What did Luther mean by “The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”? The Babylonian captivity of the church is when the Antichristic powers and spirits, via the sects and their false teachers, take captive the absolution, baptism and the Sacrament by way of false and fake doctrines that hide their true purpose in unconditionally GIVING forgiveness, and/or altogether change them so that they no longer are the sacramental Gospel.
This is just as when Babylon captured Israel—the OT people of the promise, the church and sacramental congregation—so that the promise via them could not be proclaimed and they could be influenced away from it into the ways of the law.
From this we easily c9me to realize—via the antichristic sects of Rome and Protestantism—the church is deeply in Babylonian captivity to this very day.
How do they do this? Basically they make confession and absolution, baptism, and the holy supper into signs and symbols of penance, contrition, faith, repentance and inward or ‘spiritual’ realities. In doing this they turn them into sacrifices and not sacraments—i.e. works to and for God, not His Promise to and for us. Hence, they become paganized and heathen ritual churches. In short Babylon.
This Sacrament is the Gospel 