"But when God came down to see the city and the tower mankind was making, he said, ‘Look! If they are able to accomplish all this when they have just begun to exploit their linguistic and political unity, just think of what they will do later! Nothing will be unattainable for them!’"

CONTENTS:

Introduction: Where is the Promise?

1. The Three Prohibitions

Appendix: How God Works in History

Introduction: Where is the Promise?

From the years following the Second World War, until the mid 70’s, many churches in the western world were infected by a condition known as "Second Coming Fever". That is to say, many Christians were sure that the Second Coming of Christ was going to happen at any moment. Although this attitude seems to have been proven wrong by history, there were many good reasons for it.

One reason was the development of nuclear weapons and the threat of atomic war. Many Christians saw in the threat of atomic war the fulfillment of some of the Biblical prophecies concerning the final judgment. The most prominent example is II Peter 3:10: "But the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat…" It may have been a mistake to interpret this passage as referring to nuclear holocaust, but it was not at all unreasonable.

A second reason for expecting the Second Coming to occur in the latter part of the Twentieth Century is the time that has passed since the First Coming of Christ. It has now been nearly 2000 years since Christianity began, and this does have Biblical meaning. By Biblical chronology, it was about 2000 years from Creation to Abraham; and about another 2000 years from Abraham to Christ. (exact numbers aren’t important; large numbers in the Bible are almost always approximations.) Therefore, it logically follows that we should expect some type of large scale divine intervention in history in our time. ^[1^].

A third reason for expecting Christ’s return is the restoration of Israel as a state. There are several Bible prophecies that foretell this event, and that seem to associate it with the Second Coming of Christ. This is particularly true of Isaiah 11:10&11: "And in that day there shall be a Root of Jesse, Who shall stand as a banner for the people; for the Gentiles shall seek Him…It shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall set His hand the second time [emphasis mine: author] to recover the remnant of His people." Again, there is no problem with connecting the establishment of the State of Israel with the imminent appearing of our Savior.

Yet for all the good reasons to expect Jesus to really come soon, there has been a big decline in Second Coming Fever in the churches since the mid 70’s. There may be several reasons for this. For one thing, people are probably just tired of all the hype about the Second Coming. Second, It’s also true that people aren’t as afraid of nuclear war as they used to be, especially since the end of the Cold War. But perhaps the biggest cause of the decline in interest in the Second Coming is the number of times in recent years that people have tried to pinpoint the date of the Second Coming and have been proved wrong by history. These incidents have tended to assign serious belief in the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ to the lunatic fringe of Christianity.

This writer found an example of the truth of this in two Christian book catalogues he had occasion to read recently. One was from Christian Publications, a chain of large Christian bookstores. The other was from Christian Book Distributors, a large mail-order house. In looking through the two catalogues, this writer was dismayed to see that there wasn’t a single title offered in either one that was about the Second Coming of Christ. The reason is fairly obvious. Booksellers aren’t going to push books that they don’t think will sell. And it also must be remembered that any successful salesperson knows his market. These Christian businesses know that Christians aren’t interested in the Second Coming. They know that Christians don’t believe that Jesus will really come soon. So they don’t publish what they know Christians won’t buy.

Anyone who has any Biblical knowledge of the doctrine of Second Coming prophecy should know that Jesus made it perfectly clear that we can’t pinpoint the time of His Coming. The key scripture for this is Matthew 24:36: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of Heaven, but my Father only." Therefore, anyone who claims to know the exact date or time of Jesus’ Coming, even the year, is taking an unscriptural position, no matter how much "scriptural evidence " or "insight" he may claim. And anyone who claims, as some have in recent years, to even have been told by the Holy Spirit when Christ will come, is in an offhand way confessing to have given heed to seducing spirits (see I Timothy 4:1).

But there is a counterpoint to this. The Scriptures also tell us that those who are truly living Spirit-filled lives of obedient faith will not be taken by surprise when the Second Coming occurs. One of the best known scriptures for this doctrine is the Parable of the Fig Tree in Matthew 24: 32: "Now learn this parable of the fig tree: When its branch has already become tender and put forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see all these things, know that it is near-at the door!" Yet another passage on which we can base our certainty of being aware of the imminence of the Second Coming is I Thessalonians 5:4 (part of a passage that follows the famous "Rapture" passage in I Thessalonians 4): "But you, brethren, are not in darkness that this Day should overtake you as a thief". When the Second Coming is near, the obedient Christians will know it.

