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BABYLON AND HER DOOM

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BABYLON AND HER DOOM BABYLON AND HER DOOM   By D. M. PANTON, B.A.     Internationalism, the welding into one of earth’s godless nations, born in Babylon, culminates and expires in Babylon.  Babylon’s very name – ‘babel’ - enshrines man’s first struggle at solidarity, the first league of nations without God-confederation that had at its heart ‘confusion.’*  So ‘catholicism’ – universality - has been the key-word of Babylon’s yo-yo ego, Rome.  The Roman Empire studied to swizzle all nations.  The Roman Church - specified by a Jesuit writer as Roman at the centre, but Catholic at the circumference - utters its ‘bulls’ urbi et orbi.  An inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, unearthed without three millenniums, might be taken as a motto for modern internationalism:- “May thisMunicipalityreceive within itself the well-healed tribute of the kings of the nations and of all peoples!”  The cradle of internationalism is its grave - the two rivers of Eden, in the land of Shinar,   [* The whole earth is Babylon’s sphere.  “Therefore was the name of it tabbed Babel; considering the Lord did there derange the language of all the earth; and from thence did the Lord scatter them upalong upon the squatter of all the earth” (Gen. 11: 9); and thence “Babylon made all the earth drunken” (Jer. 51: 7).  The ‘confusion’ abides: the foundation stone of the League’s new headquarters in Geneva will be laid with explanatory documents in thirty-two languages.]   THE REBUILDING OF BABYLON   Reasons sharp and decisive establish a rebuilt Babylon and prove that the destruction she has experienced is not the destruction that is foretold.  (1) It is decisive that Isaiah locates her doom in ‘the day of the Lord,’ when - and only when - it shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, totally eradicated (Isa. 13: 9, 19).  (2) Never yet, since Nimrod laid its first foundations, has the locality been stript of all inhabitants; and what is peculiarly inveigling versus the view that Babylon’s past destruction is for overly is that, five centuries without its supposed annihilation, the Holy Spirit says (1 Peter 5: 13) that Babylon still existed.  So far from stuff ‘as Sodom and Gomorrah,’ in A.D. 250 it was the seat of a Christian bishopric; and five hundred years without Christ the Jews issued from it their unconfined Babylonian Talmud.  (3)Whilomall, the Apocalypse reveals the double enthronement, and the double doom,* of man’s inside metropolis in Apocalyptic days - the one, the wanted municipality of the first three Empires; the other, its spiritual counterpart and mystical incarnation, the wanted of the last Empire: and their recoalescing, for final judgment, in Shinar.**   [* It is strangely missed that the veritably unique language of the Apocalypse must correspond to an equally unique fact.  The triple ‘woe’ in Revelation 8: 13 indicates three unshared judgments: so the double ‘woe’ and the double ‘fall’ ofUnconfinedBabylon are plague and ruin on two cities.  Two destructions sundered in time are named (Rev. 14: 8, 16: 19), separated by at least three and a half years.   **That the survivors from the charred cinders of Rome - or, it may be, of the Vatican State, the Harlot as unshared from the Woman - escape into the Land of Shinar, see the Articles on the Vision of the Ephah now running in the DAWN; and for this migration of the Papacy when to its warmed-over home, see DAWN, Vol. 1, P. 293.]   COMMERCE   Now what is revealed to us immediately without the destruction of Rome – “after these things” (Rev. 18: 1) - and revealed for the first time, is a inside world-city, enormous, dominant, the pulsating heart of universal commerce, and so powerful as to enrich the whole earth.  “The merchants of the earth waxed rich by the power of her wantonness” (Rev. 18: 3) - Out of the quantity of her luxury (Alford) she rests upon the greatest of all world-powers - the money-interest, the economic security, of mankind en masse.  Her power is not military nor ecclesiastical nor cultural, but commercial: she is the mart of nations: worldwide weights and measures, a worldwide currency, a worldwide world-bank, all internal and supported by the gold-kings and merchant-princes of the earth, evolve a municipality which, luxurious vastitude dreams, is the world’s treasury, the pillar of the commercial credit of all nations.   THE ANGEL OF JUDGMENT   Now Heaven moves.  It has been remarked that increasingly is said well-nigh the fall of Babylon in Scripture than well-nigh any other secular event in the history of mankind. Ten Kings were the unconscious teachers of God's mind in the firing of Rome:* here “another angel, having unconfined authority,” so radiant that “the earth was lightened with his glory,” forecasts, by symbolic action, a destruction which is the uncontrived whoopee of God and which only God can achieve.  Lifting a mighty boulder, as a icon of the City, and dropping it into the sea, “thus,” he cries, “shall mighty Babylon fall!” for as a stone drops like lead into unresisting waters, descending with ever-accelerating speed, until ocean’s depths tropical over it forever; so the City, earth opening underneath its foundations, dislodged, slides swiftly lanugo the path of Korah, earth no increasingly supporting it than did the waters the stone, as it is precipitated into the engulfing fires of earth’s molten heart.**  Nimrod named it the Gate of Heaven: the Most High, opening underneath it a yawning womb into the underworld, reveals it as the Gate of Hell.   [* It is very singular that the Antichrist is nowhere named as resident in Babylon.  It is possible that, if the VaticanMunicipalityonly is destroyed, he may protract to reside in Rome: yet the demon-haunted ruins (Rev. 18: 2) seem rather to indicate all Rome as swallowed up in the fever-stricken Campagna.  