ment that the creed power is now beginning to prohibit the Bible
as really as Rome did, though in a subtler way."(641)

When faithful teachers expound the word of God, there arise men of
learning, ministers professing to understand the Scriptures, who denounce
sound doctrine as heresy, and thus turn away inquirers after truth. Were
it not that the world is hopelessly intoxicated with the wine of Babylon,
multitudes would be convicted and converted by the plain, cutting truths
of the word of God. But religious faith appears so confused and
discordant, that the people know not what to believe as truth. The sin of
the world's impenitence lies at the door of the church.

The second angel's message of Revelation 14 was first preached in the
summer of 1844, and it then had a more direct application to the churches
of the United States, where the warning of the judgment had been most
widely proclaimed and most generally rejected, and where the declension in
the churches had been most rapid. But the message of the second angel did
not reach its complete fulfilment in 1844. The churches then experienced a
moral fall, in consequence of their refusal of the light of the advent
message; but that fall was not complete. As they have continued to reject
the special truths for this time, they have fallen lower and lower. Not
yet, however, can it be said that "Babylon is fallen, ... because she made
_all nations_ drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication." She has
not yet made all nations do this. The spirit of world-conforming and
indifference to the testing truths for our time, exists and has been
gaining ground in churches of the Protestant faith in all the countries of
Christendom; and these churches are included in the solemn and terrible
denunciation of the second angel. But the work of apostasy has not yet
reached its culmination.

The Bible declares that before the coming of the Lord, Satan will work
"with _all_ power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness
of unrighteousness;" and they that "received not the love of the truth,
that they might be saved," will be left to receive "strong delusion, that
they should believe a lie."(642) Not until this condition shall be
reached, and the union of the church with the world shall be fully
accomplished throughout Christendom, will the fall of Babylon be complete.
The change is a progressive one, and the perfect fulfilment of Rev. 14:8
is yet future.

Notwiths