There is further support for this doctrine in the Old Testament. In Amos 3:7, we read; "surely the Lord does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servant the prophets". We find an example of this in Genesis 41, when Joseph, the son of Jacob, told Pharaoh about the coming seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine. But how does this apply to us? In the Old Testament times, the Holy Spirit was given to only a select few people whom God had chosen for special purposes. These were the people we call the Prophets, and they weren’t necessarily people who foretold the future, though most of them did at one time or other. In Genesis 20:7, God says that Abraham is a prophet, and He did tell Abraham in advance about the destruction of Sodom. Now in our time, the Holy Spirit is given to all who repent (accept Christ) and are baptized (Acts 2:38). And according to Revelation 19:10, everyone who testifies to faith in Jesus is a prophet, "for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy". Therefore, it follows that everyone who truly testifies to faith in Jesus Christ and is filled with the Holy Spirit will know when the Second Coming is near.

In the light on this, let us reconsider the majority of Christians who were expecting the Second Coming to happen soon. Could it be that they were right in the long run? Did the Church, in effect, give up too soon? Were they, in fact, expecting the Second Coming too soon? In the reasons for expecting Jesus to come soon given above, at least two of the three (Israel and the time factor) are valid. And there are other valid reasons to believe that the Second Coming is close.

One is the prophecy in Daniel 12:4: "…many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase". If this is to be taken as a sign of the approach of the Second Coming (as the context indicates) it has certainly been fulfilled in our time. It has been said that the sum total of human knowledge is doubling every ten years. In this writer’s lifetime, space travel has gone from science fiction to commonplace. In terms of passenger miles (to use the statistical term) there is more traveling done every day now than was done in a year a century ago. And it just so happens that much of the traveling is related to increasing knowledge! Many HAVE BEEN running to and fro. Knowledge HAS BEEN increasing. Which means that the Second Coming of Christ should be close.

Another indication that the end of the age is approaching is found in the words of Jesus in Matthew 24:12: "And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold"; and the words of St. Paul in II Thessalonians 2:3: "Let no one deceive you by any means, for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin (or "man of lawlessness"; author’s note) is revealed, the son of perdition". There is no question that lawlessness abounds today, and the moral decline that has been infecting the whole world may very well be the falling away that Paul spoke of. The decline in belief in the imminence of the Second Coming could be part of it too. And although many people have understood the term "man of sin" to refer to the "Antichrist", it has been noted by some Bible scholars that it could refer to a type of person; one who rejects all moral standards and has no respect for law. There are many people like that around today, and some dare to call themselves Christians.

In his second Epistle, chapter 3, verses 3 & 4, St. Peter gave us what may be understood as another sign of the approach of the Second Coming: "Knowing…that scoffers will come in the last days…saying ‘Where is the promise of His Coming?’ ". It appears that these scoffers have come, and most of them are in the Church. (the unsaved usually aren’t even interested in the subject.) They tend to be subtle about it, expressing their scoffing by their goals in life. It has been noted by no less a Christian personality than Chuck Colson of Watergate and "Born Again" fame that the primary goal in life of most Christians is not pleasing God (See I John 3:22), but rather is having a better quality of life in the here and now. As individuals, Christians are focusing on financial success and personal fulfillment. This is demonstrated in two books this writer recently saw on sale in a Christian bookstore: One was entitled "Secrets of Winning at Work: 20 Inspirational Keys for Success in Your Career". The other was a tantalizing little offering called the "Business Woman’s Topical Bible". Clearly, the people who created these books didn’t have the Second Coming on their minds. Their focus was on getting ahead in this world. This is also the goal of most modern ministries. Eternal goals are given lip service, but they are not part of the mainstream of contemporary Christian thinking. As previously stated, serious belief in the imminent Second Coming of Christ has largely been assigned to the lunatic fringe of Christianity.

Unfortunately, even if everything else a Church or ministry says or does is perfectly scriptural, it still isn’t teaching the whole counsel of God if it isn’t teaching the imminence of the Second Coming (See II Peter 3:10-12). Christians, and especially Christian leaders, should remember the warning given by Jesus in Luke 12:40: "Therefore, you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." Note that He said this to His disciples, which is to say, to Christians, not to the unsaved, and therefore, by extension, He said it to the whole Church. But many Christians no longer really expect the Second Coming, and many pastors never mention it.

