BINDING BABYLON

 

Binding Babylon, Becoming Zion

If we want to be Zion material, we have to bind the spirit of Satan inside ourselves. If we want Zion as a community, we have to bind the spirit of Babylon inside our collective life. There is no workaround. Zion cannot rise while we still cradle Babylon’s instincts.

Isaiah’s prophecies about Babylon and Zion are not museum pieces about long dead empires. Nephi tells us that Isaiah “said many things that are hard for many of my people to understand, since they do not understand the method of Jewish prophesying,” and that his words “are valuable for mankind, very valuable to them in the last days.”

Nephi copies whole chapters for his children and for us so we will know the covenants of the Lord and that “no other nation on earth would crucify their God.” In other words, Nephi stands between Isaiah and us and says, “Do not file this under ancient history. These words are about you.”

Babylon is everything we build with fear and pride. Zion is everything God builds with humility, charity, and the lived knowledge of Christ. Only one of these can stand.

The Pattern We Are Invited to See in the Mirror

Babylon is:

• every system we are tempted to erect that runs on control, hierarchy, coercion or self righteousness
• any place Lucifer’s fingerprints appear as pride, ascent and domination
• anything shaped by that spirit, which therefore shares Babylon’s fate

Nephi diagnoses the same disease when he describes churches which are built up “to themselves so they can make money and oppress the poor,” causing “envy, antagonism and malice,” with “secret conspiracies using the accuser’s plan,” where he “leads them by the neck with a strong rope at the start made of flax, until he enslaves them with his strong ropes forever.” That is Babylon wearing religious clothing.

When we turn the mirror on ourselves as a covenant people, Babylon stops being a label for “those people out there.” It becomes a personal and communal diagnosis. Any reflex to secure safety through control, unity through pressure or righteousness through hierarchy is a Babylon reflex, not a Zion one. Anything built on that foundation collapses. God’s love never fails, but structures raised by pride cannot bear His presence.

The Banner on the High Mountain

Isaiah opens with a summons: Lift up a banner on the high mountain. In our moment this is not a call to rally around a vote, a policy or a human blueprint. The high mountain is the covenant itself, the pure doctrine of Christ, the way of meekness, mercy, persuasion, long suffering, gentleness and love unfeigned. The banner is always Christ’s character, never an institutional project.

Nephi says the same thing when he declares: “We talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies so that our children can know to what source they can look for a remission of their sins.” Christ, not structure, is the center.

The real question for us is this. Are we gathering to His banner, or to our preferred version of how things ought to go?

The Army God Actually Gathers

When Isaiah describes the Lord assembling His warriors, their traits are spiritual, not militaristic. They rejoice only in His triumph. Status, influence and recognition have become meaningless to them. Their battle is against the Babylon still living in their own bones, never against their brothers and sisters.

Nephi shows us the same people, those who hearken unto the truth, look forward to Christ with steadfastness, endure persecution with patience and wait for the promised signs. These are the ones healed by the Son of Righteousness, the ones who enjoy seasons of peace spoken of by the prophets.

Applied to us today, these “warriors” are the meek, the teachable, the ones who can wait on the Lord instead of rushing into the pass. They refuse to build Zion with Babylon’s tools. They trust that obedience flows from knowing God, not from managing others.

The battle right now is the surrender of pride and the quiet dismantling of every inherited model of leadership that still smells of domination.

The Darkened Sun and Silenced Moon

When Isaiah says the sun and moon go dark, the image lands differently when we see ourselves in it. The sun is the presence of God. The moon is a community that once reflected that light. When the sun is darkened among us, God’s presence is withheld because our hearts have turned elsewhere. When the moon goes dark, we no longer even reflect the light we once received.

Nephi tells the same story. When any people reject Christ and His prophets, “The Spirit of the Lord will not always help mankind fight temptation. And when the Spirit stops helping mankind fight temptation, a rapid destruction will come.”

Among us this rarely happens through open wickedness. It happens when pride masquerades as righteousness, when we trust our own judgments, traditions and interpretations more than revelation and repentance. A community without light cannot help but stumble.

