“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” To come out of Babylon is to be converted to the true scriptural doctrine of the personal coming and kingdom of Christ; to receive the truth on this subject with all readiness of mind, as you find it plainly written out on the pages of the Bible: to love Christ’s appearing, and rejoice in it, and fully and faithfully to avow to the world your unshrinking belief in God’s word touching this momentous subject, and to do all in your power to open the eyes of others, and influence them to a similar course, that they may be ready to meet their Lord. Christ has said, “Whoso is ashamed of me and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he shall come in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels. Who are you that you should be ashamed of what God has written in his word respecting the kingdom of Christ, and that you should wish to spiritualize it into some other meaning than God has expressed, for the purpose of making it more popular with those that fear not God? Stand up before the world and dare honestly to avow your belief in what the Almighty God has spoken. Give up the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life; wean yourself from the love of this present world, and be looking for that blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Be just as ready, also, to receive and confess all that God has been pleased to reveal touching the time of the establishment of the kingdom of Christ, as any other part of the subject. Why be ashamed of the time of Christ’s coming?CHMP 18.1

Many are beginning to say, “We are satisfied that the usual notion about a spiritual kingdom of Christ and a temporal millennium, is altogether groundless, and that the coming of Christ is doubtless near;” but they feel a very great reluctance either to express or to hold any belief respecting the time. It is very popular not to know any thing about it, and a very convenient way of escaping reproach, to be able to say, “we know nothing about it.” Thousands are glad that they don’t know any thing about it, and are very fully determined that they will continue to know nothing about it; and some, though they profess to have examined the subject, are hindered from getting any light respecting the time, by the conviction that if they receive the light they must avow it, and this will subject them to reproach. To escape reproach, therefore, they skulk away and hide themselves in darkness. Shame on these miserable skulkers! How will they bear the blazing light of Christ’s face at His glorious appearing! They will want rocks and mountains to hide them in that hour.CHMP 18.2

By this time many will begin to say with a sneer of contempt, “You are trying to make it out that none but Millerites can be saved.” Hold one moment, for your soul’s sake, and tell, if you can, how he can be prepared for the kingdom of Christ, who is opposed to Christ’s reigning in person on the throne which God has sworn to give him, and who is ashamed to believe and avow what God has revealed touching the time of Christ’s appearing? If you can see any way into the kingdom of God for such a soul as that, I frankly confess you can see what I cannot. Do you still complain that I should try to make it appear that you are not a Christian? I have no such desire. I pray God that you may make it appear you are a Christian. But I do say, if you are a Christian, come out of Babylon! If you intend to be found a Christian when Christ appears, come out of Babylon, and come out Now! Throw away that miserable medley of ridiculous spiritualizing nonsense with which multitudes have so long been making the word of God of none effect, and dare to believe the Bible. It contains the wisdom of the infiniteCHMP 19.1

God as it is, and needs no alterations and emendations from men, as though they could tell what God means, better than He has been able to express it in his own language. He has sworn with an oath that he would raise up the seed of David to sit on David’s throne; and the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign for ever and ever!CHMP 20.1

And now away forever with your miserable transcendental philosophy, that would make the throne of David a spiritual throne, and the coming of Christ to sit upon it as a spiritual coming, and his reign a spiritual reign. Thanks be to God, His kingdom cannot be blown up into such spiritual bubbles as these, for a thousand, or even 365 thousand years, and then blown for ever away into some etherial something, which some sneering infidel has defined, to be sitting on a cloud and singing Psalms to all eternity. No, no. Jesus Christ has been raised up in David’s flesh immortalized, and he shall come in that flesh glorified, “and there shall be given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom that all people, nations, and languages shall serve Him: His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and His kingdom that which shall not be destroyed. And the kingdom and dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom under the whole heaven, shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; and the saints of the Most High shall take the kingdom and shall posses the kingdom forever, even forever and ever.” This is God’s word; and all the spiritualizers on the footstool cannot alter it. They may undertake to tell what God means by it; but God has given His own meaning in His own language, and He will make it good in fulfilling it as He has caused it to be written. If God had meant something else and not this, He would have told us what He did mean. Just as though when God had given us truth in symbolic language, and then interpreted it that it might be fully understood, He had after all left it for men in their upstart folly, to improve His own revelation. My soul is pained when I reflect how the word of God has been rendered powerless upon the consciences and hearts of men, by the attempts which have been made to alter it into something else. And now a multitude of ministers of all the multiplied sects of Antichrist will begin to say, “Thus saying, thou reproachest us also,” and will perhaps accuse me of dealing in wholesale denunciation, when I refuse to acknowledge them to be the true ministers of Christ. All I have to say is, if you are the true ministers of Christ, come out of Babylon, and no longer be opposed to the coming of Christ as the Bible declares he will come, to take his seat forever on the throne which God has sworn to give Him. I do not say that you and your hearers may not have been converted to Christ; but I do say, if you have, it remains for you to show it by coming out of Babylon, and by standing no longer opposed to the reign of Jesus. God never will alter His word to suit your carnal desires. He has written it, and as he has written it he will fulfill it; and if you are ashamed of it, he will be ashamed of you. Dare you believe the Bible? dare you preach it? Dare you bring out its plain testimony respecting the manner, the objects, and the time of Christ’s coming, and tell the world that it is truth, and meet the consequences? Or will you turn away with a sneer, and call it Millerism, and go on prating about a spiritual reign of Christ? I tell you, if you continue in that course you will be reckoned with Antichrist, when the glorious Son of David comes to take his throne. “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.”CHMP 20.2

II. WHAT ARE WE TO UNDERSTAND BY THE FALL OF BABYLON?

IV. IT REMAINS THAT I SPEAK OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF REFUSING TO COME OUT OF BABYLON