Again, this has been due in part to all the people who in recent years have tried to pinpoint the date of the Second Coming and have been proven wrong by history. But this may be a Satanic ploy to discredit anyone who really believes in, and preaches, that Jesus will really come soon. The Bible indicates that he does have some idea of when the Second Coming will take place: "…the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time", (Rev. 12:12). If the Devil believes that Jesus will come soon, the last thing he wants is for Christians to be conscious of it and be concerned about being ready. Such a consciousness could precipitate a real revival. Far more Christians would be ready, and many more people would get saved. So he’s playing a "boy who cried wolf" game with false predictions of the Second Coming so that Christians won’t believe the real warnings.

There is more reason to believe that Jesus will really come soon than is usually known by students of prophecy, more than just the prophecies that have already been fulfilled. There are circumstances developing in this world that God is going to have to deal with if His plan of salvation is going to be fulfilled, and if the Second Coming is ever going to happen in any way that resembles our expectations. They will be discussed in the following chapters. But understand this: there is plenty of reason for any Bible-believing Christian to believe that Jesus will come soon. As He also warned us, "it (the Second Coming) will come as a snare on all those who dwell on the face of the whole earth", (Luke 21:35). So in His own words (Mark 13:37), "What I say to you, I say to all; Watch!"

1. The Three Prohibitions

In the introduction to this booklet, entitled ‘WHERE IS THE PROMISE’, we said that in the last twenty years there has been a big decline in belief in the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ among Christians. This is frightening because as we also said, there is good reason for any Bible-believing Christian to expect Jesus to come soon. To show just how true this is, in this and the following chapters we will discuss some reasons why this is so that aren’t part of what is ordinarily considered Second Coming prophecy. But we must begin by asking a question that, again, may not seem to have anything to do with Second Coming prophecy.

THE QUESTION is this: why did God confuse the languages at the Tower of Babel? Before this question can be answered, we must first understand what the Tower was and why it was built. There have been a number of erroneous explanations offered. One is that the Tower was really a spaceship. All you have to do is read the story in the Bible, in Genesis 11:1-9, in the New King James Version, to know that it was just a pile of bricks held together with asphalt. Then, more frequently, it has been said that the people at Babel thought that they could reach Heaven and take over from God (or some equivalent nonsense) by building the Tower. That, of course, is based on the words "whose top is in the heavens" in Genesis 11:4. But that’s just a figure of speech that means that the Tower was intended to be very high. (Another example of the same figure of speech can be found in Deuteronomy 1:28, KJV.) It’s like our calling tall buildings "skyscrapers". The real reason for the construction of the Tower is actually stated in verse 4: "…let us make a name for ourselves lest we be scattered abroad…" The purpose of the Tower was to give them an identity and thus preserve their unity. It would have become the focal point of their society, the common purpose and achievement that would have held them together. But God didn’t want them to stay united.

There may be a half-truth in the erroneous explanation, but only in that the people of ancient Mesopotamia believed that they could get closer to God for worship purposes if they built their temples on the top of high platforms. (The Mayans of Central America seem to have had the same idea.) The ancient pyramid-like structures in the Mesopotamian region known as ziggurats were in fact elevated platforms for temples. But this possibility is the only real basis for the mistaken idea mentioned above.

The Real Reason for the confusion of the languages is plainly stated in Genesis 11:6: "And the Lord said, ‘Indeed, the people are one and they have all one language, and this they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them’". This an astonishing statement. In fact, it’s one of the most amazing things that God says about mankind in the entire Bible. It’s like a modern proverb that says, "What mind can conceive, man can achieve." This comes from the fact that we are created in God’s image: "So God created man in His own image; in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them" (Genesis 1:27). Note that the use of the phrase "created He them" tells us that we are created in God’s image collectively as well as, if not more than, individually. God is the Creator; therefore we are creative, also collectively as well as, if not more than individually, as we shall see. In Genesis 11:6, God was saying that if we act in unity without limits on our ability to communicate, our creative potential, at least in the technical sense, is unlimited. The translators of The Living Bible, perhaps the most popular of the paraphrase editions of the Bible, obviously saw this meaning in this verse. They rendered it: "Look! If they are able to accomplish all this when they have just begun to exploit their linguistic and political unity, just think of what they will do later! Nothing will be unattainable for them!" In fact, consideration of both these verses leaves us with the impression that our collective creative potential is equal to that of God Himself! But there happens to be a big problem with that, and God confused the languages of the people at Babel to disrupt their unity and thus frustrate their creativity.

