It is often repeated that the Rod teaches that the SDA Denomination is Babylon. This is simply not true. The message clearly teaches that the Seventh-day Adventist Church is NOT Babylon**.** The Rod puts it very succinctly:

The reason that the church is figuratively NOT Babylon is that it is called Jerusalem (Ezek. 9:4, 8), and from among the good therein, the wicked (the tares) are destroyed, taken out, by the six men with the slaughter weapons (Ezek. 9: 6-9), and then afterward the good (the wheat) are gathered in the barn . . . 

If Christ by assembling these seven churches in a group of seven candlesticks and giving the blackest record to the last one, is not calling the Laodiceans Babylon, then neither is the interpretation of the heads doing so. 

But remember that our decision is not to be that of joining something, but of joining Christ and His judgment message for the salvation and prosperity of the Denomination. Stay in it and work for its return to God. It is not Babylon; do not let them intimidate you to leave it. . . .If you want to know why the church is not Babylon and what Babylon is, then you had better study The Shepherds Rod.