July 3, 2004

Reading through the Bible in one Year: 2 Kings 1-5

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters,

A quick update on my situation, the UP decided to be gracious to us and reduced our off time to 15 days instead of thirty.  I will be off for one more week, then back to work.  Thanks for your prayers.

Genesis 11:1-9 (NASB95)
¹ Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. ² It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. ³ They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. ⁴ They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” ⁵ The Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. ⁶ The Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. ⁷ “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” ⁸ So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. ⁹ Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.^[1]

Think for a moment, all men used the same language, therefore everyone in the world could communicate and work together.  That doesn't sound like a bad thing, man was also very advanced in their abilities to build.  Considering that they were able to build as a single unit, makes for a very interesting problem.  Man came together in order to usurp the authority of God.  It doesn't matter that the task at hand was impossible, what matters was that the entire world decided to work in unison against the God that saved them through the flood. 

Genesis 9:5 (NASB95)
⁵ “Surely I will require your lifeblood; from every beast I will require it. And from every man, from every man’s brother I will require the life of man. ^[2]

In verse 4 it is indicated that men understood that they were subject to being spread over the entire earth. God told men to spread out and multiply, populating the entire earth.  I wonder what they thought they would gain by gaining illegal entry into heaven.  Perhaps the idea was that by circumventing God's design, they could take over heaven.  Whatever the thought, it was a repeat of the pre-flood attitude of people on the earth.  People had decided to openly rebel against God, and to go around His plan for populating the earth.

One other thought on this, Babel is similar to the Hebrew word for confused which is balal.  God confused the world's language at the tower of Babel and scattered them throughout the earth.  That left a problem for the ones who returned to continue to build the city of Babylon.  They had a tower, which no one could remember how it came to be.  They also had a wall around the city of incredible proportions, at least 60 miles in length and very wide.  In order to justify the incredible structures of the city, the Babylonians decided that the city was constructed by the gods and was left for them to inhabit.  They believed that Babylon was a heavenly city and considered the tower to be a "gate of God", (The Bible Knowledge Commentary).

At this point God scattered the people throughout the earth, putting them in all areas of the world.  Sorry, the evolutionist are wrong about the Alaskan land bridge.  God did the scattering, He did the populating of the Americas, Australia, and all the outlying countries in the world. He also gave them the intelligence to cope with and adapt to their environments.  This is also the reason that it is difficult to account for the nations that were born out of Noah's descendants, upon scattering them, God must have wiped a portion of their memory so that they would not return to the Holy Land. 

Zephaniah 3:9-11 (NASB95)
⁹ “For then I will give to the peoples purified lips, That all of them may call on the name of the Lord, To serve Him shoulder to shoulder. ¹⁰ “From beyond the rivers of Ethiopia My worshipers, My dispersed ones, Will bring My offerings. ¹¹ “In that day you will feel no shame Because of all your deeds By which you have rebelled against Me; For then I will remove from your midst Your proud, exulting ones, And you will never again be haughty On My holy mountain.

Acts 2:6-11 (NASB95)
⁶ And when this sound occurred, the crowd came together, and were bewildered because each one of them was hearing them speak in his own language. ⁷ They were amazed and astonished, saying, “Why, are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸ “And how is it that we each hear them in our own language to which we were born? ⁹ “Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya around Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹ Cretans and Arabs—we hear them in our own tongues speaking of the mighty deeds of God.” ^[3]

The Bible Knowledge Commentary indicates that Zephaniah had described this event along with a promise for re-gathering the people of the earth.  Acts seems to back up the idea.  All the world will once again speak the same language during the end times when Jesus returns for His thousand year reign. 

Here is an interesting note: “Ancient Contemporaries of the Neanderthals.

There is no reason why these isolated cultures like the Neanderthals could not have been contemporary with the advanced civilizations of Egypt, China, Babylonia and others that were developing in the lower latitudes nearer to the equator after Noah’s Flood. It is very likely that the Ice Age lasted only a few hundred years, rather than two million years as evolutionists believe. (The biblical perspective of the Ice Age is covered in Volume VI of the Creation Science Series.) The Ice Age occurred at the time of Noah’s Flood and lingered on for several centuries afterward.

The Iceman was simply another member of the human race. Like the Neanderthals and the Cro-Magnon ethnic groups, he was one of the descents of Noah who spread out across the Earth after dispersion of the races. The division of the people into nations occurred as a result of the rebellion. It happened at the time of the construction of the Tower Babel (see Gen. 11).

Because of the people’s evil purpose to glorify man rather than God, He separated them into races, languages and ethnic groups. He did this to slow down the progress of evil. Today, evil is again spreading very rapidly. It is the result of many of Earth’s people speaking a common language, English, and because the use of computers allows us to store and retrieve tremendous amounts of knowledge. The time is drawing near when God will once again separate the peoples of the world. Some are attempting to unify all peoples with another “Tower of Babel”—the United Nations. This time God will divide man-kind into two groups: the godly and the ungodly. He will judge the wicked and reward those who have made Him Lord.

