Lux Lucet

The Tower of Babel and World Government

It is the contention of this author that the Tower of Babel is the prototype of all future empires, including today’s push for world government by the Popes of Rome and others. 

In Genesis 11, we read about the Tower of Babel and the intentions of those who built it.  After the flood, God told Noah and his sons, much as he told Adam and Eve, that they were to “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1).  But in direct disobedience to the command to fill the earth, men gathered at one spot, Babel, and sought to make a name for themselves with their own effort.  “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” (Gen. 11:4).   What God had commanded, filling the earth, the men of Babel saw as an evil to be avoided. 

John Gill writes,

lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth:  which they seemed to have some notion of, and feared would be their case, liking better to be together than to separate, and therefore were careful to avoid a dispersion; it being some way or other signified to them, that it was the will of God they should divide into colonies, and settle in different parts, that so the whole earth might be inhabited; or Noah, or some others, had proposed a division of the earth among them, each to take his part, which they did not care to hearken to; and therefore, to prevent such a separation, proposed the above scheme, and pursued it.

Gill, The Exposition of the Old and New Testaments

The men of Babel were concerned to make a name for themselves lest they be scattered.  In this, they seemed to want to stand in the place of God, having men look to them rather than to their creator.

The Lord himself acknowledged the effectiveness of their scheme, for when he came down to see their work, he said, “now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (Gen. 11:6).

To prevent the men of Babel from carrying out their scheme for world government and to prompt them to seek for him, God confused their language and scattered the people. 

Paul’s Sermon on Mars Hill

In Paul’s sermon on Mars Hill recorded in Acts 17, we read, “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, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that hey might grope for Him and find Him” (Acts 17:26-27).

Whereas the men of Babel wanted to make a name for themselves in the hope, apparently, that men would look to them rather than to God, the Lord scattered the people.  The reason for his doing so is not a matter of speculation, for Paul tells us plainly that the Lord established the boundaries and appointed times of men’s dwelling, “so that they should see the Lord.” 

World government is a monument to man’s idolatry.  One of the great problems with civil government, and it was God who instituted civil government, is that Caesar often forgets that he is God’s minister and begins to think of himself as a god.  We see the unbounded pride of rulers time and again in Scripture, not merely among the heathen where we would expect to see it, but even among God’s appointed rulers of Israel.   If the rule of only part or the earth, even so great a portion as that of the Babylonian, Greek or Roman Empires, could fill their kings and emperors with the sort of unbounded pride we see in Scripture, what would have been the case had they been the masters of the whole world?  

Jesus tells us the mindset of the rulers of the nations.  He said, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors’” (Luke 22:25).  Here, we see two characteristics of worldly rulers.  In the first place, they “exercise lordship.”  This is a sound translation from the NKJV, for that is the meaning of the underlying Greek.  One could even translate this passage as, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them.”  To lord it over someone is to act in a prideful or arrogant manner toward someone.  That certainly describes many, if not most, political leaders in history.  

But one doesn’t have to go way back in history to see examples of rulers lording it over their people.  In just the past year, we’ve seen politicians and bureaucrats lord it over their hard-pressed citizen with their arbitrary, unchristian, unconstitutional, unscientific, and unmerciful Covid dictates.  They have destroyed our economic and political liberties and done nothing to stop the spread of the disease.  Indeed, the areas with most governmental intervention have had the worst Covid results, while places that respected liberty tended to do much better.  Now they expect us to be thankful as they piecemeal our God-given liberties back to us and wish to be seen as “benefactors,” as if our freedoms were theirs to take in the first place!

But apart from limiting the pride of rulers, there is, I believe, at least one other reason nation states serve to promote the seeking of God: the separation of powers.  In the United States Constitution, the framers were careful not to give too much power to any one institution.  As a way of preventing the centralization of authority, they created the federal government with three separate, co-equal branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial.  Interestingly, this three-fold division of government is supported by Scripture.  In Isaiah 33 we read, “For the LORD is our Judge [judicial branch], the LORD is our Lawgiver [legislative branch], the LORD is our King [executive branch].”

It is this author’s contention that a system of nations or nation states has the same effect – decentralizing power – on international relations as the division of power does within a government such as the federal government of the United States.   Instead of one gigantic world-wide imperial government with no effective checks on its power, individual nation states serve as a check one another’s power.  While evil may prevail in one nation, good counsel in other nations can limit the spread of the tyranny. 

The New World Order, the Tower of Babel for Our Time  

It is the contention of this author that the New World Order, which is simply another name for globalism, is the Tower of Babel of our time.  While the men of ancient Babel sought to rule the world in unrighteousness, unsurprisingly, the charge toward world government in our time is being led by the men of Mystery, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and of the Abominations of the Earth.

The current Antichrist, Pope Francis, simply cannot stop with his calls for the creation of his shiny new Tower of Babel.  In a Breitbart piece from March 2021, Pope Francis actually used the term “New World Order.”  In the article “Pope Francis Calls For ‘New World Order’ After The Pandemic,” Francis is quoted as saying that we can heal injustice, “by building a new world order based on solidarity, studying innovative methods to eradicate bullying, poverty and corruption.”  Coming from the Vatican, historically and presently the biggest, longest running collection of bullies, inducers of poverty and corruptocrats the world has ever seen, the Pope’s comments are preposterous.      

Posted in Scripturalism, Theology | Tagged John Gill, New World Order, Pope Francis, Rome and World Government, Tower of Babel, United Nations, Westphalian World Order | Leave a Comment