Soon after the Flood as the earth and its inhabitants were beginning the process of recovery after such a catastrophic event in just the fourth generation from Noah, we are introduced to an important individual. In Genesis 10:8, 9 we read that “Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.” The description of “mighty one” given in the original Hebrew has an alternative definition of “despot.” To paraphrase the whole description in Hebrew, it would read thus: “He began to be a despot in the earth. He was a mighty hunter of men to lead them away from the Lord.” Thus he went and founded a kingdom:

“And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar” (verse 10).

Under satanic inspiration, the ambitious warrior Nimrod proceeded to form a new apostate religion to glorify himself and his mother Semiramis or Rhea, thought of as the primeval goddess. He trained a considerable army of young men who shared his warlike disposition and with them established his power in the city of Babylon.

“The men of Babel had determined to establish a government that should be independent of God. . . . Had they gone unchecked, they would have demoralized the world in its infancy. Their confederacy was founded in rebellion; a kingdom established for self exaltation, but in which God was to have no rule or honor. Had this confederacy been permitted, a mighty power would have borne sway to banish righteousness—and with it peace, happiness, and security—from the earth.”1

History describes the beginning of Babylon as it is tied to the account of the “Tower of Babel”:

“Babylon is often designated in the cuneiform texts by a symbolical name, ideographically written, meaning ‘the town of the root of languages.’ . . .

“The story of the ‘Tower of the Tongues’ was among the most ancient recollections of the Chaldeans, and was one of the national traditions of the Armenians, who had received it from the civilized nations inhabiting the Tigro-Euphrates basin. Berosus gives the story in a form almost identical with that of the Bible, which will be found further on in the chapter on the Babylonians. . . .

“Some years since an inscription of King Nebuchadnezzar was recovered and translated, in which he boasts of having repaired and completed the tower in honour of one of his gods. He calls it ‘The Tower of the Seven Stages, the Eternal House, the Temple of the Seven Iluminaries of the Earth’ (the seven planets) to which is attached the most ancient legend of Borsippa. . . .

“Nebuchadnezzar adds, ‘Men had abandoned it since the days of the deluge, speaking their words in disorder. The earthquake and lightning had shaken the crude brickwork and split the burnt brickwork of the revetment, the crude brick of the upper stories had crumbled down into mere piles.’”2

The Bible account talks about a city and a tower. The city was related to a government, while the tower indicates worship. Thus the tower of Babel stood for rebellion against God; rebellion against the government of God and rebellion against the true worship. This is confirmed by the following statement:

“[The Babel builders] determined to keep their community united in one body and to found a monarchy which should eventually embrace the whole earth. . . . Had they succeeded, a mighty power would have borne sway, banishing righteousness and inaugurating a new religion.”3

This new religion was to replace the worship of God with a counterfeit religion. It consisted in drawing the attention away from the plan of redemption by replacing it with a system of rituals, mysteries, and multiple deities while at the same time it recognized God. And as God dispersed human beings from the valley of Shinar, each civilization inherited and practiced a variant of this mother of all mysteries, Babylon.

It is from the land of Shinar that God called Abraham and said: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee” (Genesis 12:1).

The prophet Isaiah foretold the fall of literal Babylon (see Isaiah 47:10, 11).

The fall of the splendid city of Babylon, whose magnificence had been one of the seven wonders of the world, was a shocking surprise to the ancient world. Belshazzar, in a bold act of defiance, presumed to bring to his drunken feast the sacred vessels taken from the temple in Jerusalem.

The Bible account says: “Belshazzar, whiles he tasted the wine, commanded to bring the golden and silver vessels which his father Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of the temple which was in Jerusalem; that the king, and his princes, his wives, and his concubines, might drink therein” (Daniel 5:2).

Inspiration ads: “The king would prove that nothing was too sacred for his hands to handle.”4

If there is one sin that reaches the limit of God’s forbearance—if there is an act that seals the destiny of an individual or of a nation—it is the blatant disregard for the authority of God by mixing the sacred with the profane. God is swift in dealing with this challenge. This was also evidenced with Nadab and Abihu when they presented strange fire before the Lord. Now, Belshazzar’s Babylon proved to be no exception.

