The Madness of Babylon
You and I live in a dystopian nightmare. We traverse a world of madness that howls from every TV, PC and cell phone, while brain-eating delusions consume the minds of friends and family. Neighbors and coworkers heave their infected thoughts across Facebook and Twitter, and shriek in outrage if we disagree. And, when one mass delusion dies away, another quickly takes its place.
History is full of such delusions, but they have never been this widespread. For the first time in history, more than a billion people are terrified of one thing. And, I think that we should talk about this Madness of Babylon.
The Madness of Babylon
Everyone knows the story of the Tower of Babel. If you don’t, go here:
Genesis 11
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2011&version=NKJV
It couldn’t have been built more than a century after The Great Flood, ‘cuz the ancient civilizations of the world didn’t arise until AFTER God scattered them. So, there weren’t all that many people building this pyramid.
Maybe there were a thousand? Two?
There couldn’t have been too many thousands, since there’s a limit to how many kids, grandkids, great grandkids and great-great grandkids (and so on) over the course of a century or so. This also means that the ziggurat/pyramid/tower that they were building couldn’t have been all that large.
Yeah. I know. All those pictures of the ‘Tower of Babel’. Sorry, but it just ain’t so. And, it’s good to sometimes remember that the pictures in our head often don’t correspond to what actually happened. Yes, there was a ‘Tower of Babel’, but it wasn’t anywhere close to as big as the Egyptian pyramids. And, we’re missing the point, anyway, if your focus is on big buildings.
Don’t Focus On The Tower
What was the point?
Here it is in verse six:
And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.
– Genesis 11:6 (NKJV)
It’s the part where they were ‘one’. Unified. A single nation with a consuming purpose. And, that was a problem.
Why?
‘Cuz when you get enough of them together, they go nuts.
Of course, my definition of ‘going nuts’ is all about sin. There is nothing more insane than sinning against God. In fact, it is probably a leading cause of madness – especially at the society level. Just be careful about accusing people of being sinful because they suffer from psychological problems. That’s stupid, and it doesn’t help. But, back to Babel…
So, this tower wasn’t all that big, and there weren’t all that many people building it. Furthermore, they were building it out of mud brick. So, none of that sounds all that impressive. But, God knew where this was going, and it needed to be stopped before it got ugly.
TRANSLATION NOTE- Oh, and one other thing. The ‘Tower of Babel’ was in Shinar, but there’s no indication that the Tower of Babel was located in or around the city of Babylon. But, since the Hebrew word for Babylon and Babel is the same (בבל – pronounced bah-vehl), the confusion is reasonable. And, that ‘Babylonish garment’ that Achan took from the fall of Jericho (Joshua 7:21) was not from Babylon. The Hebrew word that Achan used was Shinar (שנער – pronounced sheen-ahr).
Actually, it wasn’t stopped. Only delayed. As God predicted, the world has come together and a new kind of Tower of Babel has arisen, and some of the most powerful leaders of our world are trying to make us all one people again.
FULL ARTICLE AT: The Madness of Babylon
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