The following is based on the phonetic writing of the expository teaching tapes of Pastor Jim Mooberry.
…the Bible declares that this (Tower of Babel) is the mother of all religious systems that are apostate—false.
We are looking at the account of the city and the tower called Babel. We have been looking at these initial stories in the book of Genesis because they are foundational to your whole understanding of the Bible.
Periodically we need to go back and look at these stories. This story takes its place along with the creation, the fall, and the flood and those four historical events and incidents explain the way the world is today. Whys is the world the way it is? These four stories explain it to us.
Chapter 11 actually occurred before chapter 10 chronologically, for in chapter 10 we have what is known as the table of nations. Look in Genesis 10:32. These are the families of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies, by their nations and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood.
Chapter 11 explains why the nations of the earth speak different languages in spite of the fact that they all came from the same family—the family of Noah, and why they ended up spreading up throughout the whole globe.
And so there is a question, we look at Noah as he leaves the ark and his family and we know that they are to re-populate the earth… the question arises, “Well then where did all of these different languages come from? And, “Why did all of these tribes separate from each other if they really were all one big family?”
All of this finds its root in the first city that was built after the flood. The judgment of the flood is over, but since the root of sin is still in the human race—the fruit of sin still bears its fruit. And it reappears and so here we see proud disobedience to the command of God. Notice the comparison of these two verses:
Genesis 9:1—God told Noah and his posterity this, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
Genesis 11:4—We see the cry of those who were building this city that they want to build it lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. And so this city and what they were doing there is in direct disobedience to God’s command. “We do not wan to spread all over the earth, but we want to be unified in this place.”
It is going to come to mean something entirely different. Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words and it came about as they journeyed east that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.”
The time was about two hundred years after the flood. I did a little quick mathematics this weekend as I was thinking about this and if these eight people that came through the flood, four families, each bore eight children, which was not uncommon in that day as long as they lived, and then their children had to marry and bear eight children and we consider 40 years to be the time to consider that they are bearing these children, well in two hundred years there would be 10,000 people on the earth already.
So there was this great population of humanity and as they grew they left the mountains of Ararat and they began to journey eastward to this land called Shinar. They all had the same language, they all had the same vocabulary. So they left the mountains of Ararat and they came to Shinar called the “valley of the world.” It’s between the Tigris and Euphrates in what is called today modern Iraq.
If you look back in chapter 10:8-10, “Now Cush begat Nimrod: he began to be a mighty one in the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.’ And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel. And Erech, and Accad, and Caineh, in the land of Shinar. Nimrod was a city builder, a kingdom builder. But the Word of God tells us at least four things about his man named Nimrod.
He was a man of great power. He’s called a “mighty one.” The word literally means a “tyrant,” or a “despot.” And so he had great personal prowess. He was the first dictator on the earth.
He is called a “mighty hunter” which literally means he was a man of savvy.
He understood men, he understood how to control men and the implication is that he even would “hunt them.” He was a man who used force greatly.
He was a father of earthly kingdoms. In verses 10, and 11 we see at least six cities that he is responsible for building himself.
But the most important thing about Nimrod was that he was an apostate—he was a man who was in rebellion against God. And so as we see the story develops about Babel you will see what he was attempting to do there. It’s interesting that his grandfather’s name is Ham which means “darkened one.” His father’s name is Cush which means “black one.” And then his name Nimrod means the “rebellious one.” So you can see this degeneration spiritually in this family. And he was a great apostate—he is the forerunner of a man that’s coming called “the man of sin” or “the antichrist.” Here is the “initial one” that Satan raised up against God and His kingdom.
So after having established a settlement in Shinar they the gateway of God. Lets look at the Go to, let And they had brick for stone, and slime Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered. The focus of their aspirations are, first of all, on a city and a tower. This tower was what is known as a ziggurat.
It’s a stepped pyramid. It was a temple-type tower. It had had an altar on the top of it and, in fact, this particular construction, as mankind did spread throughout the whole world, this construction continued through all of the tribes and you will see through history in Babylonia, in Assyria, in Egypt, even over in the Incas and the Mayan civilizations—stepped pyramids… and it all came from this original one in Babel.
It is man’s false religion. In the Babylon of Nebechadnashar’s day, a few centuries later, the ziggurat there was known as “asoklia”(?) and it was called the temple of Marduk. It may have been the original one we don’t know. But that was a seven stepped tower and it was thirty stories tall.