It is in our ability to communicate and in our creativity that we most radically differ from animals, and most obviously display our god-like nature. Dolphins and apes are nearly as smart as we are, but they can’t communicate the way we do, and they aren’t creative at all. There is only one word that could describe the difference between our ability to communicate and our creativity and that of ordinary animals. The word is infinite! We are so immersed in the products of our creativity, and our ability to communicate, i.e., talk, write, read, etc., comes so naturally to us that we don’t realize how awesome these things are as compared to animals. Understand also, that when I speak of our creativity, I don’t just mean artistic creativity. The booklet you are reading this in is a product of human creativity, as were the machines that were used to create it. The fact that you are reading it is an example of our ability to communicate. If you are sitting in a chair reading this, that chair is a product of human creativity. If you are ready it on a computer screen, that computer is a product of our creativity. The Internet through which you accessed it is the latest advancement in our ability to communicate. It's existence is a manifestation of our increasing unity. I took my ideas and turned them into a series of tiny symbols, and you are looking at those tiny symbols and turning them back into ideas. No animal can do anything that even remotely approximates this. In fact, as far as we know, no animals have ideas like these. We can do these things because we are created in the image of God. But this also makes us dangerous to ourselves.

In Genesis 6:5, just before the Flood, God makes another shocking statement about mankind: "Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of his heart was only evil continually." This is related to the theological doctrine of Total Depravity; the idea that men are so inherently sinful, that they are incapable, apart from God’s Grace, of turning from sin. But there is more to the passage than that. The real significance of this statement is rooted in the meaning of the Hebrew word translated "every intent" It is the Hebrew word "yetser", and it is a blanket term for everything man thinks of, and by logical extension, everything man creates. God was saying that everything man creates is evil to some extent as surely as "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). (And that includes computers, even though this writer is presently using one. In effect, computers are no more evil than a typewriter or printing press. Whether or not it’s evil to use one depends on what you’re doing with it.) By the way, God says the same thing again in Genesis 8:21, presumably to make it clear that the Flood didn’t change the situation.

God said in effect that we can do anything we think of doing, given two basic conditions: 1) we must have unlimited communication; from "they all have one language" and; 2) we must act in unity; from "the people are one". Note that this need only apply to people engaged in a specific project; not necessarily the whole human race. Neither do they have to be thinking and saying the same things generally. They only have to be working as a team on whatever specific project. God thought it necessary to confuse the languages at the Tower of Babel because of its profound implications concerning human creativity. We must conclude that human creativity, corrupt as it is, can pose a threat to God’s plan of salvation for the human race. Understand, though, that the threat is effectively to ourselves, not to God. The Tower itself was not a threat to God’s plan (note that He didn’t destroy it); the threat was the human potential the Tower represented. So He moved against the human potential.

From this situation it is possible to perceive the first of three major inviolable prohibitions that God has placed on the human race. They are clearly implied, though not directly stated in the Bible. These are three things that God will not, and in fact cannot, allow the human race to do (at least not for long) regardless of how sinful we are otherwise, if His plan of salvation for the human race, as revealed in the Bible, is ever going to be fulfilled in any way that resembles our expectations.

• The first inviolable prohibition (from Genesis 11:6) is that God will not allow man to live in unity and have unlimited communication before the Second Coming of Christ. At least not for long. The second two prohibitions will be violated if the first is violated for any significant length of time.
• The second inviolable prohibition (from Genesis 3:22-24) is that God will not allow the human race to have biological eternal life. Neither will God allow us to significantly extend our lifespans. This is based on two shortenings of the human lifespan found in Genesis 6:3 and Psalm 90:10.
• The third inviolable prohibition (from Acts 17:26 and Revelation 1:7, etc.) is that God will not allow humans to leave the earth and take up permanent residence anywhere else in the solar system, let alone the universe, before the Second Coming.

We are in a state of increasing violation of the first prohibition, for purposes of education, science and business, and even for entertainment, right now. Therefore, we are currently working on the violation of the second and third prohibitions with increasing unity and ease of communication. In short, a new Tower of Babel is rising. But, unlike the first one, which was built with bricks and asphalt and simply meant to be very high, this one is being built with science and high technology and it’s literally reaching for the stars!

