We are considering the end of Noah's life
in our last study.
Now, this chapter is mostly a record of
the descendants of Noah, the record of the
generations of Shem, Ham and Japheth, the sons
of Noah, and sons who were born to
them after the flood.
I just want to mention one or two
things in passing.
Ham was the cursed one.
It says here, the sons of Ham, verse
6, were Cush, Mizraim, and Put and Canaan.
Cush refers to Ethiopia, Mizraim to Egypt, and
Canaan, we know, was the land of Palestine
where the Canaanites lived.
And we don't want to read all these
verses where the names of the descendants are
given, but we can look at verse 8.
Now, Cush became the father of Nimrod.
He became a mighty one on the earth.
Now, notice, Nimrod was the grandson of Ham,
cursed by Noah.
Canaan and his descendants were cursed.
And he was a mighty hunter before the
Lord, or against the Lord.
Therefore it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty
hunter before the Lord.
And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.
He was the leader of the construction of
the Tower of Babel.
And in the margin it says Babylon.
And it's important for us to just stop
here and consider a little bit about him,
because when we speak about Babylon spiritually, the
reason why the Book of Revelation calls a
certain religious system Babylon is because it had
the characteristics of the Old Testament Babylon.
That's the reason.
And that's why it's important for us to
understand something about Old Testament Babylon, so that
we can understand the spiritual system called Babylon
today.
And in an earlier study from Daniel through
to Nehemiah, we considered what that movement from
Babylon to Jerusalem consisted of.
But here in this chapter we are told
about the origin of Babylon, the beginning of
Babylon.
And the man who built Babylon, the original
Babylon, first was a man called Nimrod, born
to Cush, who was the son of Ham,
of that cursed seed.
And there are three things mentioned in verse...
Three times it's mentioned in verse 8 that
he was mighty.
Three times that word mighty comes.
And that symbolizes the essence of Babylon, human
might.
That can be physical might in those days,
I think it was physical might, but not
only physical might, it is what I would
call soul power.
Babylon is built by people who are mighty,
humanly speaking, if not physically, in their soul.
And just like to understand what soul power
means, and I believe that Nimrod had this
when it says he was a mighty man,
he was a man who had such soul
power that he could dominate people, just like
physical power.
It's like if you have a mighty giant,
you can squeeze the life out of a
whole lot of pygmies in front of him
through his physical power.
Something of the equivalent of that is also
possible in the soul realm, in the realm
of the intellect and personality.
And not everybody has it, just like not
everybody has physical power.
Some human beings are physically weakling.
And just like that, some people don't have
soul power.
In their soul they are weakling.
But there are other human beings who are
very strong physically, and there are many human
beings who have tremendous soul power, the ability
to rule and dominate others by the strength
of their personality, strong willed and able to
dominate and lead others with their human ability.
Hitler was one like that, and many others.
Nimrod was the first great leader with human
soul power, a mighty man who had a
tremendous following.
And when you come in Chapter 11 to
see how the details are given about the
building of Babel, you see how he was
able to get the whole world into a
project.
You can imagine what a man he was.
He was the first great world leader.
And we must remember that although Noah had
died, his God-fearing son Shem was alive,
and Shem was a grand-uncle of Nimrod.
And Shem was a God-fearing man, but
Shem couldn't do it.
But this man could gather the whole world.
Of course, there were not many people interested
in following God-fearing Shem, but Nimrod, he
could gather the whole world.
And it says a mighty hunter before or
against the Lord means one who led a
spirit of rebellion against God.
And he was a mighty hunter, one who
probably not only hunted wild animals, but hunted
men.
And just like Stalin and others wiped out
anybody who opposed him, the first great dictator
and tyrant mentioned in the Bible, Nimrod, a
hunter who wiped out all opposition till people
were so scared that he was able to
be the ruler of the whole world.
We can say that he is the first
clear type of the Antichrist in the Old
Testament, because in the final day also the
word of God says that one will arise
in the last days called the man of
sin, who will lead, who will be a
world leader in rebellion against God.
And it's going to be exactly the same
spirit as it was there in Nimrod, who
was called a mighty hunter before the Lord.
And there, the beginning of his kingdom, he
was the first man mentioned who had a
kingdom.
Kingdom means he was a sort of a
king.
He was a king.
In which case he is the first king
that we read of in the Bible.
And he was a man who turned the
world against God.
He had a kingdom.
And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.
Babylon is the first kingdom mentioned in God's
word.
And when from the tower of Babel they
were scattered, which we read in chapter 11,
it says in verse 11, from that land
he went forth into Assyria.
That is when the people got scattered in
Babel, which we'll read in the next chapter.
He had to move into Assyria and built
Nineveh.