We read, “In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote” (verse 5).

The Spirit of Prophecy confirms: “In that last night of mad folly, Belshazzar and his lords had filled up the measure of their guilt and the guilt of the Chaldean kingdom. No longer could God’s restraining hand ward off the impending evil. Through manifold providences, God had sought to teach them reverence for His law. ‘We would have healed Babylon,’ He declared of those whose judgment was now reaching unto heaven, ‘but she is not healed’ (Jeremiah 51:9). Because of the strange perversity of the human heart, God had at last found it necessary to pass the irrevocable sentence. Belshazzar was to fall, and his kingdom was to pass into other hands.”5

“The message of Revelation 14, announcing the fall of Babylon must apply to religious bodies that were once pure and have become corrupt.”6

What is spiritual Babylon? is the question that this sobering statement addresses with a definition that can be applied in very broad strokes. As we see the situation of today’s Christian world, we need to not just see the apostasy that is prevalent, but also examine how and where we are standing.

Balaam, as he was attempting to curse the people of God while viewing the camp from the mountaintop, said this under inspiration, “From the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Numbers 23:9).

In order to be a pure and peculiar people, God’s faithful ones have always had to respect this Heaven-ordained principle. They are to be in the world, but they are not to be of the world. God’s church is not to seek the endorsement of ecumenical councils nor the sanction of the state. Inspiration is clear on this point:

“Consider, my brethren and sisters, that the Lord has a people, a chosen people, His church, to be His own, His own fortress, which He holds in a sin-stricken, revolted world; and He intended that no authority should be known in it, no laws be acknowledged by it, but His own.”7

The other principle that is just as important because it is tied to the first is the following, as ordered through Moses: “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you” (Deuteronomy 4:2).

Then again Solomon instructs and councils: “Every word of God is pure: he is a shield unto them that put their trust in him. Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar” (Proverbs 30:5, 6).

What was the beginning of spiritual Babylon? The answer reads thus:

“The very beginning of the great apostasy was in seeking to supplement the authority of God by that of the church. Rome began by enjoining what God had not forbidden, and she ended by forbidding what He had explicitly enjoined.”8

The apostle Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians sounded a warning in order that the recently established church would be watchful. The members of the church at that time believed that Jesus would return in their lifetime, but Paul under inspiration sent a clear warning about what was supposed to take place prior to the second coming, and to be aware that there was a danger lurking within the ranks that would soon become evident. See 2 Thessalonians 2:3–5. To the Ephesians he warned: “For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears” (Acts 20:29–31).

No sooner had the last of the disciples died, that Satan’s agents became bolder with their heresies in their attack against the purity of the gospel. In order to gain new converts, unfaithful pastors began adopting heathen customs in their worship.

Within twenty years after the death of John the Revelator, the perversion of the truth of Christ had become widespread. About the history of this century Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, a German church historian and eloquent lecturer, wrote this:

“It is certain that to religious worship, both public and private, many rites were added, without necessity, and to the offense of sober and good men.”9

“The Christians were pronounced atheists, because they were destitute of temples, altars, victims, priests, and all that pomp in which the vulgar suppose the essence of religion to consist. For unenlightened persons are prone to estimate religion by what meets their eyes. To silence this accusation, the Christian doctors thought it necessary to introduce some external rites, which would strike the senses of the people, so that they could maintain themselves really to possess all those things of which Christians were charged with being destitute, though under different forms.”10

The next step to follow was the adoption of pagan holidays, many of which Christians even in our day celebrate. But the principal of them all was the day of the sun as a festival day. Before the close of the second century the form of worship had been compromised with heathen customs, that the professed Christian world was adopting heathen positions and forms during their worship and prayers—so much so that the heathen were accusing them of sun-worship. Regarding this Tertullian wrote in his Apology for the Christians:

“Others, again, certainly with more information and greater verisimilitude, believe that the sun is our god. We shall be counted Persians perhaps, though we do not worship the orb of day painted on a piece of linen cloth, having himself everywhere in his own disk. The idea no doubt has originated from our being known to turn to the east in prayer. But you, many of you, also under pretense sometimes of worshiping the heavenly bodies, move your lips in the direction of the sunrise. In the same way, if we devote Sunday to rejoicing, from a far different reason than sun-worship, we have some resemblance to those of you who devote the day of Saturn to ease and luxury, though they too go far away from Jewish ways, of which indeed they are ignorant.”11

All this was taking place one hundred and fifty years before the proclamation of the conversion of Constantine.

