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From: Jeff Harrison (Jeff@totheends.com)
To: heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject: To The Ends Of The Earth--Teaching Newsletter #4


TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH--Teaching Newsletter #4

Thanks for the encouraging feedback of so many of you
from around the world!  May God use these teachings
to enrich your walk with Him!

I'm a little behind in posting back issues of this
Teaching Newsletter on our web site, but they'll get
there eventually.   

Some have had a problem downloading the free Messianic/Christian
Passover booklet from our web site.  The problem is
solved if you upgrade your free Adobe Acrobat Reader
to version 4.0.  The reader is available free at www.adobe.com.
 The Passover Booklet is at our web site at www.totheends.com

Thanks for your interest and for helping us spread
the word by sharing this teaching with your friends
and family. 

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THE TOWER OF BABEL
By Jeffrey J. Harrison

"There are two ways, one of life and one of death,
and there is a great difference between the two ways."
 So starts the Didache, one of the oldest extra-Biblical
Messianic (Christian) writings, an instruction manual
for new converts.  This teaching of the two ways comes
from Jesus' parable about the narrow way of life that
few will find, and the broad way of destruction that
will claim many (Matt. 7:13-14). 

But the idea of the way of the few and the way of the
many stretches back long before the time of the New
Testament, into the earliest pages of the Bible.  The
generation after the Flood faced a choice of two ways:
 either to obey God's command to scatter and fill the
earth (Gen. 1:28; 9:1,7), or to gather many together
behind the walls of a city--the city of Babel. 

Cities do not get very positive reviews in the pages
of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament).  The first
city was built by Cain after he was cast out from the
presence of the Lord (Gen. 4:17).  The second was Babel
with its famous tower (Gen. 11:9).*   

* The cities mentioned in the genealogy of Gen. 10
were built later, after the destruction of Babel. 

An essential characteristic of ancient cities was a
city wall.  If there was no wall, it was not considered
a city, only a village or town.  The appearance of
walled cities* marks an important turning point.  Historians
consider this the beginning of civilization--a word
based on the Latin civitas ("city").  But city walls
and some of the other marks of civilization, like bronze
weapons, appeared only for the purpose of defense from
the violent attacks of other "civilized" societies.
 Was this really a step forward, as many assume, or
was it a giant step backward in man's moral development?
 

*In what archaeologists identify as the Early Bronze
Age. 

Both the Bible and ancient Mesopotamian documents,
as well as modern archaeology, identify the time before
the advent of "civilization" as peaceful.   In Mesopotamia
(ancient Iraq), this was considered a "Golden Age"
that followed the Flood, when everyone spoke the same
language.  In the Bible, this matches the time before
the construction of Babel, when people slowly migrated
from Ararat (ancient Armenia), where the ark had landed,
to the plain of "Shinar" (Gen. 11:2).* 

* According to the Hebrew Bible (the Masoretic text),
this migration took about 250 years.  According to
the Old Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint),
it took about 700 years.  Archaeologists also identify
a movement of the population down from the hilly highlands,
though their evolutionary assumptions lead them to
assume a much longer period of time.      

Shinar, which the archaeologists call Sumer (the lower
Euphrates river valley in central Iraq), is where,
both in the view of the Bible and modern archaeology,
civilization began.  The discovery of irrigation led
to an explosion in the production of grain and centralized
wealth, which gave people something to be greedy about,
something to hoard and protect, or to steal for oneself.
 So the walls went up.  Humanity fell away from the
devotion of Noah and his family to God.  Peace was
replaced by armies and war, which have been with us
ever since.   

The motivation of the builders of Babel is clear: 
so they could avoid being "scattered abroad over the
surface of the whole earth" (Gen. 11:4).  They sought
affirmation in unity, in a sense of group identity,
in the power of being many, that was directly opposite
to God's calling and God's command.   

The unity of Babel also appealed to another of mankind's
dangerous tendencies:  pride.  "Let us make for ourselves
a name" (Gen. 11:4), in other words, let's make ourselves
famous in the eyes of man.  There's not much room for
pride in going out and scattering about the countryside,
where your only neighbors are your family and God himself.
    

This pride manifested itself in a monument to their
unity and their own abilities:  a huge tower in the
middle of the city.  But this tower was more than a
simple monument.  It had a religious purpose, as can
be seen in the name of the city:  Babel (or Babylon),
which comes from the Akkadian "Bab-illi" which means
the "Gate of God" or the "Gate of the gods."*  The
tower was intended to connect heaven and earth--literally:
 "and its top will be in the heavens" (Gen. 11:4).
 It was, in other words, the ultimate symbol of man's
attempt to reach God by his own strength and his own
abilities. 