He was the one who built the city
of Nineveh as well.
And I just want to mention something that
we know from secular history.
We can't speak of it with the 100
% certainty that we can of words of
scripture.
But it's fairly well documented that Nimrod was
the founder of a religious system, which involved
magic and secret rites, which became the original
Babylonian religion, which involved idolatry.
And history tells us that he had a
very wicked wife called Samiramis, and that when
Nimrod finally died, his wife, who lived a
very loose, evil life, had an illegitimate child,
and she said that was Nimrod, come back
to life again.
That was the first claim to resurrection, long
before Jesus rose from the dead.
Satan was determined to counterfeit everything.
And she knew that people respected Nimrod so
much that she was afraid that she would
lose her position once Nimrod died.
And so she said, this child is Nimrod,
come back to life.
And then people began to worship her and
her child, Samiramis and the baby Nimrod.
And as this, at the time, when people
in those days were not scattered all over
the earth like today, they were in a
fairly closed area, this religion spread.
And as people spread to the various parts
of the earth, this religion also spread of
worshipping the mother and the child.
And of course, after the Roman Catholic system
came up, they just changed the names to
Mary and Jesus.
So you see, the Jesus that the Roman
Catholics worshipped in the arms of Mary is
actually Nimrod.
It's this Nimrod, and that's the masterpiece of
Satan, that he's got a whole lot of
Christians thinking they are worshipping Jesus.
And he's got them to worship his great
leader, Nimrod.
And they used to celebrate the birthday of
Nimrod on December the 25th, because they worshipped
the sun.
And December 25th was the day when the
sun went down to the southern hemisphere.
And these folks who lived in Babylon, which
is presently known as Iraq, that was the
time when the sun would begin its journey
back to the northern hemisphere, and that was
called the birthday of the sun.
And that also was transferred to the birthday
of Jesus.
So all this is another Jesus.
Another Jesus worshipped by the Roman Catholics and
the mother and child.
Another Jesus whose birthday is celebrated on December
25th.
And you can see what a fantastically wonderful
work Satan has done in fooling multitudes of
Christians in celebrating all these things.
Another Jesus.
If only Christians who celebrate Christmas would realize
that they were celebrating the birthday of Nimrod.
What a shock they'll get when they finally
stand before the Lord and discover they were
celebrating the birthday of Nimrod and calling it
the birthday of Jesus.
We are not to be without light in
these things.
That's why we must say we must stick
to Scripture.
If you find something in Scripture, in the
New Testament, do it.
If you don't find it in the New
Testament, things like Christmas, Easter, you do it
because some God-fearing person does it, you're
bound to go astray because God honors His
word.
Not the word of even a God-fearing
man, but His word.
And that's why God tests us to see
whether our devotion is to His word or
to religious systems.
I mention that because it's when we move
away from God's word that we can slowly
drift into Babylon to a greater or a
lesser extent.
And I believe all who celebrate Christmas have
got a little bit of Babylon in their
religious system.
And, of course, the greater parts of Babylon
is the whole religious system which includes priestcraft
and rites and rituals and traditions and all
types of things which are contrary to God's
word.
So that's a serious thing that we mustn't
take lightly.
Then it goes on to speak about all
the others who were the descendants of Ham.
Further down in that chapter, the territory we
read in verse 19 of the Canaanites in
Sodom and Gomorrah, the place that God destroyed,
was also the descendants of Ham.
These are the sons of Ham, it says
in verse 20.
And the first great rebellion against the Lord
came through the sons of Ham.
Ham was probably offended very greatly because his
father rebuked him.
And it must have made him very bitter
against his father, very bitter against God.
And he must have transmitted that bitterness to
his children and to his children's children till
his children's children grew up to rebel against
God himself.
And then we read about Shem, the God
-fearing brother of Ham.
He's called the father of all the children
of Eber.
Now, it's amazing that he's called the father
of all the children of Eber because Eber
was not actually Shem's direct son.
It says in verse 22 that one of
Shem's sons were Arphaxad, and verse 24, Arphaxad's
son was Shelah, and Shelah's son was Eber.
So Eber was actually the great-grandson of
Shem.
But Shem is mentioned here as the father
of all the children of Eber, probably because
it was through Eber that Abraham came, and
it was Eber that gave the name Hebrew
to Abraham.
Abraham is called Abraham the Hebrew, and Hebrew
is from the word Eber, which the Jews,
the language the Jews speak today.
The Hebrews are descendants of Eber, from which
the word Hebrew comes.
And that's the reason why Shem is called
the father of all the children of Eber.
And it says in verse 25, two sons
were born to Eber.
The name of the one was Peleg, for
in his days the earth was divided.
That is the time when the Tower of
Babel took place.