If you go out to Schaumburg here and you see some of these office buildings—they’re about 25 stories tall…. They said that is was a tower that was reaching up into the heavens. Critics have made light of that and have said, “Oh, look at these people they’re so stupid they think they can build a tower that actually goes into the heavens…” No. What they were doing was they were making a tower that was higher above than all of the other vantage points around them that they might be closer to their gods and offer their sacrifice in his presence in the atmosphere of the heavens.
So they built this large pyramidal tower. There was an altar on top. Usually there were astrological signs of the zodiac written around it. It was a building of great spiritual mystery and impressiveness.
Their purpose involves a CITY, a TOWER, and a NAME. The city reflects this fellowship of man. There is a need in our lives for societal fellowship, but this is a fellowship that leaves God out entirely. God is not the center of this city. This is a fellowship of man.
And so they built this gigantic city and Nimrod’s purpose in it was to CONTROL MANKIND AND TO LEAD THEM IN THIS COMPLETE APOSTASY FROM GOD. So there error was not in building a city, there’s nothing wrong in dwelling in cities—their error was in attempt to frustrate the will of God. And then also this tower—so there we see that the state and the religious system combined in a unity. This was the first great religious system and this was the first great religious center. In fact the Bible declares that this is the mother of all religious systems that are apostate—false.
As we anticipate that this will once again occur in history as God allow Satan to finally achieve his end of unifying the world in apostasy. In Revelation 17 John was taken into the wilderness in the spirit.
Revelation 17:1-3, “And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, ‘Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of he great whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns.” This is a reference to the original Babylon.
Satan has taken those seed doctrines and spread them throughout the world—it’s amazing as you go to different cultures throughout all of the world you’ll find this same occurring Satanic doctrines and they all originated in this place called Babel or Babylon. So it is the mother of all false religions.
Third, they say they want a NAME for themselves and that is the heart of their sin and their rebellion which is pride. They sought human glory rather than God’s glory and they were responsible and this is the essence of their sin. This city and this tower was to be a monument to their greatness against God—the exaltation of man and the deification of man.
It’s the same old lie isn’t it? What was the original lie that Satan told Eve? You shall be like God and that’s what their trying to do again. That’s what’s happening today. We see it occurring again. It first occurred in all the rationalism in our country where man was the measure of all things and reason was the only source of truth to be trusted.
Well now it has moved into a mystical realm in the New Age movement. If you really want a handle on the New Age movement—there are three things the New Age movement is built on, whether it’s this cult or this sect or whatever… it’s all built on three things:
Monism: the fact that all things are considered to be one—the earth and all that’s in it is all unified and linked together and we are all one.
Pantheism: everything is god; you hear them talk about Gaia, living earth… well Gaia is a god as well as god…all things are god.
Deification of man: you are gods so what we need to find is that inner, higher self, we need to get in touch with the divinity that’s in us and release that and actualize our lives… it’s the same old lie that came in Genesis 3, “You shall be like God.”
So Babel sets up this great religious system against God and sets up an idolatry that continues throughout the centuries and the millennium. Just as a Christian the Bible really teaches that anything that takes the place of Jesus Christ on the throne of our life is an idol.
That means if it’s your will, or if it’s something you want or whatever is there instead of Jesus Christ is an idol and its idolatry. So even as Christians we need to be very careful about who is on the throne of our life and who it is that we truly worship and submit to and it should be the Lord Jesus Christ. Satan’s goal was the unity of mankind in apostasy. He wanted to attempt to set up a counterfeit kingdom of God.
Now we see the purpose of God resisted in these first four verses, now notice the purpose of God is insured. Man has joined together to attempt the impossible, he wants to frustrate the will of God. Man was to spread and fill the earth, now God moves to ensure that His purpose is accomplished as He always will.
Genesis 11:5, 6, “And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. 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.”
Some have asked if God has a sense of humor…verse 5 is one example, that’s a very sarcastic verse, “And the Lord CAME DOWN to the city and the tower which the sons of man had built.” When God looked down from heaven to see man’s great work it was so puny in his sight that he couldn’t see anything and so he had to come down to take a look at it. In fact one author said, “From the real heaven it looks too small and God can’t see it with His naked eye. Certainly it must be terribly tiny this stupendous tower into heaven if even the all knowing God cannot see it with his glasses and His telescope and so He comes down to take a look at this tower.”
