18:23. [And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee;] And the voice of the Bridegroom and of the Bride.—Christ and His true Church.—Jer. 7:34; 16:9; 25:10; 33:11.
Shall be heard no more at all in thee.—Neither Christ nor His saintly ones have had anything to say in the affairs of the nominal church since 1878; nor have they wished to have. “The rejection of Babylon (‘Christendom’), in 1878, was the rejection of the mass of professors—the ‘host,’ as it is termed by Daniel, to distinguish it from the Sanctuary or Temple class.”—C. 180.
For thy merchants were the great men of the earth.—They said so, themselves. They have attempted to direct everything from prize fights up. Rev. Rainsford even tried to run a beer saloon, but was not able to make it a coin-producer for the church and gave it up.—Isa. 23:8; 47:15; Rev. 18:3, 11, 15; Ezek. 27:21, 36.
For by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.—“Consider, again, why Babylon is so named. Evidently, because of her many errors of doctrine, which, mixed with a few elements of Divine Truth, make great confusion, and because of the mixed company brought together by the mixed truths and errors. This sin of holding and teaching error at the sacrifice of truth is one of which every sect of the church nominal is guilty, without exception. Where is the sect in which you can obey the Master's words and let your light shine? We know of none.”—C. 181; Rev. 17:2; 2 Ki. 9:22.
18:24. And in her was found the blood of Prophets.—They are accounted as having slain the Prophets because they refuse to heed them, and to that extent caused them to lay down their lives needlessly!—Rev. 16:6; 17:6.
And of saints.—They are accounted as having slain the saints because they have given no heed to their warnings, and to that extent caused them to die in vain.—Jer. 51:49.
And of all that were slain upon the earth.—The great European war, and other wars, are justly laid at the door of the system that has perpetuated the doctrines of Divine right of clergy and kings; and it is for this reason that God has decreed her sins must be wiped out first with symbolical blood (Rev. 14:20), and afterwards with literal blood in the red sea of anarchy.—Ex. 14:21-28; Isa. 63:1-6.
The Traveler Inquires The Way To Heaven