In his days, in the days when Peleg
was alive, the people were divided on the
earth across the face of the earth.
And it's interesting to note that, because when
you read the detailed genealogy in chapter 11,
you see something very interesting.
We don't have time to look into it,
but if you read from verse 11, sorry,
from verse 10, chapter 11, verse 10 onward
up to verse 17, where all the ages
are given, you'll discover one thing, that Peleg
was born just 111 years after the flood.
And you can work that out from chapter
11, verse 10 to 17.
111 years after the flood, Peleg was born.
And that gives us an indication of how
soon after the flood Nimrod rebelled against God.
It didn't take a long time, just about
one century, a little over a century, and
man was again rebelling against God.
It was a very short time.
It wasn't a long time before man drifted
away from God.
Less than 150 years after the flood, Nimrod
was able to gather the whole world in
rebellion against God.
And we read of that in chapter 11.
Chapter 11, verse 1.
The whole earth used the same language and
the same words, or as the margin says,
just a few sets of words, one language.
And it came about as they journeyed east,
that they found a plain in the land
of Shinar and settled there.
Right from the beginning, the significance to their
journey east, right from the beginning, man has
worshipped the sun, because the sun is the
giver of light and warmth.
And they journeyed east means they journeyed towards
the sun.
They journeyed towards their God.
You find even today, a lot of the
orthodox Syrian churches, they turn, their buildings are
constructed towards the east so that when people
stand in the building, they face the east.
When they pray, and even in their houses,
they turn towards the east when they pray.
This is all part of the old Babylonian
religion that's come down through 4,000 years.
They face towards the east.
In fact, when the Lord, this is something
I want you to remember, that when the
Lord told Moses to build a tabernacle, He
said, put the gate of the tabernacle in
the east so that when they go in
to the most holy place, their backs will
be towards the sun.
In the tabernacle, when they entered it, they
were always facing west.
You read that in Exodus.
God was determined to turn people away from
this business of worshipping the sun.
But the Jacobite and other churches have gone
back to Babylon, to turning back to the
east.
Why?
Even Protestants.
I remember the Baptist church down here just
a few years ago.
They went out to a hill down here
to have a sunrise service on Easter morning
to worship the sun on Sunday morning.
The sun has risen.
It's the old Babylon just a few years
ago down the street.
It's widespread, the worship of the sun.
They call it sunrise service.
But Jesus has risen.
What has risen there in the morning?
The sun.
You trace it back to the old Babylonian
religion, it's there.
And they journeyed east, and Nimrod was the
leader of this worship of the sun.
Of course, he was probably claimed to be
the incarnation of the sun to get everybody
to worship him.
He was a mighty man.
And they found a plain in the land
of Shinar.
Shinar is Babylon.
You read about Shinar again in the book
of Zechariah.
And settled there.
And they said one to one another, Come,
let us make bricks.
And you can be sure this was Nimrod's
idea.
It was man's plan.
To let us make bricks and burn them
thoroughly.
And they used bricks for stone, and they
used tar for mortar.
And they said, Come, let us build for
ourselves a city.
And a tower whose top will reach into
heaven.
Probably because they thought, just in case there's
another flood, we better find some place high
enough where we can climb up and live,
in case there's another flood.
They wouldn't believe that God had said, I
will never again send a flood.
No, they wouldn't believe that.
They wanted to build a tower to take
care of themselves.
And let's build something high whose top will
reach into the heavens.
And let us make for ourselves a name.
In the heavens was the God they worshipped,
the sun.
And they wanted to reach that.
And lest we be scattered, let us make
for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered
abroad over the face of the whole earth.
Now I want you to notice three things
about Babylon, which are true of Babylon right
from the beginning, right through even till today.
First of all, Babylon is built according to
man's plans, without seeking God's will.
Remember that.
When we live our life according to our
own self-made plans, without reference to knowing
is that God's will or not, that's the
beginning of the spirit of Babylon.
Come, let us make bricks, and let us,
verse 4, build a city.
Let us do that.
Come, let us do this.
Come, let us go and take this job.
Come, let us move to this city and
live there.
Come, let us go and marry this person.
It's all the same system that begins with
no interest in seeking God's will.
That is the worship of the sun.
And you can see that Jesus came and
lived exactly the opposite way to all that.
He never wanted to do his will in
anything.
Always saying, Father, is that your will?
I have a will of my own, Jesus
said.
My will, for example, in Gethsemane, his will
was that he didn't want to drink that
cup.
But, he said, not my will.
And all through his 33 years, he had
his will, but he never did it.
He sought the Father's will.
That is what builds Jerusalem.
And we mustn't think that Jerusalem is just
a system that sings songs about the new
and living way and has a particular songbook
and has a particular language.
That can be the greatest deception of all.
