The Kings—Her Friends

It is not that she outwardly ignores the cross of Christ. She is not heathen. She may publish Christ crucified, but she refuses to know Christ rejected. She does not continue with Him in His temptations, nor consider the poor and needy Jesus. (Luke 22; Psa. 40.) The kings of the earth and the merchants of the earth are her friends, and the inhabitants of the earth are her subjects.
Is not, then, the rejection of Christ the thing she practically scorns? Surely it is. And again I say that the prevailing thought of the Spirit about her is this—she is that which is exalted in the world while God's Witness is depressed and she is in defiance of that depression, for she knows of it. Babylon of old well knew of the desolation of Jerusalem. Christendom externally knows and publishes the cross of Jesus.
Babylon of old was very bold in her defiance of the grief of Zion. She made the captives of Zion to contribute to her greatness and her enjoyments. Nebuchadnezzar had done this with the captive youths, and Belshazzar with the captive vessels.