Rebuilding the Tower of Babel
Nimrod “began to be a mighty one in the earth . . . And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel” (Gen. 10:8-10). God had judged the earth by a universal flood because “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Gen. 6:5). God had also charged the post-flood generation with self-government and the necessity of spreading out, repopulating, and settling the earth. But the people ventured eastward from the Ararat mountains to the land of Shinar between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. There they said, “let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Gen. 11:4). Piously they pretended to honor God and speak of heavenly things, no doubt remembering the severity of God’s judgment a few short generations ago. They pretended that the worshiping of the creation more than the Creator would be accepted, that creating a new religion of astrology and Sun worship would rally all people into one homogeneous group. This it did. But not to God’s pleasing. Soon God would judge again, confounding the languages and scattering the people by necessity rather than obedience.
Are we rebuilding this civilization today? Surely we have created our own religions and worshiped and served the creation more than the Creator. We have “changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man” (Rom. 1:23). Will God give us “over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient?” (Rom. 1:28). Will it really just “Take a Village” to bring the world together again? Can mankind organize a one-world community by evenly spreading out the wealth and asking everyone to play fairly? The utopia that man desires cannot work for two reasons: this is a broken world and we are sinful people. Mankind needs a rule of law and a moral code to even survive their own savagery. History has sadly shown that this has only been accomplished in the poorest way. It will take the return and reign of the perfect Son of God, a lifting of the curse that was imposed on the world from Adam’s sin, and a binding of the god of this world for a thousand years, to bring about such a peaceful world. And even then He will rule with a rod of iron over the residual effects of sin that still remain.
Any attempt to rebuild the one-world community will only result in antichrist, not in Christ. It will only organize a pooling of the selfishness and arrogance of the human nature and either result in another of a long line of human disasters, or it will bring the final judgment of God. No one can know which, but we can know that such will be the result. How much better to “know God and keep His commandments” (Ecc. 12:13). How much better to give Him the glory that is rightfully His and to humble ourselves “under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt us in due time” (1 Pet. 5:6).