The Great Controversy - Righteousness is Love

294announcing the fall of Babylon must apply to religious bodies that wereonce pure and have become corrupt. Since this message follows the warningof the judgment, it must be given in the last days; therefore it cannot refer tothe Roman Church alone, for that church has been in a fallen condition formany centuries. Furthermore, in the eighteenth chapter of the Revelation thepeople of God are called upon to come out of Babylon. According to thisscripture, many of God's people must still be in Babylon. And in whatreligious bodies are the greater part of the followers of Christ now to befound? Without doubt, in the various churches professing the Protestantfaith. At the time of their rise these churches took a noble stand for God andthe truth, and His blessing was with them. Even the unbelieving world wasconstrained to acknowledge the beneficent results that followed anacceptance of the principles of the gospel. In the words of the prophet toIsrael: "Thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty: for it wasperfect through My comeliness, which I had put upon thee, saith the LordGod." But they fell by the same desire which was the curse and ruin ofIsrael–the desire of imitating the practices and courting the friendship of theungodly. "Thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playedst the harlotbecause of thy renown." Ezekiel 16:14, 15.Many of the Protestant churches are following Rome's example ofiniquitous connection with "the kings of the earth"–the state churches, bytheir relation to secular governments; and other denominations, by seekingthe favor of the world. And the term "Babylon"–confusion–may beappropriately applied to these bodies, all professing to derive their doctrinesfrom the Bible, yet divided into almost innumerable sects, with widelyconflicting creeds and theories.Besides a sinful union with the world, the churches that separated fromRome present other of her characteristics.A Roman Catholic work argues that "if the Church of Rome were everguilty of idolatry in relation to the saints, her daughter, the Church ofEngland, stands guilty of the same, which has ten churches dedicated toMary for one dedicated to Christ."–Richard Challoner, The CatholicChristian Instructed, Preface, pages 21, 22.And Dr. Hopkins, in "A Treatise on the Millennium," declares: "There is noreason to consider the antichristian spirit and practices to be confined to thatwhich is now called the Church of Rome. The Protestant churches havemuch of antichrist in them, and are far from being wholly reformed from . .. corruptions and wickedness."–Samuel Hopkins, Works, vol. 2, p. 328.