The threat that this poses to God’s plan of salvation, and especially to the fulfillment of the prophecies of the Second Coming, must result in massive divine intervention in human affairs to stop it. And this can’t be just a local intervention, as was the confusion of languages at Babel. The whole world is involved in this. (Did you know that China and India have space programs?) The only thing prophesied in the Bible that will do the job is the Second Coming of Christ, or, from the standpoint of the world, the Great Tribulation. Although we can’t pinpoint the date, it must happen fairly soon, in terms of years, or history is going to go beyond the point were the prophecies can be fulfilled, again, in any way that resembles our expectations.

In the Introduction entitled "Where is the Promise", mention was made of the prophecy in Daniel 12:4: "many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase". Few Christians today are truly conscious of the extent to which this prophecy has been fulfilled just since the end of the First World War. At that time, there had already been a major scientific and technical upheaval, that we call the Industrial Revolution. But it was just a prelude to what was coming.

The last eighty years have seen an onslaught of scientific and technological progress that has exceeded anything imagined in history before this century. It has wildly outstretched the dreams of early science fiction writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells Although they foresaw commercial and military aviation, their ideas were silly and crude. The present reality far exceeds what they imagined. Verne’s submarine "Nautilus", contrary to common opinion, was not nuclear powered (that was Walt Disney’s idea) and the power plant Verne loosely describes would not have produced enough power to run a submarine if really built. The idea of computers has actually been around since at least the late eighteenth century, but no one foresaw the electronics and the micro-miniaturization of components that make them possible. More than that, they were originally envisioned simply as big number crunchers. No one foresaw all the different tasks they can now do, like word processing, graphics and the Internet. No one expected the impact that television has had on society. People dreamed of space travel, but what’s happening now wasn’t even imagined a century ago.

Meanwhile there has been a revolution in communication. The crude telephones and wireless telegraphs of 1918 have given way to cellular phones, communications satellites, and the Internet. We are increasingly in possession of means of communication that the builders of Babel couldn’t have imagined. In ten years we will possess ways of communicating across language barriers that will, for scientific and business purposes, effectively override what God did at Babel. According to Gordon Moore, chairman of Intel Corp., and one of the principle architects of the computer revolution, we will have computers that can instantly translate any language into 50 others. (Note that this man built a multi-billion dollar business by always being right.) If such machines become common, we will have in effect completely overridden what God did at Babel. In an interview in Forbes magazine, Moore also made the point that computers are enhancing our minds the way machines enhanced our muscles. That is to say, they are making us in effect far more intelligent and creative than we really are. And of course, they are enhancing our ability to communicate. And God was upset when all we had was bricks and asphalt!

There has been another major change in the world in the last eighty years that has much to do with the Babel Rising problem. Until World War I, war was regarded as an unavoidable if horrible fact of life. But the carnage of the First World War, followed by the catastrophe of World War II, capped by the advent of the atom bomb, sent an urgent message to scholars and statesmen everywhere: man must eliminate war or war will eliminate man! The result has been a historically unprecedented effort by leaders everywhere to avoid war. Although we continue to get so-called brushfire wars, the fact that it has been over fifty years since the last global conflict shows that this effort has not been in vain. With the end of the Cold War, it’s safe to say that in the foreseeable future there will not be another major war. Business leaders have recognized that we are living in a world that is basically at peace. The small conflicts we constantly hear about, the "wars and rumors of wars", involve only a small percentage of the human population and an equally small percentage of the world’s populated areas. The motto of global political and business strategy is "make money, not war". ^[2^]. The world is not likely to end in a nuclear holocaust any time soon.

We aren’t likely to have an environmental catastrophe either. For example, it was recently announced in the news media that the emission of fluorocarbons into the atmosphere has declined to the point that the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is expected to close up. Again, in New York State, the Hudson River, which was long considered too polluted, was recently officially re-opened to swimming. Environmentally, we’re cleaning up our act.

So if God means to stop this new Tower of Babel from rising, He is going to have to do it Himself. With the unity and ease of communication we are acquiring (not to mention the number-crunching power), we’ll be able to deal with any problem we may have, and achieve any goal we set for ourselves given enough time! But God isn’t likely to give us the time! He will stop this new Tower of Babel from rising. Lift up your head! JESUS REALLY IS COMING SOON!!! BE READY!!!

2. The First Prohibition: Unity and Unlimited Communication

In the first chapter of this booklet, it was said that God confused the languages at the Tower of Babel to disrupt human unity and thus frustrate human creativity (Genesis 11:6). From this it is possible to discern the first of three inviolable prohibitions that God has placed on the human race. These are three things that God will not allow the human race to do no matter how sinful we are otherwise. The first, which is twofold, was shown by what God said and did at Babel. He will not allow the human race to live in unity apart from His Lordship, and He will not allow the human race to have unlimited communication. At least not for long. Yet the human race is in a state of increasing violation of this prohibition for purposes of science (including medicine), education, and business (including entertainment).