* This is the same city of Babylon that appears later
in Scripture.  The decision of many translators to
use the Hebrew form of the name (Babel) in Genesis
11 and the Greek form (Babylon) elsewhere has no basis
in the original text.  Both are the same city. 

We can piece together quite a bit of information about
this tower because of the many imitations built later
after the people were scattered around the world. 
These are the stepped pyramids (ziggurats), the ruins
of which can still be seen today in Iraq and as far
away as South America.  The shape is that of the Egyptian
pyramids we're all familiar with, but instead of having
smooth sides, it rises in a series of stages or "steps."*
 The earliest pyramids in Egypt were also of this kind.
 The same basic functional (and spiritual) reality
may also be present in other ancient mounds (artificial
hills) of North America and other places around the
world. 

* The circular Tower of Babel in older illustrations
is based on much later Muslim towers found by early
European adventurers in Iraq. 

Going up the front was a huge stairway that ascended
up to or near the top--a stairway to heaven.  And at
the very top was a small chapel, sometimes of a different
color than the rest. 

In later times, it was believed that a god would visit
this chapel and spend the night, or descend down its
stairs to other chapels built at the base, to inhabit
one of the statues of the gods there.  Herodotus, in
the 5th century BC, reports the continuation in the
top-most chapel of the same practice that brought the
Flood:  human women being given as wives to fallen
angels (Gen. 6:2, Histories I.179-185).  The pagan
use of the tower may be indicated in Gen. 11:4 where
it says the tower's "top" was in the heavens.  The
Hebrew word for "top" here can also be translated "chief"
or "leadership," a possible reference to false gods.
 

The tower was, of course, based on an incredible lie.
 The real God has no need of a man-made stairway to
go up and down between heaven and earth.  It was a
human invention that flattered man's pride, not a heavenly
reality.  This was the message of Jacob's dream at
Bethel, when Jacob saw a visionary ladder and the angels
of God going up and down to heaven.  As Jacob said
after the vision ended:  "This is the gate of the heavens"
(Gen. 28:17), in other words, there where he was, alone
with God, not the step-pyramids in the land to which
he was travelling. 

The step-pyramid was an important first development
in the whole system of pagan idolatry, the whole idea
of localizing a god in a single place, which gave tremendous
power to the priests that controlled that place.  This
is still the danger of idolatry today:  making it seem
that God only exists in the place where the idols are;
together with the related idea that the bigger and
fancier the idol or place of worship, the more God
is present there.  The truth is that God can be present
equally everywhere, not just in fancy and expensive
houses of worship crowded with worshippers.     

It's surely more than a coincidence that after the
time of Constantine (4th cent. AD), when Christianity
became the passport to a better government job and
hordes of pagans entered the Church, that the thousands
of small house churches were replaced by towering stone
churches--complete with idols--at the heart of every
major city in Europe.  It might seem rude to suggest
that these majestic Christian structures shared in
the abominations of Babylon.  But although they are
often looked at romantically as monuments of faith,
they were also associated with increasing corruption
and immorality in church leadership, at a time when
the church had become an arm of the state, with great
material benefits for those who ruled her.  The greater
the centralization of church leadership, the less the
accountability to the people.  Bishops gave rise to
archbishops, archbishops to patriarchs; and in the
West, the papal system developed, which in the Middle
Ages became one of the most corrupt human institutions
the world has ever known.  The buying and selling of
church offices was standard practice across Europe,
not to mention the flood of documented moral indiscretions--many
of which gained legal status in church law.*  The introduction
of enforced celibacy--far more extensive than in Babylon--proved
the moral ruin of many.  And the lack of religious
tolerance, which led to the execution of many tens
of thousands of Jews, Bible-believing Christians, and
others, was something completely unknown in Babylon.
 Yes, unlike Babylon, these were the sins of God's
adopted people--the Gentile Christians.  But is God
any less angry about sin in Jerusalem than he is about
sin in Babylon? 

* Priests were taxed by the Church for their mistresses,
as were brothels for their trade. 

The Protestant Reformers fought fiercely to free themselves
from this Babylonian yoke of bondage, and reintroduce
accountability and holiness into church leadership.
 But their descendants have not been immune from the
logic of Babylon.  Early intolerance has now reversed
itself to accommodate behavior which most ancient pagan
societies would never have accepted.*  Protestant exclusivism
has been replaced with a spirit of ecumenism, with
denominations being replaced by super-denominations
with an increasing urgency for pan-Christian structural
unity.  Others, who reject this path, have nonetheless
found themselves pursuing centralization in the construction
of the modern mega-churches, which have been derided
by their detractors as "mini-papacies."  Prophetically
speaking, these developments harmonize very closely
with the emerging Babylonian spirit that will close
out the age.     