The Lord’s observations are threefold. He notices first of all their unity. He sees that the basis of this unity is that they all have the same language and that of course is going to key you into what He’s going to do about that. But the first thing He notices is that they are unified. The second thing that He notices is this is only the beginning.
He foresees that this Satanic grip on men is going to increase unless something is done. And third he notices that if it’s left uncorrected they will succeed in all of their ungodly plans and what that will do is that will bring about the same conditions that necessitated he destroy the world by the flood. And the time is not yet for Him to judge the world and so He must stop this.
So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build… But notice what happens here. Two steps. First He confuses their speech and then it causes them to scatter. I would imagine that that was quite a scene when suddenly none of them it seemed could understand each other.
This was something that they had never experienced before and suddenly they could not be sure of each others intentions because they could not understand each others minds. And there was instantly, of course, fear that entered into their hearts and suspicion and soon they began to draw back from one another and separate.
You can understand that—you can’t understand someone’s language you basically may want to be nice to them but you kind of want to get away from them because you feel embarrassed, you’re not sure what they are saying—there’s no communication. Just visualize how that might have been –thousands and thousands of people in the city and they couldn’t understand each other. And perhaps one of them would come to the city square and begin to speak and some of those who could understand him would come running up to him and they could understand each other and then they’d move off to the side and then maybe someone else would come up…. Pretty soon you had groups here and there and as they looked at each other they began to pick up their belongings and move out of the city and move away. And God began to spread them throughout the whole world in their tribes.
This confusion probably arose over a period of days or weeks as the magnitude of this problem began to dawn on this human society that was being fractured. Linguists tell us today that there are over three thousand languages that are recognizable and that doesn’t even include all the different dialects within that language. But they say that all of them can be traced back to eight to ten families of language because the language that our forefathers spoke 300 years ago when this country was winning its independence and was being colonized is not probably what we speak today because of the dialect change. And we might have a hard time understanding our forefathers a little bit.
Well, imagine over a period of centuries as tribes get spread apart from each other that these different dialects in languages would arise. And so today the reality is what Genesis 11 says that it is. We have 3,000 languages, we have people all over the earth that can’t understand each other and this was God’s work and the result of it was that it fulfilled its purpose and caused man to spread and fill the globe in verse 8. The great collected enterprise turned into a weed patch and the migration of the tribes began and ultimately that resulted into the nations that have risen over the surface of the earth.
The conclusion of this story is in verse 9, “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.” As I said before, Babel means “gateway of God.” Babel in Hebrew means confusion because of this story that’s what the word came to mean and that’s what it means in English. If someone speaks in a babble we don’t understand them, it’s confusion. And that all as originated from what happened thousands of years ago in the Land of Shinar.
The essence of their sin the cause for this was human pride and pride is the essence of all sin. God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble. We are all born the children of Adam and desire to be independent from God. We live our lives in self-centered pride until the Lord Jesus Christ, if in His grace He reaches down and saves us and changes us. And so this is the stumbling block for men and women to come to Christ. And that is why God in His gracious mercy must working in our hearts to open our eyes and put our pride apart from us that we might respond to his word.
Society is today still building these fortresses in the intellectual and spiritual realm. One of the great verses on that is 2 Corinthians 10 where Paul is speaking about the ministry of the Word of God and He says that the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God. And we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
… there are these great theological fortresses that mankind erects. Like the fortress of humanism, or the fortress of evolution.. that leaves God out of the equation entirely. And so there is no creation because there is no Creator. And all that is here is here because it happened by chance and if you give everything enough time anything can happen. And all of that is simply an explanation from darkened minds about what is truth.
As long as there are nations and there are peoples and there are these divisions then apostasy cannot gain that worldwide organized hold again. Is Satan trying to unify the world today? Absolutely. Look at the global village that is on its way…the one world government, the one its coming, its on the horizon.
The United Nations building is one of the most graphic reminders of Genesis 11 there is. All of these people sitting around and they all speak different languages and they all have to have translators up in the back so that they can understand each other—they’re building a unified world. It’s just Genesis 11 again.