Jerusalem is a gathering of people who have
learned to seek the will of God and
deny their own will in all the little
details of life.
That's why I say you can sit in
any church building.
You can sit in any building and be
a part of Babylon.
We have often said that you can sit
right here in our midst for 20 years
and end up as a good pillar in
Babylon.
Sure, if you have sought your own way
and your own will in your home and
in your life, you want to have your
own way, you've never allowed God to break
that stubborn self-will of yours.
My brothers and sisters, hear it, that you
can sit here for 20 years and be
a masterpiece in Babylon.
A strong pillar of Babylon, finally.
Because it's got nothing to do with a
doctrine.
It's got to do with a certain attitude
towards God's will.
That's it.
And you see that.
Come, let us do this.
We can do it.
Man's plan.
And I've seen multitudes of Christians who live
like that.
In fact, the vast majority of so-called
believers, they have no interest in seeking the
will of God for their life.
They want something.
And they are afraid to ask, is it
God's will or not?
Which shows that they have such a lust
like Balaam, who wanted to go to Moab.
And even when God sort of tried to
put a hindrance in his way, he still
pushed his way and went.
And God said, go.
Go.
Go where you like.
I won't stop you.
And he who started out as a prophet
of God, ended up as a servant of
Satan.
And he's not the first.
There are many others, it says, who ran
after the error of Balaam.
There are many like that who built Babylon.
Beware of this spirit, my brothers and sisters,
of not wanting God's will in every area
of your life.
It is in this that we find our
flesh is so strong.
When I want to do what I want
to do, can you say it is an
evil thing to build a city?
Were they saying, come, let us all commit
adultery with each other?
They were not saying that.
Were they saying, come, let us kill one
another?
They were not saying that.
They were not doing evil things.
What were they planning?
Come, let us build a city.
What's wrong with that?
Supposing you made a plan one day saying,
I want to build a house for myself.
What's wrong in that?
Nothing wrong in it.
But yet it can be the spirit of
Nimrod, the spirit of Babylon.
If you want to build a house.
Because after all, these people are only building
a house.
That's all.
Can you imagine that Babylon began with people,
not with people committing murder and committing adultery.
No.
It was with just such a simple thing
like building something.
And there we need to understand that there
are so many things that look so innocent
on the outside.
You can say there's nothing evil in that.
There's nothing wrong in that.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong in that.
But underneath it is your desire to seek
your own, your own comfort, your own gain,
your own profit, your own advancement.
And as long as that is your way
of thinking, it is a way of thinking
which began with Nimrod.
Of course, it began with Cain, but which
is manifested in a more collective way in
the days of Nimrod.
That's seeking one's own advancement and gain and
making plans without reference to God's will at
all.
Beware of it.
That's not Christianity.
That's a counterfeit.
And that's the counterfeit that Satan has spread
all over Christendom today.
And that's why we say it's all Babylon.
And I've come to see in my brief
contact with people who speak of the new
and living way that that spirit is found
even among those who speak of the new
and living way.
And I'm not speaking only about India.
I'm speaking about Europe and America and other
places too where people speak about the new
and living way and seek their own.
Seek their own gain and comfort and convenience
and their own advancement.
But that's the language of denying yourself.
It's one of the greatest deceptions of Satan.
It's not a doctrine, brothers and sisters.
It is an attitude towards God's will and
an attitude towards my own stubborn seeking my
own gain and advancement in this world.
And if we are not careful we'll end
up like those people Paul warns Timothy about
who have a form of godliness but don't
have the inner power.
The power is doing God's will.
They don't do that.
But a form of godliness.
All the language.
But underneath it it's a seeking of convenience.
And I will not seek something which is
inconvenient or which is going to disturb my
comfort in some way.
And I can speak the right language.
We have to be very, very careful.
And so it says here they made this
plan and we saw in chapter 10 that
it says about Nimrod he was a mighty
man.
A mighty man.
A man might, might, might is what's spoken
there in chapter 10 we saw that.
And that's the other thing about Babylon.
It is human power.
As I said human soul power.
Where one man dominates others.
That's another thing I've seen Christendom riddled with.
People finding out God's will for others telling
people what to do, where to go controlling
them with money.
Can you think of any Christian organization in
this country which is not controlled by money?
Almost all of them by foreign money.
Somebody comes and gives money and then he
has the control on the work.
That's why we have to be careful.
Might can be with soul power, money power
so many things.
And soul power and money power can never
build the kingdom of God.
Very important if we want to build Jerusalem
that we don't let people's soul power dominate
the church.
Or money power dominate the church.
We know that Western countries, Western Christians have
a lot of money.
And that's been the tragedy of Indian Christians
that they have sold their souls for money.