All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats (Matt. 25:32).”^[4]

Also note: “Some creationists believe the canopy was somewhat translucent, allowing stars, the sun, moon and planets to be visible to the naked eye. There is no way to know for sure the accuracy of this view. However, there is a common thread in most of the myths of the ancients: the worship of the sun. In many of these myths the worship of the sun was preceded by worship of the sky god, the water heaven or an inferior light. The myths often presented the sun replacing a former sunlight.

Egypt’s religion revolved around the worship of the sun god. In Greece, the former sun was replaced by the present sun after the banishment of the water heaven. The same has been found to be true in the religions of the Buddhists of India and of Persia, the Mayas of Central America and the aborigines of Sarawak. The Indians of South America believed in a “water sun”; this sun existed in the “first age,” which ended by a flood.

Thus, the collapse of the canopy would explain the sudden burst of sun worship throughout the world. Within 150 years after the Flood, the entire human race was immersed in astrology and sun worship.”^[5]

“The Tower of Babel promised to be the masterpiece of world architecture. Records reveal that over 26 tons of gold were used in its construction. Babel was also to be the political and religious capital of the world—and the tower, a place of reaching into the heavens (Gen. 11:4). This reaching into the heavens was not a literal climbing up into the heavens, but making contact with the spiritual realm—with the creatures of the fallen spiritual world. Fallen man had learned how to contact the fallen demonic realm.”^[6]

We fail to understand the full ramifications of the tower of Babel.  If you consider the differences in the religions of the world, and the ancient belief by many of them that there was once a water ocean above the earth, then it makes sense that once this water came down on the earth, they believe that the great lights of the sun and the stars were of spiritual value.  All throughout the earth you can find pyramid type structures similar to the tower of Babel which reach up to the heavens which were constructed by early man.  The Mayans in Mexico are one example this, along with their belief in the sun god.  Consider also that Japan is considered the land of the sun, their national flag is devoted to the god of the sun.  The book reverenced above, “The Canopied Earth” indicates that thousands of pyramids have been found.  The point of the pyramids is that they brought man closer to the gods, in other words closer to the heavens where the sun and star gods were believed to exist.

Genesis 11:10-32 (NASB95)
¹⁰ These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old, and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood; ¹¹ and Shem lived five hundred years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹² Arpachshad lived thirty-five years, and became the father of Shelah; ¹³ and Arpachshad lived four hundred and three years after he became the father of Shelah, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹⁴ Shelah lived thirty years, and became the father of Eber; ¹⁵ and Shelah lived four hundred and three years after he became the father of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹⁶ Eber lived thirty-four years, and became the father of Peleg; ¹⁷ and Eber lived four hundred and thirty years after he became the father of Peleg, and he had other sons and daughters. ¹⁸ Peleg lived thirty years, and became the father of Reu; ¹⁹ and Peleg lived two hundred and nine years after he became the father of Reu, and he had other sons and daughters. ²⁰ Reu lived thirty-two years, and became the father of Serug; ²¹ and Reu lived two hundred and seven years after he became the father of Serug, and he had other sons and daughters. ²² Serug lived thirty years, and became the father of Nahor; ²³ and Serug lived two hundred years after he became the father of Nahor, and he had other sons and daughters. ²⁴ Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and became the father of Terah; ²⁵ and Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years after he became the father of Terah, and he had other sons and daughters. ²⁶ Terah lived seventy years, and became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. ²⁷ Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran; and Haran became the father of Lot. ²⁸ Haran died in the presence of his father Terah in the land of his birth, in Ur of the Chaldeans. ²⁹ Abram and Nahor took wives for themselves. The name of Abram’s wife was Sarai; and the name of Nahor’s wife was Milcah, the daughter of Haran, the father of Milcah and Iscah. ³⁰ Sarai was barren; she had no child. ³¹ Terah took Abram his son, and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife; and they went out together from Ur of the Chaldeans in order to enter the land of Canaan; and they went as far as Haran, and settled there. ³² The days of Terah were two hundred and five years; and Terah died in Haran.^[7]

The genealogy from the last chapter showed how that the earth was populated.  This genealogy is more specific, demonstrating how that Abram descended from Noah's son Shem.  This was designed to demonstrate how that Abram and the Jewish nation descended from the legitimate line of the righteous sons of Noah.  One other note that was pointed out about this genealogy is that the words "and he died" are missing; this genealogy demonstrates life and an expectancy of life.  It demonstrates blessings of following the righteous God.

Father, as we consider Your word today, open our eyes so that we can understand and apply it to our thinking.  I pray that everyone in the study will carefully consider the creationist point of view when thinking about the beginning of the world and that we will take more effort to establish the biblical view than others are taking to refute it.

In Him,

Joe Turner.