Not satisfied with the gains he was making among the believers, Satan took straight aim at the canon of the Scriptures. The great center of learning in Alexandria was home to a congregation of Christian believers that during the time of the apostle Paul had become eminent in the knowledge of the Scriptures but also was exposed to Greek influence. Gnosticism had started to creep into the church and it was starting to become evident in the leadership. Tertullian (around 160–around 221 a.d.) wrote to one of these scribes the following:

“Now this heresy of yours does not receive certain Scriptures; and whichever of them it does receive, it perverts by means of additions and diminutions, for the accomplishment of its own purpose; and such as it does receive, it receives not in their entirety; but even when it does receive any up to a certain point as entire, it nevertheless perverts even these by the contrivance of diverse interpretations.”12

Beginning with Justin Martyr who was born the year of John the Revelator’s death, heresies were conveyed, magnified, and then implemented into the manuscript reproduction of the Scriptures. Tatian the Assyrian, Justin Martyr’s pupil, wrote a harmony of the gospels called Diatessaron. In it were incorporated Gnostic ideas and heresies. A bishop in Siria at that time became so alarmed that he ordered two hundred copies of this Diatessaron thrown out because it was getting confused with the true gospels. Clement of Alexandria, Tatian’s pupil, founded a missionary school where all these heresies and pagan philosophy were being taught as pure gospel. All this became amplified by Origen, his pupil, who further corrupted the New Testament manuscripts in his work Hexapla, which was six versions of the Bible side by side with commentaries and additions, all in one book. This became the manual which Jerome mainly used in the making of the Latin Vulgate in the year 382 a.d. The Latin Vulgate then became the official version of the Bible for the Catholic Church.

All the groundwork was ready by the time the papacy was established. Because of the thoroughness of the confusion fomented at that time by the events described, the papacy took control, and through the union with the secular power it plunged the known Christian world into a period of spiritual darkness commonly known as the Dark Ages.

Amid the spiritual darkness of this period, certain individuals such as John Wycliff, Jan Huss, and Jerome of Prague were prominent. Their influence was to be heard as a shout of freedom throughout Europe. On October 31, 1517, “Babylon” was dealt a mighty blow when Martin Luther nailed his 95 thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. As this great reformer stood valiantly against Rome and its dogmas, there arose simultaneously throughout Europe, men who also lifted the banner of freedom from the spiritual darkness that had been imposed on them for so long. The main point of dissent from Rome was first to recognize the Word of God as the only authority in spiritual issues. People learned that the soul may be justified only by faith in the merits of Jesus Christ, and that the penitent sinner did not need any act of penance in order to be forgiven. They discovered, too, that the individual has been endowed by God with a conscience and given freedom to follow its dictates. In this all of the different reformers agreed.

As it was with the fall of old Babylon that the profane wine was placed in sacred vessels, likewise spiritual Babylon will through legislation impose sacredness on a common day. The inspired pen wrote:

“When Protestant churches shall unite with the secular power to sustain a false religion, for opposing which their ancestors endured the fiercest persecution, then will the papal sabbath be enforced by the combined authority of church and state. There will be a national apostasy, which will end only in national ruin.”13

There will be no neutral ground. We will either be part of Babylon or part of the saved. We read further:

“Men in authority will enact laws controlling the conscience, after the example of the papacy. Babylon will make all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. Every nation will be involved.”14

The fate of the world will then be sealed. The fall of Babylon will be complete.

Today, as we observe the events and see the devil hard at work trying to bring the world, the religious bodies, society, and families into a state of utter confusion, may we hear the same voice that spoke to Abraham in the land of Shinar: “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee.” As the enemy of our souls presents this world as his work of complete confusion, God will point to us before the universe and before the angels and declare: “Here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus” (Revelation 14:12).