The solution to that of course is not
to have no contact with Western Christians.
To be an Indian nationalist is not spirituality.
There was a time in my life when
I was like that an Indian nationalist, completely
anti-Western and God showed me that I
wasn't spiritual.
I was just Indian.
Not spiritual.
And the Lord showed me He has children
everywhere and if I thought that spirituality was
to be against a particular group of people
I was deceiving myself and I had to
cleanse myself from that.
But we have to be very careful that
we don't let anyone have power over us
with money.
And I remember in our contact with these
brothers from Europe with whom we have had
fellowship one of the first things I told
them when they came here first many many
years ago was I said if there is
one thing that ruins God's work in India
today is Western money.
So my brothers I said if you want
to have good fellowship with us don't send
money and don't support anybody here financially.
They are not under obligation to anyone.
They are not under obligation to us.
Then we are free.
Then nobody can control what we say or
do and we can't control what they should.
Then we can have fellowship.
But money power and soul power is the
thing that very subtly destroys the building of
Jerusalem.
And that's the thing we have to fight
in the church.
And soul power that's the thing which all
of us can have brothers and sisters.
You may say I am not a church
leader.
Do you know you can have soul power
over others?
You can have a few younger brothers perhaps
who look up to you.
Or you are a zealous young brother who
got a few teenagers to look up to
you.
Or you can be a sister.
And you got a little group of younger
sisters who look up to you and you
got your dominating them with your soul power.
You are afraid if they are devoted to
anybody else they must be devoted to you.
What is that?
That's the spirit of Nimrod.
That's what I mean.
That's Babylon.
That you want them to be under you.
You don't have to be a church leader.
You can be a 25 year old young
brother or sister and have people under your
power.
I've seen it.
People who want to control teenagers.
Tell them what to do.
The spirit of Nimrod in sisters and brothers.
Babylon.
And we have to fight it in the
church.
And it's a terrific battle.
And these can be people who know the
doctrine so well.
And who have so much zeal.
They can be specialists and experts in all
these things.
But this spirit this soul power.
They don't give people freedom.
They want to rule and dominate.
Tell people what to do.
You must do everything according to the way
I say.
That spirit when we.
It's in all of us my brothers and
sisters.
It's in our flesh.
We The world is full of stories of
mother-in-laws and sons-in-laws and
daughters-in-laws.
Where does it all come from?
It comes from the spirit of Nimrod.
Where a mother does not know how to
leave her son alone after his marriage.
Or a father.
Doesn't know how to leave his son alone
after his marriage.
He wants to sit on his head and
tell his wife how to take care of
the boy and how to do this and
how to do that.
What is that?
That's Nimrod all over again.
It's all over the world.
We just don't know how to leave other
people alone.
This desire to lord it over others and
rule over others and boss them and get
them and I'd be offended if they don't
do it the way I have told them
to do it.
It is Nimrod.
It's Nimrod reproducing himself all over the world
again and again and again.
And now we proclaim a gospel where we
cleanse ourselves from these things.
We are not offended if somebody doesn't do
things the way we do it.
Or the way we advise them.
I've come across lots of cases where some
brothers ask me for advice and I've given
them advice and I see he doesn't even
do it and I say praise God.
I'm glad he's free from me.
I'm glad he doesn't live in such fear
of me that he has to do it
the way I've told him.
And if he's gone and made a mess
of his life, that's a greater opportunity for
me to cleanse myself so that I don't
sit there and become another little Nimrod in
my spirit and say, there, that's got him
a lesson.
That he didn't listen to me and so
he's made a mess of his life.
Have you ever felt like that?
You told somebody to do something, he didn't
do it the way you told him?
You the great Nimrod and then you got
a little delight in your heart when he
got his life messed up instead of feeling
a bit sad.
My brothers and sisters, we've got to cleanse
ourselves.
Not only from the filthiness of the flesh,
but the filthiness of the spirit.
This tremendous soul power which I believe all
of us have.
You can be a teenager and you can
boss the other little brothers and sisters you
have in your home.
Oh, you can see some teenagers are tired
in their home.
The big brother, the big sister bossing all
the other ones, telling them what to do.
It's there.
You don't have to be a church leader
or any such thing.
You can just be a little teenager and
that spirit can be there and if only
you can get light on it in your
young days and cleanse yourself from it and
have the spirit of Christ who knew, who
was Lord of all the universe and yet
never bossed people around.
I believe he was an elder brother in
that house of Joseph and Mary as an
example only to serve, not to boss the
others around.
He had four brothers and two sisters at
least, but he didn't boss any of them.
He had a flesh like ours.
And I believe this is the area where
we all need to cleanse up.
Husbands who boss their wives and wives who
want to boss and control their husbands in
some way or the other.