The Fall That Must Happen First

Isaiah’s terrifying imagery of Babylon’s collapse is aimed at anyone, ancient or modern, who refuses to let the Babylon mindset die. That mindset can be subtle:

• thinking we already know God’s will for someone else
• believing our view is clear enough to judge another’s heart
• imagining unity can be manufactured or feigned
• supposing Zion can be scheduled, administered or orchestrated into existence
• trying to build safety through rules instead of broken hearts and contrite spirits

Nephi gives the identical warning in the language of priestcraft and Gentile religion. Every echo of domination, pride, priestcraft and exclusion has to die inside us, or it will destroy us. Not symbolically. Actually.

This is why the Lord sometimes allows division and dispute to surface among a covenant people. The conflict is not merely tragedy, it is mercy. It exposes where Babylon still clings to our bones like an infection we carried into a new land.

The King of Babylon Lives in Us

Isaiah’s satire of the fallen king is God’s way of saying, “This is what spiritual ego always looks like in the end.” The lofty fall hard. Those who thought they understood the mind of God perfectly are revealed as fragile as everyone else.

Nephi echoes the mockery when he describes Gentiles who say “A Bible, a Bible, we have a Bible, there cannot be another Bible,” and who “will proudly view themselves as superior and will have stumbled because they have a great stumbling block.” Their certainty becomes their stumbling block.

We are being warned not to cling to certainty about our own understanding, or to step into roles of judgment that belong only to God. The king of Babylon fell because he said, “I will ascend.” Zion rises because its people finally bow low enough to be lifted.

Lucifer’s Fingerprints

Isaiah’s pivot from the king of Babylon to Lucifer himself exposes the beating heart beneath every proud system. It is the ancient pattern, “I will ascend into heaven, I will make myself like the Most High.”

Nephi forbids priestcraft, “Priestcrafts are when preachers set themselves up as a light to the world so they can make money and receive praise from the world, but they have no desire for Zion to advance,” and commands charity instead. He insists all are the same to God and that He “invites everyone to come to Him and share in His goodness and does not deny anyone who comes to Him, black or white, enslaved or free, male or female. All are the same to God, Jews and Gentiles.”

Any attempt to guide or influence others by our own light, even with the best intentions, risks aligning us with the wrong pattern. Zion is built by descent, not ascent. Christ washed feet. The greatest among us, He said, is the servant of all.

The Final Word

All the chaos, judgment, shadows and warnings in Isaiah rush toward one unshakable declaration. Zion has been established and there His people will find safety.

Nephi sees the same ending. Humble followers of the Holy One rejoicing, tyrants and scoffers cut off, justice restored, wandering children returning willing to be taught.

When we see ourselves plainly in these prophecies, we receive both promise and diagnosis.

The promise: if we let Babylon die in us, truly die, God Himself will establish Zion among us and it will be safe.

The diagnosis: anything in our community today that still feels unsafe is Babylon showing through, never Zion.

Zion will not be voted in, scheduled in or managed in. Zion is established when Babylon is dead in us. There is no other way.

Questions That Reveal Our Present Pattern

• If Babylon is any system built on pride, control or hierarchy, where do we still see these instincts in ourselves or among the covenant people today
• In our current disputes, do we rejoice in God’s triumph or in being proven right
• When light seems to withdraw from our community, what attitudes or behaviors are usually present
• Where are we still trying to build Zion using Babylon’s tools, pressure, procedure, fear of being wrong

Questions That Expose Spiritual Misalignment

• Where do we still try to ascend instead of descend, to lead instead of serve
• From heaven’s perspective, what beliefs or behaviors in us would look as ridiculous as the fallen king of Babylon
• The survivors are refined like gold. What refining fire are we resisting right now and why
• Where do we imagine that unity can be produced by agreement instead of by transformation

Questions That Call Us to a Different Way

• Nephi says God will show that He is able to do His own work. Where are we still trying to force His work by our own methods
• If Zion is meant to be a place of safety, what are we doing that still makes things feel unsafe among us
• What needs to fall in us before Zion can rise
• Where are we clinging to certainty that may actually be blocking revelation

Questions About Our Current Moment

• In what ways might our recent divisions be God exposing Babylon in us so we can repent of it
• Whose burdens are we unintentionally adding to with our words, structures or silence
• The scriptures end with Zion established as a place of safety and joy. What would we have to change, stop doing or surrender for our community to become that place in reality, not just in theory

Let Babylon die. Then, and only then, Zion lives.