One of the things that bothers me about this is that the tendency of the evangelical church to sort of be a child of its age and always catch on to whatever the world is doing and do something like it. We see this today because there is this great cry, and this great push for unity in the church today. Now where as it is good for brethren of “like minds” to gather together and to do things together—what they are calling for is something much more than that. They’re calling for almost a visible institutional unity of the church of Jesus Christ. They are playing right into the hands of Satan who is beginning to forge the end time world church of apostasy.
They usually leave out the middle part of John 17:21, “That they all may be one; ASTHOU, FATHER, ART IN ME, AND I IN THEE, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.” The middle part is a prayer that anticipates the baptism of the Spirit in Pentecost when God’s spirit takes a believer and puts him into Christ and the spirit comes into us (1 Corinthians 12:13, “For by one spirit we have been all baptized into one body.”). And so what Jesus is praying for has nothing… it is being fulfilled. It is fulfilled every day as a person comes to Christ they are put in Christ and He is put in them and then that relationship that he speaks of and prayed for “as thou art in me, and I in thee, and they may be in us” is fulfilled. This is a spiritual unity. Every person on the globe that knows Christ as their Savior truly is unified with every other person who knows Jesus Christ personally.
The fact that we have different denominations in some ways is a grieving to the Spirit of God because we often argue over very minor things. But there are some things that are very important and to say that we are all going to be one visibly institutionally means that we are going to have to lower the fence so low in what we believe doctrinally so that everybody can get over that what we are really doing is setting up and abetting Satan in establishing a church that and it will be filled with the doctrines of Satan.
Denominations really are not in the Scriptures at all—we are local churches of Jesus Christ. And all local churches of Jesus Christ have an affinity with one another if they truly believe in Him as Savior. I believe we live in exciting days but they are evil days and Satan is afoot and he is attempting again, to once again pull the world together in a collective apostasy.
If you’ve studied the book of Revelation you know that this apostasy is going to be linked to economics. Economics is what runs the world of fallen individuals and in Revelation 13:16, 17 it speaks of the antichrist and of his right hand man the This false prophet will cause those on . And then in 16 and 17 it shows his unity. He causes all the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free man and the slaves to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead and he provides that no one should be able to buy or sell except the one who has the mark.
Either the name of the beast or the number of . So Satan will one day be able to achieve what he was not able to. This time the world will be unified in apostasy except for the remnant. Except for those who are believers in Christ on the earth.
But this is all as preparation for Christ Jesus to come back. And when he returns with His church He will conquer this evil kingdom of Satan’s and establish the kingdom of God on earth. I rejoice in that don’t you? So we should be careful about all of these unity movements. We don’t need to be unified with everyone else on the earth—just with Jesus Christ our Savior and God will accomplish His plan.
Finally, in Revelation 21 what we are looking forward to is the day that God will establish his Kingdom:
“I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth past away and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I Behold the tabernacle of God is among men and he shall dwell among them and they shall be his people and God himself shall be among them and he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes and there shall no longer be any death and there shall no longer be any mourning. I’m looking forward to that day.
When the sin of Adam and Eve, the sin in the garden will finally have been removed from our sight forever and we will live in the city of God in the new earth of God. And history is moving towards this chapter and nothing will stop it. But if you know Jesus Christ as your Savior you rejoice because you know you are on the right side and you know you are headed.
In 1 John 5:4,5 it says, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world and this is the victory that is overcome the world our faith. And who is the one who has overcome the world? But he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”
Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? Do you believe that He came and became a man that He might identify with us having no sin of His own yet He took our sin upon himself on that cross. And when God judged Him He judged Him in our place. Do you believe that? If you believe that from your heart then you have taken Jesus Christ as your Savior and you are an overcomer.
You have overcome the world through your faith. He has provided a wonderful provision for you and for me to escape the judgment we deserve because of our sin and that provision is His Son Jesus.
Even where you sit there, in the quietness of your heart talk to the Lord Jesus and say “I recognize Lord Jesus that you died for me and right now I receive you as my Savior because I believe you are the Son of God and you died for me.” If you can do that from the heart, God’s Spirit will give you testimony to your spirit that you are in fact now a child of God. What a joy that is and all of these passages mean something entirely different to the children of God.
- Mooberry, Pastor Jim. The Faithful Word. GENESIS 11:1-9 “Tower of Babel Pt. 4.”
- The Church Age
- Old Testament Study
- Revelation and Church History
- Receiving Jesus
- Heartland Baptist, Bellevue, Nebraska
- Broken Bow Berean Church, Broken Bow, Nebraska