The spirit of Nimrod with the language of
Jerusalem in the mouth with the spirit of
Babylon in the heart.
Beware of soul power.
Beware whenever you have power over another person,
beware of it.
It's a very dangerous thing to have power
over another person.
You got to live in fear.
We got to cleanse ourselves.
A true father, a true mother, a true
father-in-law, mother-in-law can only
lead by service, by example and by service,
not by bossing and lording.
Particularly as children grow up.
There is a need for discipline in their
younger days, but not this Nimrod spirit.
And you who are older brothers and older
sisters, I want to warn you.
Cleanse yourself from this Nimrod spirit, lest you
become a part of Babylon, having heard all
about Jerusalem and the church for so many
years.
Be humble.
Take Jesus as your example.
And when you begin to boss your younger
brothers and sisters, just ask yourself if Jesus
did any such thing.
And if Jesus didn't do such a thing,
just imagine whom you are following.
You are following Nimrod then.
Ya mighty man, mighty hunter who gathered people
and everybody would do exactly what he said.
We are not talking about the heathen.
We are talking about believers now.
This is how Babylon is built.
And if we don't cleanse ourselves from this,
we shall live in the greatest delusion of
all, with the language of Jerusalem and the
spirit of Babylon.
Ya, there is a great need for that
exhortation.
Brothers and sisters, judge yourself and don't be
a busybody in other people's matters.
Tremendous need for that.
Because to be a busybody in other people's
matters is the spirit of Nimrod.
And the other thing we see here is,
it is not only the man's plan, man's
power, but also it is for man's glory.
In the middle of verse 4 of chapter
11, let us make a name for ourselves.
A name for ourselves.
People should know that we are something.
You can build a church talking the language
of the new and living way with this
desire.
Let us make a name in Bangalore, or
in India, or in the world perhaps, that
we are the church.
Or let us make a name in the
church that our home is the ideal home.
That people will see our home and talk
about it.
The brothers and sisters in the church will
say, oh, that brother's home, see how he's
brought up his children, and see how he
runs his home, and see how he lives
with his wife.
What is it?
It is the same old Nimrod spirit.
Let us make for ourselves a name.
Only thing they did it for another purpose,
you are doing it for another purpose.
But the same spirit, my brothers and sisters,
that is an obvious deception.
The most subtle deception is, when I am
doing spiritual things with this desire, let us
make for ourselves a name.
Tell me, aren't you tempted by this in
the church?
If you say you are not tempted by
this, I would only say, I wouldn't say
you are a liar, I would say you
probably have very little light in your life
so far.
We are tempted in this area.
Let us make a name before the brothers
and sisters.
Let us make ourselves a name before the
elder brothers.
Let us make ourselves a name.
This is Babylon.
We talk about Babylon and Jerusalem.
Basically it is this.
Let me make myself a name.
Do you think it is possible for a
brother who speaks the language of the new
and living way, to try and make for
himself a name?
Why not?
That is why Jesus said the first will
be last and the last will be first.
There are going to be some tremendous surprises
in the day of judgment when we discover
brothers and sisters who spoke and preached about
the new and living way, ending up as
Babylon.
What a surprise it will be.
Will it be a surprise to you?
I will tell you, it will not be
a surprise to me at all.
Because it has become clearer and clearer to
me that many who speak the language of
the new and living way have not cleansed
themselves from the spirit of Babylon.
It is there.
Let us make us a name that I
am a godly brother or I am a
humble brother or my family is an exemplary
family or our church is a wonderful church.
Let us make ourselves a name.
And we have to cleanse ourselves from this
because it is in our flesh.
My will, my power, my glory.
That is basically Babylon.
I want to do what I want.
And I have got the soul power and
the cleverness and the sharpness and the intellect
and the, what I call discernment, all human
to do it.
And then ultimately it will be for my
glory.
I believe that the vast majority, I wouldn't
be surprised if more than 95% of
Christian work is done for the glory of
man.
Books written for the glory of man.
Articles written in Christian magazines.
Let us make ourselves a name.
Songs sung, songs, hymns written for the glory
of man.
Let us make ourselves a name that I
am the writer of a hymn or words
spoken and solos sung in Christian conventions.
All with this principle.
Let us make ourselves a name.
Let me make myself a name.
A name.
It can be all types of things.
It can be cooking a meal in a
house.
I cook a meal to serve people and
then underlying it I am just waiting for
all of them to say what a fantastic
meal.
What is it?
Let me make myself a name as the
best cook in the assembly.
Or some stupid Nimrodish thing like that.
Lots of Nimrodish things like that.
In various areas.
Let me make myself a name.
If I can't get it there, I can't
preach.
Alright, let me do this then.