Today, we are not, of course, all one, and we don’t all speak the same language. But there are ways in which we do have unity, and ways in which we do all have the same language. And we have means of communication that are beginning to seriously override what God did at Babel. Yet we are still guilty of the problem that God stated in Genesis 6:5: "every intent of the thoughts of his (man’s) heart was only evil continually". This means that everything we create is to some extent tainted with sin, as surely as "all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God" (Romans 3:23). That’s why we live with problems like nuclear weapons, toxic waste, and the immoral influence of entertainment on our children.

But the problem that God was, and still must be, concerned with is the potential of our corrupt creativity to interfere with His plan of salvation for the human race. To understand this, we must consider what might have happened if God hadn’t confused the languages at Babel. From what He said, we understand that the people were the same ethnically and socially. There were no class distinctions. We know from the story of the Flood, and from the story of the Tower itself, that they were civilized and had the beginnings of technology. History has shown that cultures like that tend to develop scientifically and technologically very quickly.

Because they had ethnic and social unity, their progress wouldn’t have been slowed by slavery. Slaves usually come from lower classes or other ethnic groups, and there were none. If God hadn’t confused the languages, it might never have appeared. Slavery isn't mentioned in the Bible until the time of Abraham. Cultures that have slavery don’t develop quickly. The Romans, for example, did little to improve their sailing ships because they had cheap slave labor to row them. Again, they knew how to build water mills to cut lumber and grind grain, but they seldom did, for the same reason.

Moreover, their progress wouldn’t have been slowed by war. There wouldn’t have been anyone to fight with. Again, if God hadn’t confused the languages, there might have never been any wars. We know that in our times, war accelerates progress in science and technology through weapons research and development. But it wasn’t always so. It is known that in ancient times, wars caused much scientific and technological knowledge to be lost. This was from the ancient practice of exterminating entire cultures, through mass deportation and enslavement of captives, or out and out slaughter (it’s in the Bible). When a culture died, any knowledge that was unique to that culture usually died with it. For example, it was discovered some years ago that the ancient Babylonians knew how to make electricity from batteries and do electroplating. The destruction of Babylon caused that knowledge to be lost for over 2000 years. It was the confusion of the languages that precipitated ethnic differences, wars, and slavery.

Again, the Babel culture may not have had any of the false beliefs and cultural taboos that can hold back progress. For example, the pioneer astronomer Galileo nearly got burned at the stake for saying that the earth orbited the sun, because the Church of Rome insisted on taking the erroneous theories of Aristotle and Ptolemy as gospel. When Galileo’s discoveries were finally accepted as fact, they gave birth to modern astronomy and calculus, modern physics, and now-space travel. If the Babel culture did not have such erroneous beliefs, their scientific development could have happened that much faster.

So what would have happened if God hadn’t confused the languages? From Genesis 9:1 and 11:8 & 9, we know that God wanted them to spread out. Well, they would have spread out, all right. In chapter 1 it was mentioned that some people have foolishly believed that the Tower was a spaceship. It wasn’t, but if God had left them alone, they would have been building spaceships within a few centuries. By the time of Moses, they’d have been on the Moon. They’d have had colonies on planets around other stars by the time of Christ. We’d be living in an interstellar civilization by now. Again, the Tower itself was not the problem. The problem was the human potential it represented.

The people of Babel would have also noticed within a few centuries that their lifespans were getting dramatically shorter. If they had set out to do something about that, we would have had biological eternal life a long time ago. Because of our longevity, and the fact that the human population wouldn’t have suffered attrition from war and disease, the human race would now number several trillion individuals. But God’s plan of salvation calls for the human race to stay on earth (Acts 17:26 & Revelation 1:7). And humans with biological eternal life might be lost beyond salvation (I Corinthians 15:50). There is also Biblical reason to believe that God’s plan includes a limitation on human numbers, implied in Acts 17:26 and Revelation 7. God confused the languages at Babel to keep human creativity from interfering with His plan of salvation.

