Babylon, as the great world power in Nephi’s day, symbolized the things of the world. Nephi’s brothers preferred the things of the world to the things of the Spirit. This useful phrase from Isaiah suggested to Nephi’s brothers their priorities were askew. They needed to reorient themselves to the things of God. Fleeing, in the sense used here, is less geographic and more attitudinal, although for Nephi’s generation it was both. In our day we live in “Babylon” because the Church has never occupied, and has no immediate prospects of occupying, a place sufficiently apart that we can govern ourselves in a united order. Fleeing in our day is within our own lives, inside our own families and in our own wards. It is done in our scattered state, throughout the world. But fleeing nonetheless is needed now, just as it was then.
The picture of “fleeing” suggests dramatic, even heroic effort to overcome a location within Babylon. We sometimes think we can get where we need to be by a saunter, rather than by flight. The gravitational pull of Babylon has always been such that escape can only be obtained by flight. And so we, too, must flee. Or we will fall with Babylon, for it is certainly on schedule to fall today as it did anciently.