Here I'll make myself a name.
The thing is in the area where I
think I am a specialist.
There is where I can be a Nimrod.
I have that spirit.
Because I can't do it there.
Okay, I know you are competing in that
area.
Let me compete in this area and really
make myself a name.
Beware of those areas where you are specially
gifted.
Those are the most dangerous areas for you
and for me.
If we live in fear, and if we
can say like Paul, we are not ignorant
of Satan's scheme.
We see through all this what Satan is
trying to do.
Then we are safe.
It says here, verse 5, And the Lord
came down to see the city and the
tower which the sons of men had built.
The Lord examined everything we do.
And he comes down and sees, what are
these people doing now?
What were they doing?
Were they committing adultery?
Were they killing one another?
Were they stealing from one another?
Were they telling lies to one another?
Which of the Ten Commandments were they breaking
there?
Only the one connected with God.
The first one.
Thou shalt have no other God but me.
They were breaking that.
They were their own God.
Their plan, their might, their glory.
And the Lord was examining the whole thing.
And we can say, concerning all of our
life, it can be said, And the Lord
came down to see what we were building.
With our life, in our family, in the
church.
There we know what it means to cleanse
ourselves.
To cleanse ourselves, brothers and sisters, from that
which is defiling.
And the Lord said, They are one people.
There was unity there.
A lot of Christians think that unity means
God must be there.
Do you know that the first place in
the Bible where unity is mentioned is at
Babel?
They are one.
And the Lord Himself says that.
It is not a deceptive oneness.
They were one.
And that's the deception in the ecumenical movement,
where they think they can get all the
churches together and the Lord says they are
one.
Of course, the Lord said about Babylon also,
they are one.
And that's what He says about the ecumenical
movement.
That's another Babylon which is all one.
Externally.
Not in the spirit.
No.
But they were one in their project to
rebel against God.
They were one in wanting to do their
own will.
There were, a lot of people in the
world are one like that.
One in loving money.
One in doing their own lust.
One in seeking their own gain and profit
and honor.
The Lord said, They are all one people.
They are one.
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.
Think of that.
Will be withheld from them.
That means what they have set their hearts
to do, they are going to do.
My brothers and sisters, what a sad thing.
If God has to say that about any
of us, that that which this fellow has
started out to do, nobody can stop Him
now.
Almighty God Himself cannot stop.
They are determined to do it.
They are not bothered about finding out my
will in that area or not.
They are so set on doing it and
they are determined to do it.
This soul power is so strong.
Nothing which they purpose to do will be
withheld.
Then God says, All right.
Let me go down and do something.
Because He loved humanity.
If it was just one little group doing
it on their own, God would have probably
left them alone and say, All right, you
can do what you like.
But when it concerned the whole human race
there, God has to do something to protect
the children, to protect the younger ones.
Sometimes God has to come and bring frustration
to our plans.
And it's because He loves us that He
does it.
And we know that He scattered them.
They deserve death.
But He didn't give them death.
He just scattered them.
That's His mercy.
Let us confuse their language.
Let us go down.
That is another verse from the Old Testament
that teaches that God is more than one
person.
We know that they didn't know it clearly
in the Old Testament.
Today we know it's the Trinity, but you
notice in expressions like this when God speaks,
it is, Come, let us, verse 7, go
down.
And confuse their language that they may not
understand one another's speech.
And the Lord scattered them abroad from there
over the face of the whole earth, and
they stopped building the city.
Therefore its name was called Babel, meaning confusion.
And that's important to know also that Babel
means confusion.
And there's a verse in 1 Corinthians 14
which says, The Lord is not the author
of confusion.
Confusion is not God's will in our life,
in our family, or in the church.
It's not God's will that we should be
confused.
And that's why I say it's part of
divine nature to learn to do things in
an orderly way, to keep our clothes in
an orderly way, to keep our things in
an orderly way, to keep our life in
an orderly way, to keep our finances in
an orderly way.
If you say my finances are a mess,
what you're saying is my finances are Babylon.
You better do something about it if your
finances are Babylon.
Or, my home's a mess.
Some people are so proud of it, they
even hang it up on the wall.
In a mess.
You might as well write that this house
is like Babylon.
Now, it's one thing to...
I'm not saying that when you have small
children you can always keep your house neat
and tidy for the honor of men.
That's not possible, it's impossible where there are
small children.
But what I say is we need to
understand I'm not talking about the state of
our houses, but I'm saying we need to
understand that tidiness and orderliness is part of
God.
And confusion and chaos is the work of
the devil.
And sometimes it's not possible to do many
things because of many responsibilities that we have
in our homes, but we must have this
in our mind at least.
I must seek as far as is possible.
The degree of possibility is different for different
people.
