The God of the Old Testament – Part 15: The Once and Future Judgment
By Mark L. Carlton
Most of the critics of the God of the Old Testament are guilty of “Cherry-Picking;” choosing those acts of Divine retribution which support their theory that the God of the Bible is a cruel and sadistic tyrant. Overlooked in their cursory reading of the scriptures are occasions when God’s judgment is so measured that it barely registers on the Richter scale. God’s first judgment after the Great Flood is one of events. The event I am referring to is the Tower of Babel.
Last week I pointed out that God entered into a covenant with the human race after the flood.[i] As far as the Bible is concerned, this is the only covenant God made with the entire human race. The Bile calls it, “The everlasting covenant between God and man and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.” I will be referring to it as the Eternal Covenant.
Babel was the first time after the flood that the human race violated the Eternal Covent. But when they were corrected for it we do not see a vengeful God pouring out wrath and indiscriminately destroying human life. Instead we see a gentle intervention aimed at forcing humanity to that which it is ever reluctant to do, obey God.
The Eternal Covenant is extremely important for developing what I refer to as a Biblical Philosophy of History or understanding human history from a Biblical perspective. The reason the Eternal Covenant is important is that it establishes a standard by which God judges the nations. So when the Bible talks about God judging some people we understand what is happening. Certainly there may be many factors in play, but one thing is certain, they must have violated the covenant.
In addition, the Eternal Covenant helps us to look at human history and understand the reasons for the rise and fall of nations. It also gives us the ability to understand our own times. But more importantly for us and posterity, the Eternal Covenant will be the reason for God’s future judgments and His final intervention in human history at the end of the age.
The Eternal Covenant has two parts to it. First, God has covenanted to do or not to do certain things. Second, He has clearly stated what He requires of the human race.
For His part, God made these promises:
- To never to curse the ground again because of us, or to destroy the earth with a flood. Note, God did not say he would never again destroy the world, just that He would never again do it with a flood.
- To maintain seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, day and night for as long as the earth remains.
- To put the fear and terror of man into every beast of the field, bird of the sky, etc.
In turn, the human race, represented by Noah and his sons, were blessed and given certain privileges and responsibilities:
- The human race was given the responsibility of being fruitful and multiplying, and filling the earth.
- The human race was given the privilege of eating meat, just as it had previously been given fruits and vegetables. However, we were commanded not to eat the blood of the animals we kill for food.
- The human race was given both the privilege and the responsibility of executing justice upon the earth.
Notice that the first responsibility God gave to man under the Eternal Covenant was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. After the flood the human race was fruitful, and it multiplied. But under its first great political leader, Nimrod, the human race soon made it clear that it had no intention of filling the earth. In fact, it was their stated goal not to be scattered over the face of the earth. And it was this desire to stay together as a one-world community under the leadership of a single man, Nimrod, which led to their ambitious building project on the plains of Shinar:[iii]
“It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land Shinar and settled there. … 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 earth.”[iv]
With the plan to build a great city, and what would come to be known as the Tower of Babel, humanity’s great one-world dream was born. But because of Divine judgment it was stillborn.
This leads us to the question; Why? What was wrong with Babel? I believe the Bible gives us the answer — though it is more implied in Genesis than clearly stated — in the statement God made when He announced His intention to intervene: “Now nothing which they purpose will be impossible to them.” While various interpretations have been offered for this statement, I believe the point is this; God knows that our great Utopian dream is ultimately the most dangerous idea we have ever come up with.
The last century’s secular attempts to resurrect the dream underscore this theory and should serve as a warning against it. But the one consistent lesson we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. And so history is forced to repeat itself. As British poet, Steve Turner, pointed out, “It has to. No one listens.” But for those who may have forgotten the twentieth century’s attempts at constructing as a secular Utopia, let me refresh your memory.
We are all familiar with the Nazis, who were responsible for the deaths of nearly 21 million of their own people, in their attempt at rebuilding the tower. As you may recall, Hitler’s tower was built with a slight tilt to the right. This has caused many Utopians to think if it were just tilted to the left things might be better. But that too was tried in the last century by various Marxist regimes. Their results were even worse.
According to an article appearing on Newsmax;[v] “By 1987 there were 15 Marxist states which had managed to kill at least 1,000,000 of their own citizens,” not in war, but in times of “peace.” From 1917 until 1987, seventy short years, the Utopians of the left killed between 170 and 360 millions of their own people, 5 to 18 million times the number killed by fascism.
However, ignoring the lessons of the past century, our political leaders continue to build the tower in our time. The debate is over the slant of the tower. Some want to tilt it to the left; others want to tilt it to the right. But no one seems to be asking whether the tower should be built at all. And so the vision first dreamed on the plains of Shinar, continues it inspire. But it is like many dreams we have had before. It starts hopefully. We think it is going to be a good dream. Then, all at once, it turns into a nightmare.
But let us return now to God’s gentle judgment of the original building project. As I look at it, the thing that strikes me most is how measured it was. As we look at the judgment at Babel it is clear that God had no desire to destroy the human race. Instead, His actions seem calculated only to force the race to separate and fill the earth with diverse groups of people.
But, I see more than a Divine desire for human diversity at play in the judgment of Babel. It seems to me that God’s grace is displayed here in the midst of His judgment. I see God, recognizing the ends that the human race could not see, moved to save that generation from themselves, by frustrating their dream of Utopia. And so God put a stop to humanity’s one world dream…at least for a season.
The result of the judgment was that the human race was separated into tribes, the tribes began to migrate, and the earth was filled with diverse peoples, just as God intended.
Millennia have past since God confused the languages at Babel, and yet the ancient idea of Babel is making a big comeback in modern times. Today the human race seems more determined than ever to unpack the dream from its collective unconsciousness and to rebuild the ancient tower? But what will happen when we find a new Nimrod and unite behind his calls for unity? The scriptures indicate that God will not be as gentle as He was the last time we tried it. The prophet, Isaiah, foresaw it all:
“Behold, the LORD lays the earth waste, devastates it, distorts its surface and scatters its inhabitants. And the people will be like the priest, the servant like his master, the maid like her mistress, the buyer like the seller, the lender like the borrower, the creditor like the debtor. The earth has been completely laid waste and completely despoiled, for the LORD has spoken the word. The earth mourns and withers, the world fades and withers, the exalted of the people of the earth fade away. The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the eternal covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and those who live in it are held guilty. Therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left….The earth reels to and fro like a drunkard and it totters like a shack. For its transgression is heavy upon it, and it will fall never to rise again.”
As I stated last week, I believe that there is an unstated reason so many today are offended by the God of the Old Testament. Their real fear, and perhaps dread, is that if God judged in the pasts He just might do it again. And, if Isaiah is to be believed, this fear is well founded, He will.
[i] I am aware of Covenant Theology and the theological covenants. But in this and all future messages I will only speak of the covenants that are so named in scripture. The first covenant that is actually named as such is this covenant that God made with the human race after the flood.
[ii] Genesis 9:16b
[iii] This plain is often identified as the present site of Babylon. However, the Bible says that Nimrod’s kingdom included Babel, Erech, Accad and Calneh (Genesis 10:10). The Bible says that all of these cities were located in the land of Shinar, so any one of them could have been the site of the tower. There is no archeological evidence for such a tower a Babylon. However, there is evidence that such a project was started and abandoned unfinished in Uruk (Biblical Erech, from which we get the name, Iraq).
[iv] Genesis 11:2-4
[v] Steve Montgomery and Steve Farrell, Newsmax, September 24, 2001
[vi] Isaiah 24:1-6; 20