* The divorce rate among those who claim to be born-again
Christians in America is now reportedly higher than
in the general population, and arguably at the highest
level in human history.  And homosexual marriage, now
gaining approval in certain denominations, has never
before gained such wide acceptance throughout human
history--even in pagan societies. 

But the message of God has always been the opposite
of the message of Babel.  Rather than centralizing
worship and religious authority, God sends his people
out and scatters them across the face of the earth
(Gen. 11:8).  Go!, he said to Abraham, to a land I
will show you (Gen. 12:1).  Go!, he said to Moses,
to take my people out of Egypt (Ex. 3:10).  Go!, he
said to Isaiah and the other prophets (Isa. 6:8). 
Go!, Jesus said to the disciples, and make disciples
of the nations (Matt. 28:19).  Go!, scatter, disperse!
 Whether it's down the street or around the world,
God wants us to leave our sources of pride behind and
go with him to reach the lost.  Salvation does not
consist in bringing people to a "holy place" or to
a "holy man" (priest, preacher, etc.) but to a holy
God who is right where they are! 

We need to purge ourselves of Babylonian thinking altogether,
the human assumption that bigger is always better,
creating huge hierarchies accountable to a man rather
than scattered worshipping families accountable only
to God!  Maybe working through the struggles of faith
and life in small communities of faith can bring us
closer to God--and to one another--than all the efficiencies
and material possibilities of vast organizations. 
Maybe true authority and responsibility before God,
rather than a burden for the individual believer, is
important to development and growth in Christ.  There
are other ways in which we can share resources and
work in cooperation than through organizational unity.
 Why should we want to imitate Babylonian thinking
and risk imitating her sins?  The Lord tells us to
scatter as we go out to reach the lost.  There must
be a good reason for it.*

* The experience of persecuted believers has shown
that it is easier for the authorities to shut down
a few big, centralized churches than hundreds of scattered,
small churches. 

God is not looking for crowds.  He's looking for individuals
who are willing to stand out from the crowd and be
in an individual relationship of accountability to
Him!  If you need the comforts of Babylon to feel good
about your relationship with God, something's wrong.
 Abraham didn't have a big religious organization behind
him.  He had only his extended family and God.  But
he walked away from Babylon (Mesopotamia) and changed
the history of the world.  Moses didn't have access
to any great material resources.  All he had was a
stick! (Ex. 4:2)  But God used him to set a whole nation
free from slavery!  The handful of Jesus' disciples
"upset the world" (Acts 17:6) when they finally obeyed
their calling and left Jerusalem to go out across the
world. 

Our calling is not to gather as many behind towering
church walls, but to go out, individually and in groups,
to spread the gospel--in the pride-crushing, unglamorous
job of reaching out to the unsaved, the homeless, the
poor.  Start a Bible study in your office or some other
place of need.  Talk to your neighbor about God.  Or,
better yet, help start a worshipping community in a
group no one else is reaching.  God will meet you there
in ways you never imagined possible, and give you victory
over forces you never imagined you could defeat.  
 

We, too, have a choice of two ways.  Will we scatter
with the few or remain with the many?*

*Ralph Winter of the U.S. Center for World Mission
has made the interesting observation, based on a detailed
analysis of church history, that whenever the church
does not scatter to do the work of God, God brings
enemies to scatter her by force among the unreached
pagans (the "involuntary go" mechanism)--as for example,
in the time of the barbarian invasions of Europe in
the 4th and 5th centuries AD (and as, we would add,
he did at the Tower of Babel).  See "The Kingdom Strikes
Back:  The Ten Epochs of Redemptive History" in Perspectives
on the World Christian Movement, William Carey Library,
Pasadena, CA, 1981, pp. 137-155. 

-------------------------------------------------------

Copyright c 2000 by To The Ends Of The Earth Ministries,
Inc.  All rights reserved. 

If you know anyone else that would be interested in
these teachings, please feel free to forward it to
them. 

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To see these teachings complete with photos, visit
our web site at http://www.totheends.com .  There will
be a delay of a couple weeks after a new teaching is
sent out before it is available with pictures.   

To The Ends Of The Earth is sponsoring a study tour
to Israel in June 2001.  Pastor Jeff Harrison, who
will be leading the tour, studied with some of the
top Israeli archeologists and Christian scholars in
Jerusalem and led tours full time for two years while
living in Jerusalem.  This will be a rich time of study
of the Jewish roots of Christianity and the life of
Jesus in the Land of Israel.  For more information,
e-mail us at Jeff@totheends.com 

To The Ends Of The Earth is a Messianic/Christian teaching
ministry bringing you information from Israel on the
Jewish Roots of our faith.  We are able to make these
teachings available at no charge because of the support
of a team of believers called alongside to help.  If
you are interested in joining our team, visit our Support
Page at http://www.totheends.com , or contact us by
e-mail at Jeff@totheends.com .

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