To run all of my life in an
orderly way.
Devil means confusion.
The Lord confused the language of the whole
earth.
And from there the Lord scattered them abroad
over the face of the whole earth.
Now, it's very interesting when you compare this
with what happened on the day of Pentecost.
On the day of Pentecost it was exactly
the opposite.
There are many people who spoke different languages.
I mean, the people began to speak languages
they had never learned.
These people also began to speak strange languages.
But there it was a unity in rebellion
that God brought a division in.
But when the Holy Spirit came on the
day of Pentecost, it was a reversal of
Babylon.
That they could speak in languages that they
had never learned not to rebel against God,
but to praise and glorify Him.
That's an interesting contrast.
Here they built Babylon, there on the day
of Pentecost it was to build Jerusalem.
There was a unity which was different from
the unity of Babylon.
It was a unity in spirit, a unity
in humility, a unity in the spirit of
Christ.
And that was the other time where God
brought in new languages.
And so that's just in passing.
And then we read about the records of
the generations of Shem, verse 10 onwards.
How He became the father of Arpachshad and
so on.
And all the other children, grandchildren and so
on.
And we come right down to verse 27.
In the line of Shem, we finally come
to the man through whom God begins to
make a new beginning.
After Nimrod's rebellion, God begins again with another
man, Abraham.
And we need to see this contrast.
Chapter 10, we read of Nimrod.
At the end of chapter 11, we read
of Abraham.
His name was Abram in the beginning.
These are the records of the generations of
Terah.
Terah became the father of Abram.
Nehor and Haran, and Haran became the father
of Lot.
Lot was Abraham's brother's son.
And Haran died in the presence of his
father.
Terah in the land of his birth, in
Ur of the Chaldeans.
Abram and Nehor took wives for themselves.
The name of Abram's wife was Sarai.
The name of Nehor's wife was Milcah.
And Sarai, verse 30, was barren, and she
had no child.
And 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.
Why did they want to go to the
land of Canaan?
Interesting question.
Verse 31, it says, Terah took Abram, his
son, and went from Ur to the land
of Canaan.
And they went as far as Haran and
settled there.
If you turn to Acts of the Apostles,
chapter 7, verse 2, we read what Stephen
said.
Acts 7, verse 2, Stephen said to the
high priest, Hear me, brethren and fathers, the
God of glory appeared to our father Abraham
when he was in Mesopotamia, that is Iraq,
Ur of the Chaldeans, before he lived in
Haran, and said to him, Depart from your
country and your relatives, and come into the
land that I will show you.
God said that to him in Ur.
And he departed from Ur and did not
reach Canaan, but settled in Haran.
And from there, here is the important phrase,
after his father died, God removed him into
this country.
Sometimes the father has to die before God
can remove a man to the place where
he wants to be, because the man is
so attached to his father.
Later on, Abraham was attached to his son
Isaac, and God had to separate him from
Isaac.
But before that, Abraham was attached to his
father.
He was 75 years old, but he had
this emotional attachment to his dad that God
had to break him free from his father.
And the only way he could break him
free from his father was by allowing the
father to die.
Otherwise, Abraham would never have reached Canaan.
It's a sad thing.
It says there in chapter 11 that, Genesis
11, 31, that Terah took Abraham, his son.
What did we read in Acts 7?
To whom did God appear?
God appeared to Abraham.
But who was the one?
Abraham went and told his dad, God appeared
to me and said, we've got to leave.
And dad got everything organized.
All right, son, we're going.
Who was the leader?
Dad.
And when dad came to Haran, dad said,
we're settling here.
And Abraham, 75-year-old Abraham, neatly settled
down with his dad.
And God had to do something drastic.
Since his father died, God said, Abraham, I've
got a plan for your life.
You've got to move on.
After his father died, he moved on.
We have to break free from our relatives.
In the days of Terah, 11-32, 205,
when Terah died.
Now the Lord had told Abraham, it says.
That's the way you should read chapter 12,
verse 1.
The Lord had said to Abraham, go from
your country, from your relatives, from your father's
house.
But he didn't listen.
He went from his country.
But he didn't break free from his relatives.
You see how way back there, you have
this matter of relatives hindering a man's spiritual
progress.
Keep that in mind.
Our love for our relatives can make us
stop in a halfway home called Haran when
God wants us to reach Canaan.
And if I don't break free from them,
respect them, honor them, but don't let them
hinder your spiritual progress.
Don't get into all types of worldly conversation
with them and hinder your spiritual progress.
So many people have settled in a halfway
home, Haran, when God wanted them in Canaan.
And if God loves you sufficiently, He may
take away your father or mother or someone.
So if He wants you to go on
with Him, it's not right to be so
attached to someone that it hinders our spiritual
life.