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Two of the places which mark the career of power are also representatives of the world's idolatry, viz., Egypt and Babylon. The former shows its folly and debasement: the latter its enmity. For in Babylon the persecuting power is developed, and is first noticed in scripture as such. The Israelite in Egypt beyond doubt was persecuted by the idolatrous king, and this may have been part of the cry which God heard (Ex. 13:99And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine hand, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth: for with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:9)). But Babylon enforced idolatry by law; hence persecution. This gives to that city an awful pre-eminence in sin, so that its very name is given to the worst iniquity that ever defiled the world.
In Babylon the world's religion and power are combined against the confession of God; and Satan appears to rely for success in the terrors of a fiery furnace, besides making idolatry attractive with the world's music (the music continues to this day, if the furnace be gone). When the Gentile king set up his idol at Babylon, the world's religion was supreme. Doubtless he thought to strengthen the bonds between the various parts of his many-tongued and discordant empire. And he was wise in his generation.
But Satan's aim was not merely to bind the empire into one homogeneous whole, but to unite all in idolatry, and persecution of those who confessed God. And though the fiery furnace became a scene and triumph for the witnesses of God, yet he so far succeeded that the worshippers of the image afterward drank wine in praise of their false gods from the vessels taken out of the temple of the Lord. Nor is that the sum of the iniquity of the guilty city: for the Mede dares to take the place of God and forbids worship to any but himself. Idolatry, sacrilege, and pride are united in Babylon. But neither had the den of lions greater terror for the witnesses for the truth than had the fiery furnace in the days of Nebuchadnezzar. If in his day idolatry was rampant, it is pride that is prominent in the degree of Darius. This may not be so degrading as worshipping an image, but it is equally iniquitous. Darius may have been persuaded unthinkingly to make his decree; but there were Satan's cunning, and device behind it. The embodiment of all the sin and evil in the world is found in Babylon, and it leads on to the end: the deification of man as developed in Darius is of the world, or of Christendom as part of and supported by the world. When the name of Christ is altogether rejected, the climax of this deification will appear in Antichrist. Great Babylon follows in the wake of the first Babylon, and enforces its idolatries by the same means. There is this difference between them: in the first the secular power seems paramount; in the second it will be the religious corruption and persecution.
The deification of man appears to have begun with Nimrod. He was a mighty hunter—a giant among men. He went to Assyria and built Nineveh, and several other cities. The modern Arabs ascribe all the ancient great works to him, and suppose him to have been worshipped at Babylon after death by the name of Bel. The exaltation of human nature has ever been a part of the world's religion. Paganism had its gods among the heavenly orbs, powers of nature, &c., and soon learned to put men among them—its heroes became deities. And Christendom follows in its track, and has its heroes (according to man's estimate and heroism) and in a sense deifies them. The worship of idols, of images, may have sunk into deserved contempt (though still bowed down to in the dark places of the earth)—men attributing to their intellect the light shed by the Bible. But the exaltation of man goes on now, and if altars are not erected, monuments are, and names of a past age are dug up to satisfy man's craving for hero-worship, all paving the way for the advent of him who will sit in the temple of God and say that he is God.
We find three pictures of the world's religion in the three kings of Babylon which Scripture presents: Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, and Darius. The first is pagan and persecuting. The second mingles the vessels of the Lord's house with his idolatrous orgies; as now the fables of paganism are mixed with some of the truths of Christianity, thus producing the amalgam which makes Christendom. The third is blasphemous; it does not yet fully appear, but will be in full bloom when Antichrist claims also to be true God.
Satan could not burn out the truth, so he mixes fable with it, and here he has a measure of success so far as public profession goes. Christendom presents Belshazzar's feast on a large scale. For as he caused the vessels of the temple to be mingled with the vessels of his gods, so the old leaders in Christendom mixed revealed truth with fable on the one hand, and on the other persecution. For persecution did not vanish when the world became nominally Christian. Rather it became more bitter than its pagan ancestor, the Pharisees and Sadducees were like the Ritualists and Rationalists of the present. Superstition and infidelity mark both the ancient and the modern, they make void the word of God by their tradition and the commandments of men.
But the last or the Darius-phase of man's pride and unbelief is yet to come, though the seed is being scattered now, and the soil is well adapted to receive it. A man will take the place of God and say, “I am God and not a man.” But this the worst form of human wickedness will not be till after the church of God is gone, caught up to meet the Lord in the air, yea, even after the false antichristian church. Great Babylon is destroyed as it will be by the beast and the ten kings (Rev. 17). At this present time it is not the Nebuchadnezzar phase of gross idolatry which may yet cover Christendom; nor the Darius phase which is atheistic, though that too is spreading; but the Belshazzar phase where the truths of Christianity are mixed up with, and made to convey, the traditions of men. This is a transition from idolatry to atheism, from the worship of idols to the denial of God. This is the religious aspect of the world, although another force seems to have equal, if not greater, sway in this our time. Power was not sufficient for Satan's purpose, he brought in idolatry. But this too was not enough. For man's religion works on his fears; never on his love, and so he engages man in commerce. And all his hopes and fears, and all the love and hatred which engross his heart and fill it with care, are governed by the spirit of mammon.
Commerce which is presented in Tire exercises a deeper and more engrossing influence than the abominations of idolatry, and may be as much opposed to truth in spirit. For he who directs the world's power and its religion also guides its traffic. The world and all its affairs are yet a little longer under Satan's control (within certain limits) though men will not believe it. But God has fixed a time which the prince of this world cannot pass. Commerce may not be iniquitous in itself (though it opens a wide door for the indulgence of unrighteous ways, and needs more grace to resist than the open sins of the world), and the arch-foe may have brought it in, not so much to excite or qualify the covetousness of man, as in opposition to God who had pronounced a curse on the earth. Satan tries if possible to make it a pleasant abode, notwithstanding its sin and rebellion—a pleasant place at least for some, even if others find more sorrow and toil. Ambition and hatred may be actively stirred by power and religion, but the secret and sometimes unsuspected covetousness of the heart is nourished by traffic. Commerce in its aspect now is the innate covetousness of the heart of man systematized with the science of buying in the cheapest, and selling in the dearest markets. The maxim that guided traffickers in Solomon's day is still the rule in the commercial world. “It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer, but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth” (Prov. 20:1414It is naught, it is naught, saith the buyer: but when he is gone his way, then he boasteth. (Proverbs 20:14)). Riches are the great object of man's pursuit, and all his energies are employed for their attainment—not thinking of his irreparable loss even if he gained the whole world.
Tire gathered wealth. Her merchants were princes and kings; they were enriched by her merchandise. She does not show that bitter hatred that we see in others. Still she rejoiced at the fall of Jerusalem and imagined that her own riches would be increased by it (Ezek. 32:22Son of man, take up a lamentation for Pharaoh king of Egypt, and say unto him, Thou art like a young lion of the nations, and thou art as a whale in the seas: and thou camest forth with thy rivers, and troubledst the waters with thy feet, and fouledst their rivers. (Ezekiel 32:2)). Was Jerusalem a commercial city? Certainly Solomon raised it to such a height of splendor that silver was accounted as nothing. Solomon traded with Hiram, king of Tire, and had many ships with Tyrian sailors. He traded with Egypt also (1 Kings 9). It may be that Tire was envious of the wealth of Jerusalem under Solomon, and would emulate her in riches; and hence the joy of Tire at her fall. We know that Hiram was not pleased with the cities that Solomon gave him in reward for his services. But however the form of Tire's sin may differ from that of Egypt and Babylon, they unite in hatred to the city and the testimony of God, and in arrogance.
(To be continued, D.V.)