When one considers what we’ve done so far, in spite of limitations God placed on us, and what we are now thinking of doing, one must believe that with their unity intact, the Babel culture would by now have achieved things that we have not yet imagined. Unity and unlimited communication are the key ingredients necessary for unlimited scientific and technical progress. An uninformed person might not believe that mankind has much unity now. But as stated, for purposes of science, business and education, and even entertainment, we do have unity, and that unity is increasing. When the "Babel Rising!" message was first published on audio cassette in 1986, we were still in the Cold War. As this booklet is written, Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts are orbiting the earth together in the Russian Mir space station, which is being serviced by an American space shuttle.

In the long run, this unity will eventually override what God did at Babel, and to some extent it already does. Again, it isn’t required that we all think and say the same things to violate the second and third prohibitions. All that is required is that enough people work together for a common purpose for long enough. And they don’t even have to be consciously working together. Here’s an example of how this works out in practice: Go into your kitchen. Look around at all the things you have in that one room, all the dishes, appliances, utensils, foods, etc. Now imagine what would happen if everything in that room that was produced and marketed by other people suddenly disappeared. The odds are that you would be standing in an empty room, buck naked! The technological civilization we live in was produced by unity, the kind of unity that threatens God’s plan. If all the products of human unity in this illustration disappeared, the room would disappear, too!

Look at it this way: One person, starting from scratch without parts and tools, probably couldn’t build a bicycle. But people working in unity for that purpose can build a Boeing 747. In fact, they’ve built hundreds of them. One man, without tools or machinery, could probably just about lay a few logs across a small stream. Get enough men acting in unity, and they can build the Golden Gate Bridge. One person, starting without tools and materials, probably couldn’t build a small house. But people working in unity for that purpose build skyscrapers, like the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Understand? And if you’ve never watched a skyscraper being built, you’d be amazed at how few people working in unity it takes!

You’d also be amazed if you knew how many people are working in unity on things that will contribute to the violation of all three prohibitions.

There are many languages spoken on earth, over 1400. But it just so happens that most serious scientific and business communication takes place in only about a dozen. The meetings of the General Assembly of the United Nations are translated instantly into only 5! So many people are multilingual these days that language differences are seldom a barrier to important communication. And we do have, for the above purposes, two languages that are universal: mathematics and binary code. A student learning calculus will learn the same things whether he is learning it in New York or New Delhi, in Tokyo or Topeka! Most scientific and technical information is expressed and communicated, at least in part, in mathematical terms. The same is true of business information. We also have the binary code, the mathematical language that all computers use to store, process, receive and transmit data, regardless of the programming language. This language makes it possible for any computer to "talk " to any other computer. The result of this is the Internet, which links by current estimates something approaching 50 million computers all over the world. This number is growing rapidly. The Internet puts oceans of information at the fingertips (literally!) of anyone who has a computer and a modem. Moreover, hardware and software are being developed (some already exists) that can automatically translate languages. As stated in the last chapter, Gordon Moore is the chairman of Intel Corp. (the leading manufacturer of microprocessors; this booklet was made on a computer with an Intel Pentium processor), and one of the main architects of the computer revolution . He was quoted in a recent issue of Forbes magazine ( a leading business periodical) as saying that in 10 years we will have computers that can instantly translate any language into 50 others. If such computers become common, we will have completely overridden the confusion of the languages at Babel.

But that isn’t all that computers are doing. In the same interview, Gordon Moore also made the point that computers are doing for our minds what machines did for our muscles. Machines make us effectively far stronger than we are, give us far more speed and stamina, and enable us to be far more precise in our measurements. Computers give us the ability to effectively think much faster and more accurately than we really can, to have far better memories, and to be far more creative. Computers can quickly analyze quantities of data that would overwhelm a human mind. The result is great acceleration in the advancement of science and technology. When the Verazzano Narrows Bridge was built, much was said about how the use of computers had shortened the time taken to design it. And that was thirty years ago when computers were in their infancy. "Computer Aided Design" (CAD, for short) has become a major area of computer application. A state of the art desktop computer of today is far more powerful than the best computers were then. It can be used to do many more things. Computers are even used to design better computers and write better software. And, again, they are greatly enhancing our power of communication.

Not long ago, I had occasion to walk past the print shop - still in business - where, about 25 years ago, I had the first piece of Christian literature I ever wrote for distribution printed on an early Xerox machine. I’d typed it on a beat up mechanical typewriter that could barely produce readable text. And the photocopied literature looked worse. Now, I sit typing on the keyboard of a powerful computer using a state-of-the-art Word Processor program. I will print it out on an inkjet printer that will produce professional quality results. Then I’ll photocopy it on a machine that makes copies that are as good or better than the originals. The technology to build the machines I’m using didn’t exist 25 years ago. I will also be transmitting copies of it through the Internet.

