiritual. There are many characteristics that are common to both Babylons.
In ancient Babylon the church was strongly connected with the state. The king was worshipped as a god. Modern Babylon is a mixture of church and state. The pope becomes the head of the state and of the Catholic church.
Ancient Babylon had no respect for the liberty of conscience, while modern Babylon tolerates freedom of conscience only wherever it cannot do otherwise.
Old Babylon had her own religious system in opposition to God’s religious system. Modern Babylon has her own religious system in opposition to biblical truth, and so on.
The message of the second angel, however, is not talking about Babylon, the mother. It is talking about her daughters, the popular churches that follow the basic principles of the mother: Sunday keeping, immortality of the soul, rejecting the sanctuary message, and others.
In 1844, when the message of the soon return of Christ and other kindred truths were rejected by the main churches in the United States, the message that “Babylon is fallen” was applied to those churches for despising the light from Heaven.
“Our hopes now centered on the coming of the Lord in 1844. This was also the time for the message of the second angel, who, flying through the midst of heaven, cried, ‘Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city’ (Revelation 14:8). That message was first proclaimed by the servants of God in the summer of 1844. As a result, many left the fallen churches. In connection with this message the midnight cry [See Matthew 25:1–13] was given: ‘Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet Him.’ In every part of the land, light was given concerning this message, and the cry aroused thousands. It went from city to city, from village to village, and into the remote country regions. It reached the learned and talented, as well as the obscure and humble.”1
This message has a special connection with the warning given by the angel of Revelation 18:2, “Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird.” This is the reason why we, who are living in the closing scenes of world’s history, should pay special attention to it. Those who don’t learn its lessons are likely to repeat its mistakes. May the Lord help us!