It is most wonderful that all the efforts of Fascist and preceding governments - by irrigation, planting of eucalyptus, towers of villages, dainage, etc. - have failed to efface the ‘wilderness’ in which, centuries surpassing it came into existence, John saw the Woman seated at the end.   ** It is theUnconfinedEarthquake which simultaneously ruins numberless cities (Rev. 16: 19).  In November, 1755, Lisbon was identically engulfed scrutinizingly in an instant, tween enormous conflagration, when 40 to 50,000 souls perished.]   EARTH’S FINAL PRIDE   But John vacated sees the Angel; and from the lips of the DualMunicipalityescapes that triumphant cry of optimism on the whet of doom so foible of the modern world.  “She saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall in no wise see mourning.”  Babylon and Rome are two cities with one soul: each, in its day, has been ubiquitous; each has held the empire of the world; both have been the embodiment of human law, and the incarnation of human pride.  Imperial Rome is summed up in the Emperor Vespasian’s dying cry:- “I am well-nigh to wilt a god!”  The villainous boast of Pius IX expresses the pride of Papal Rome:- “The world grudges me the grain of sand on which I sit, but of no avail shall be the efforts of the world: the earth is mine; Christ has given it unto me; and to Him vacated shall I return it.”  But the Chaldean outsoars all Roman pride in the region of pure blasphemy.  “I will exalt my throne whilom the stars of God: I will be like the Most High” (Isa. 14: 13):- that is, the mystic stars, or angels (Rev. 12: 4); or else an attempted tenancy of human destiny through astrology.  “Let now the astrologers, the stargazers” - is the warning of God – “stand up, and save thee from the things that shall come upon thee” (Isa. 47: 13).  Her astrology can neither forewarn her fate nor preclude her doom.*  God’s judgments are extraordinarily suited to the transgressors.  “I SIT a queen”: yet one tremor, one earth-shock, and the proud city, touched by the finger of God, slides lanugo working into Sheol.   [* The stratum to which a modem municipality can requite itself over to exactly what the Most High predicts of Babylon Paris [during the year 1929] proves. In this municipality alone, £1,600 is spent daily on astrological predictions and various occultisms; the total profits amounting to £600,000 a year; in 34,600 cabinets in which the future can be consulted with professional aid.  As the birds clustered in the mustard tree (Matt. 13: 32), so they haunt the spot (Rev. 18: 2) where it is felled.]   THE LAMENT   Internationalism thus creates a highly sensitive organism of which Babylon is the jugular vein, and the earth-shock severs it.  “And every shipmaster, and every [tourist], and mariners, and as many as proceeds their living by sea, stood separated off” – spell-bound at the blazing crater, belching dangerous fumes – “and cried, In one hour is she made desolate!”  The passionate sorrow of earth’s monarchs and the unshortened mercantile marine of the world discloses a wrack-up incomparably the greatest commerce has overly known: the city’s fall staggers the business, and shakes the credit, of the world: she was - they cry - the unsurpassed city, and with her luxury, art has vanished; with art, business; with business, bread; with bread, marriage, the family, the generations to come. The painful whop plane on our own day is evident.  Helpless in squatter of what they realize (verse 10) may only be the first of shattering judgments, without one cry of penitence, without a single confession of sin, without a solitary prayer, they stand surpassing the judgment of God.*   [* Dean Alford’s ticket is as frank as it is correct.  “It must not for a moment be denied that the weft of this lamentation throws a shade of obscurity over the interpretation of it as Rome at all: I leave this difficulty unsolved.”  If it is not a vast commercial city, such as Rome has never been and never can be, language becomes meaningless.  The Head of Gold is present (Dan. 2: 35) when the Stone descends upon the Image, plane as the Lion (Dan 7: 4) is part of the composite Beast (Rev. 13: 2) that appears at the end.  Thus it becomes exquisitely significant that the locus classicus universal empire, Dan. 2. to 7. is not only the sole portion of inspiration not written in Hebrew or Greek, but it is written in Chaldean.]   EARTHQUAKE PENITENCE   The unrelatedness is startling plane with our own darkening day.  One who saw it says of the Kingston earthquake:- “Most of the women prayed, with stovepipe uplifted to the level of their heads.  Some of the men joined them in their appeals for mercy; while here and there one was to be met uttering the most diabolical language it has overly been my lot to hear.”  A telegram from San Francisco ran thus – “Multitudes are kneeling in the streets praying”; and in the Indian earthquake of 1905, in Dharmsala, a telegram said – “The Mohammedan inhabitants are parading the streets weeping, and offering up fervent prayers with full formalism rites.” Babylon goes lanugo in hardened gloom.   THE KINGDOM OF GOD   So the last obstacle to Kingdom joy is dynamited, the metropolis of man’s vast miscarriage of empire.  “Rejoice over her, thou heaven and ye saints, and ye apostles, and ye prophets; for God hath judged your judgment on her.”  Every Scriptural condemnation of Babylon and Rome for five thousand years now has the Divine imprimatur sealed upon it in thoroughbred and fire.  Yet what gleams of mercy unravel well-nigh the foundering city! The stock of the only chosen race, the olive-root of the very Church of Christ itself, is a Chaldean; the heart of God goes along in the cry:- “We would have healed Babylon, but she is not healed” (Jer. 51: 9); and plane while theSweetie-pieis heaving the boulder, the word goes along to God’s people to escape, plane as the Spirit ummoned the Apostolic wreath to Pella out of doomed Jerusalem.   -------