God's Work with Planet Earth

After the Flood, Noah and his wife, their three sons and their wives started the human race over again.

“So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.”

“And as for you, be fruitful and multiply; Bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it.” Genesis 9:1, 7

But after a few years, this is what their descendants did:

“Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” Genesis 11:3-4

There’s two things I notice here. First, God said spread out and fill the earth, but they were defying that command and gathering together in one location, creating a big city.

Second, “let us make a name for ourselves” and building a tower that reaches to the heavens sounds very similar to:

“I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.’” Isaiah 14:14

That’s a quote from Lucifer. So it should be clear to us what spirit was motivating them.

Tower of Babel

Using Bible genealogies in Genesis 10 and 11, we can narrow down the time of the Tower of Babel to about 100 years after the Flood. So it didn’t take very long for the old pride and arrogance to creep back into society.

There’s nothing wrong with building a community, and there’s nothing wrong with building amazing things. But when you do it out of pride, to call attention to yourself, and in defiance of God, there’s a problem.

There’s another consideration. Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote that the purpose of the Tower of Babel was to survive a second flood, and this is why the building materials (tar, asphalt) were waterproof. Instead of turning to God and following Him, they thought if God brought another flood, they would make sure they could survive it. This shows that they did not trust God’s promise to all humans.

“Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth. When I send clouds over the earth, the rainbow will appear in the clouds, and I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth.”” Genesis 9:12-16

After the Flood, God created the effect of sun rays shining through water droplets in the atmosphere which shows up as a rainbow. He had to adjust the natural laws of His Creation to make this happen.

What if you made a solemn promise to someone, and even designed a perpetually recurring natural phenomenon to confirm that promise? And the person you made that promise to said, “I don’t believe you and I don’t want anything to do with you!” How would a god respond to this slap in the face? Here’s what the Creator God did:

“But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 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. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.” Genesis 11:5-9

Instead sending fire from heaven and consuming them, or even just causing a plague or disease to break out, God just turned one language into many. Can you image being up on a skyscraper and calling down for a 16-foot plank and they bring you a pallet of bricks instead? And when you ask them why they didn’t bring what you asked for, all you hear is gibberish and nonsense coming out of their mouth! And pretty soon, nearly everyone was frustrated by everyone else speaking gibberish. The people split up into groups with people they could understand. This put an end to their tower project, and they traveled in different directions and set up different nations.

This is an amazing testament to the power of God, that He can accomplish His purpose despite the schemes, plans, and efforts of humans.

“A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” Proverbs 16:9

“What do you conspire against the Lord? He will make an utter end of it.” Nahum 1:9

Race versus Ethnicity

This is one thing I love about the Bible. If you want to understand why things are the way they are in our world today, the Bible has an explanation or a reason. Almost 2,500 years after the diversification of languages, the Apostle Paul was in Athens, Greece at the Areopagus, introducing God to the philosophers there, and he said this:

“And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,” Acts 17:26

All humans come from a single common ancestor, twice over actually, first Adam, then Noah. There’s only one race, the human race. The fact that there are:

• Kinky-haired, dark-skinned people coming from Africa
• Blue-eyed, blonde-haired people in Scandinavia
• Black-haired, light-skinned people in Asia

this was all part of God’s plan. He designed human genetics so that when a group of people settle in an area and intermarry, over just a few generations, certain physical traits become dominant and others become recessive. There’s lots of cultures and ethnicities throughout the world, just like God planned it, but only one race.

What about Racism?

This creates a problem for the idea or concept of racism. How can a person of one skin tone abusing a person of a different skin tone be racist, if there’s only one race? Aren’t you then persecuting your own kind/race? Because racism is just a label for something worse.

We learn from the Bible that the roots of sin are selfishness and pride. If you only care about yourself and you don’t care about anyone else, that mindset leads to all kinds of sins. And if you think you’re better than other people, and don’t value others, but despise them instead, you’re well on your way to sinning in many ways.

In the post “Origin of Sin” we saw that sin just means breaking God’s laws about love for God and love for fellow humans. Let’s look at the example of slavery, and specifically, one ethnicity owning another ethnicity as a slave. White on black, brown on white, it doesn’t matter.

If you think people of a different ethnicity are inferior to you, and that gives you the right to control and abuse them, that’s PRIDE.

And if you’re also using and abusing people of a different ethnicity for personal gain, that’s SELFISHNESS.

Slavery then, is a direct result of sin itself. God gave humans freedom, and it was NEVER His purpose or intention for one human to own and control another human against their will. It’s going to be a terrifying judgement day for people who have done this and not repented.

Pure Language Restored

After the return of Jesus, all of us humans will be able to communicate clearly in the same language again, because God will remove the language barriors.

“For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord.” Zephaniah 3:9

I might still be able to speak English, I don’t know. But when we’re singing praises to the God who rescued us out of a sinful world, it won’t be a garbled sound of hundreds of languages, but one heavenly language in harmony and unison.

Why? Because God has promised that He will undo the diversification of languages He caused at the Tower of Babel.