The Revelation of Jesus Christ - The Herald

The parable of the mustard seed becoming a great tree, etc., represents the Babylonian
character which the professing Church assumes in the days of the nominal Christian
emperors, patterning in its earthly administration after the kingdoms of the world. It is
very significant in this connection that the figure of a tree is elsewhere used to describe the
great world-empire over which Nebuchadnezzar is depicted as ruling. (Dan. 4.) We thus
have most clearly portrayed the reigning world-church, like the world-empire, making its
own laws and promulgating its own doctrines. It is in this way that the leaven necessarily
comes into the meal. How remarkable and true to history is the picture here presented.
The woman, the false Church, has in her hands the doctrine of Christ, the unadulterated
meal, the Christian doctrine. As one has very forcibly described it:
"She has authority over it (the doctrine of Christ); she can knead and mould it at her will;
she can add her traditions, her unwritten law, equal in authority to the written Word; she
can interpret and fix its meanings. Here is the leaven: it is the leaven of Church-teaching,
the essential error which wherever found, in whatever modified forms, quenches the Spirit
of God, deforms and mutilates the Word of God, gives the conscience another master than
the Lord Jesus Christ, and does all this cunningly in His name and by His authority, so
that the souls of His people even bow to the forged decrees and shudder at the thought of
resistance. [Let him that readeth understand!] For this is 'Mystery, Babylon the Great, the
Mother of Harlots and abominations of the earth'; and her merchants are the great men of
the earth, and by her sorceries are all nations deceived."
We next have described in strong, startling, symbolical language, the threatened judgment
upon Jezebel and her children:
"Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great
tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and
all the Churches shall know that I am He which searcheth the reins and hearts; and I will
give unto every one of you according to your works."--Verses 22,23.
Applying this language symbolically, as is evidently the only proper way, it would denote,
not what would be represented by a bed of ease, but rather a bed of pain. It seems very
evident that the purpose in these words of Christ is to contrast the state or condition
represented here with her former condition of pleasure, enjoyment, and ease. The harlot's
bed of ease and a sick-bed which usually follows, are thus contrasted. "One cannot be
indulged in without leading on, sooner or later, to the horrid sufferings of the other." The
same contrast is brought out in the vision of the final destruction of the Jezebel system,
called there, "Babylon the Great." (Rev. 17:5.) "How much she hath glorified herself, and
lived deliciously so much torment and sorrow give her." (Rev. 18:7.) "Those committing
adultery with her"--those who imbibe her spirit of selfish ambition and worldliness, those
who advance the claim of being the divinely appointed channel, etc. --will meet the same
punishment, suffering the bitter disappointment and distress of the great tribulation
coming, in which Babylon will eventually be destroyed. The expression, "I will kill her
children with death," teaches that all systems that have taken on the spirit of the "mother,"