This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 9: “A City Called Confusion”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- This lesson is built upon an unbiblical assumption, that the woman of Revelation 12 is the church instead of Israel.
- This assumption drives the characterization of Babylon as Catholicism in contrast with the “pure church” which is assumed to be Seventh-day Adventism.
- All of these assumptions are derived from EGW’s Great Controversy revelation.
Because this lesson assumes from the beginning that the pure woman with the twelve stars standing on the moon in Revelation 12 is the pure church when, in context, it actually describes the nation of Israel, the entire trajectory of the narrative goes awry. Yet this assumption comes directly from Ellen White’s Great Controversy paradigm.
Although it is not overtly stated, the strong implication of the lesson is that the harlot of Revelation 17 which rides the scarlet beast is the Catholic Church. All of these assumptions, therefore, will direct the interpretation of Adventism’s “second angel’s message” of Revelation 14. The second angel’s call that Babylon is fallen and that people are to come out of her is assumed, within Adventism, to be a universal call for people to leave Catholicism and her harlot daughters—the Sunday churches—that worship on the false Sabbath established by Rome.
In context, these conclusions are not clear.
First, in Revelation 12, the woman described represents the nation of Israel whose child, the Messiah, was the object of the dragon’s predation, but he was rescued and caught up to heaven, and the woman was hidden in the wilderness in a place prepared by God for 1260 days. This passage is a compressed account of the Lord Jesus’ birth, ascension, and the future protection of Israel during 1260 days of persecution.
Adventism, however, makes this passage about themselves: the “true church” going through the tribulation while the devil prowls about attempting to kill them.
Revelation 17 does indeed describe Babylon and compares the future Babylon to “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.”
This Babylon is described as a city that rides on the beast that came out of the sea. In the end, God causes the beast and the kings under its power to turn on the woman and to destroy her.
The fact that she is described as a harlot and a temptress and sorcerer suggests that she is apostate and leading people into spiritual adultery. It seems that she has significant spiritual power, yet she also seems to have enormous political influence and financial power. In chapter 18, in the day Babylon is destroyed, all the kings and all the nations mourn because their source of merchandise and goods and income and trade have been wiped out in a single day.
Ellen White insists that Babylon represents Catholicism, yet these chapters suggest a broad-spectrum understanding of her. She and the beast clearly have antipathy for Israel, since Israel has been hidden for the period of a great tribulation, yet the woman is compared not just to the Tower of Babel and its confusion but also to Babylon the Great.
Interestingly to me, EGW compares this harlot to Babylonian religion, while the reference to Babylon the Great reminds us of Babylon the empire, the head of gold on the vision of the statue Nebuchadnezzar saw and had to have interpreted by Daniel.
Of course, Babylon was intensely pagan—and we may rightfully deduce that this last-day Babylon is selling antichrist propaganda along with her goods. In fact, it seems as if all the political powers that do business with her become involved in her antichrist religion as well. They make agreements with her that bring them great wrath while selling their souls to the devil.
The second angel’s message, that Babylon has fallen and God’s people are to come out of her, is a call to believe the one true God and to give one’s allegiance to Him alone. It is a call to trust Christ at the risk of being marked an enemy of the state.
Furthermore, this biblical scenario emphasizes that the final deception will be a blend of financial, political, and spiritual forces that conspire to marginalize any who do not make that deal with the devil and turn away from Christ.
The real issue with Babylon is the marginalizing of Christianity, of the Lord Jesus, of worshiping Him alone. The entire world will engage with Babylon for its own profit and luxury, and those who love the Lord Jesus will be excluded from all commerce because they refuse to do homage to the beast.
The lines between Christ and antichrist will become very clear, and those who do not embrace Babylon—whatever its ultimate identity will be—will be socially outcast.
Yet God calls His own to leave Babylon because it is fallen. It is utterly sinful, and it cannot survive. Only those who believe in the one true God who created the heaven and the earth will survive! †
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