scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built it. And the Lord said, behold, the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go, let us go down, go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel, because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. What I hope you're seeing in here is that in the very beginning of the story of modern Babylon, which is Babel, the first time Babel, Babylon comes into the word of God, the whole story is there. And what did the Lord, there's a lot of symbols in that story, but what did the Lord come down to see? He came down to see the city and the tower. In Desire of Ages, page 597, we're told this. In the parable, the householder represented God, the vineyard, the Jewish nation, and the hedge, the divine law, which was their protection. The tower was a symbol of the temple. A tower in Bible prophecy, in context, is a church. It's the temple, it's the religious institution. A city in Bible prophecy is a political kingdom. So we see in the very beginning, the first time Babel comes into the word of God, that the thing that God comes down to look at more than any other is the tower and the city. He comes down to look at this combination of church and state. And the combination of church and state is the essence of Babylon, from the very beginning to the very end. The church at the end of the world is going to be the papacy. The state at the end of the world are gonna be this one world government symbolized by these 10 kings, symbolized by the 10 nations in Psalms 83, symbolized by Ziv. A city in Bible prophecy, Revelation 11, verse eight, and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom in Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified. If you go in the great controversy where Sister White's commenting on the French Revolution, she will tell you that this great city is the kingdom of France. Revelation, I'm gonna refer to Babylon being a kingdom. And in Revelation 14, eight, 16, 19, 17, 18, 18, 10, 16, 18, 19, 21, Babylon is referred to as a great city. We'll read one of those, Revelation 14, eight. And there followed another angel saying, Babylon.