2 Nephi chapters 10 & 11

Before ending, I want to share how these chapters have been working on my own heart. Our fellowship is studying these chapters right now. For the first time in my life I did not feel the urge to skip the sayings of Isaiah. The Covenant of Christ version opens the words in a way that feels alive and piercing. It is such a gift to find myself reading Isaiah without utter confusion (or dread 😬), but with hunger. These prophecies are meant for our day, and they teach in a way nothing else can. I am so grateful to finally see even a little of what Nephi hoped we would see.

When we liken Isaiah unto us it stops being ancient poetry and becomes an almost unbearably precise mirror. We have essentially taken the chapter and turned it into a spiritual MRI of a modern covenant community that still carries Babylon in its bloodstream.

Here is what it means, plainly, when we hold that mirror up to ourselves today, especially in our "Zion attempting" corner of the Restoration:

Babylon is no longer “out there” in Washington DC, Rome, or Salt Lake City corporate. Babylon is the part of us that still believes safety, unity, and righteousness can be engineered by better policies, stronger statements, tighter boundaries, clever manifestos, voting mechanisms, excommunication/pruning threats, social pressure, reputation management, or even “correct” interpretations of scripture and prophecy.

The darkening of the sun and moon is happening right now whenever a fellowship loses the actual presence of the Spirit and keeps running anyway on the residual glow of past light and human charisma. We call meetings, we read scriptures, but the Shekinah has slipped out the back door because pride quietly took the throne.

The “king of Babylon” being mocked in the underworld is a devastatingly accurate picture of any voice, no matter how orthodox yesterday, that once spoke with certainty about God’s will for everyone else and now sits stunned as their platform collapses. Heaven’s satire is merciless: “All your pomp has been brought down to Sheol… you are just like us.”

Lucifer’s five “I wills” are still the native language of far too many would be Zion builders:

I will ascend above the common people

I will decide who is in and who is out

I will sit in the chief seats

I will orchestrate the gathering

I will be like the Most High in telling everyone what God wants for their life

Every time we catch ourselves thinking or speaking that way, Isaiah is standing there pointing.

The survivors who are “left” after Babylon falls are described as few, scattered, and strangely quiet. They are not the ones who won the argument. They are the ones who stopped arguing and started trembling. They are not leading the charge; they are on their faces waiting for a word they did not author.

Zion actually shows up only after every human plan for Zion has been publicly humiliated. That is the pattern. God refuses to compete with our better idea.

So when we ask “what does this mean when likened to us,” the answer is both terrifying and liberating.

It means most of what we have spent the last several years urgently building, debating, voting on, boundary setting, platform creating, and identity protecting is scheduled for the same divine demolition that ancient Babylon got, because it was built with the same spirit.

And the only thing that survives the demolition is whatever was built on meekness, waiting, serving without controlling, loving without managing outcomes, and a willingness to be proven wrong in public if that is what it takes for the Lord to be proven right.

In short, likened to us is God’s way of saying,

“Stop trying to save the Restoration with Restoration shaped Babylon.

Let Babylon in you die first.

Then, and only then, will I raise Zion.”

The questions listed at the end are surgical. Any honest group that sits with them in stillness, without defending, without strategizing, without fixing, will feel the ground shift under them. That shift is the beginning of the only gathering God actually recognizes.

What needs to fall in us before Zion can rise

Everything that still smells like ascent instead of descent.

Everything that still confuses certainty with revelation.

Everything that still believes love needs to be enforced.

When those things fall, and they will, either by consent or by judgment, the morning after that is the first day Zion is possible.