And a new revolution in computers is in coming in the near future. Soon, perhaps before you read this, a new data storage and retrieval device, called the DVD disk, will be marketed. These disks will make it possible to make computers with fifty times the maximum amount of RAM memory available on most personal computers now, and that at a small fraction of the cost. This will lower the cost of computers, and also make it possible to use much more powerful software than ever before. ^[3^].

Computer speed, as you may know, is measured in ‘Megahertz’. When I started planning this ministry, 100 Megahertz was the high end. I bought, and am using a 166 Megahertz, which is now below standard, and 266 Megahertz is available. 300 Megahertz should be available within a year. The new "MMX" technology that Intel has just introduced makes even the 166 Megahertz processors more powerful than they were.

An experimental manufacturing process called "nanotechnology" may make computers available in twenty years that will make the one I’m using look like that old mechanical typewriter.

Two more things that must be said about computers: First, the machines themselves are no more evil than a typewriter. Otherwise I wouldn’t be using one. They become part of the "BABEL RISING!" problem when they are used to help violate the other two prohibitions, and you better believe they are being used that way.

On the other hand, contrary to a lot of Christian rumors, there is no reason to believe that computers will have anything to do with the "Antichist" or the number "666". Such theories are based on the naïve assumption that computers are totally secure and that they are fail-safe. Anyone who knows the least about computers knows that they are neither. In fact, anything but! Large companies and government agencies spend thousands of dollars on "firewall" software to keep hackers and viruses out of their computers, and even then the hackers and viruses sometimes still get in. And the nightmares of the computer operator or programmer are the "crash" and the "lockup". No one in his right mind would accept living in a world that was governed economically by a single computer. And by the way, that "supercomputer" called "the Beast" that supposedly is in the Common Market (now known as the European Economic Community") headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, does not exist and never did. The story was a false rumor that originated in a fictional Christian movie in the late 60’s. Due to a misunderstanding, an account of it got published as a news item in the Moody Monthly ( a major Christian magazine) and hence the rumor. I repeat: There is no such computer and never was! An illustration of the dangers of fiction.

Relative to the issue of unity, we still hear of "wars and rumors of wars". But the wars that are happening now, like the one in Bosnia, (which may have ended) involve very small percentages of the world’s population and equally small percentages of the earth’s land area. These wars will have very little impact on the future history of the world. Moreover, such wars are starting to die out. In a recent internal publication of Lehman Bros. ^[4^]., a major international investment bank, Dr. Allen Sinai, the bank’s top global economist, stated that we are living in a world that is essentially at peace. That observation was the basis for his recommendations for the bank’s business strategy, so he wasn’t saying it lightly. They don’t pay him a huge salary to be wrong. The major nations are so involved with each other for business purposes that there is little chance of there ever being another major war. For example, Lehman Bros., which is based in New York City, has a branch office in Beijing! But according to I Thessalonians 5:3, this state of peace may be the last great sign that the Tribulation is near: "For when they say, ‘peace and safety’, then sudden destruction comes upon them".

If the Lord had to confuse the languages at Babel, what does He have to do now? There are serious reasons why He can’t allow the human race to have significantly extended lifespans, let alone biological eternal life. There are equally serious reasons why He can’t allow mankind to spread out his habitation to the other planets, let alone to other stars. In the following chapters, these reasons will be discussed, and we will look at what is happening in medical science and space travel. But all who read this are exhorted to look beyond their quality of life in the here and now. Begin to focus on being ready for the Great Tribulation. We should all concentrate on being "sons of the light and sons of the day….Let us watch and be sober" (I Thessalonians 5:4-6).

3. The Second Prohibition: Extended Lifespans and Biological Eternal Life

In the first two chapters of this booklet, it was shown that mankind possesses both the peace and unity, and the unlimited communication necessary to violate the second and third prohibitions identified in the first chapter. We may be able to seriously extend our lifespans right now. We may be able to give ourselves biological eternal life within the next half century. Meanwhile, many nations are involved in the effort to bring about practical travel between the planets. Eventually, we will have travel between the stars. Humans may begin to leave the earth to live permanently on other worlds within the next 30 years, and certainly within the next 50 years. But this situation constitutes a new Tower of Babel that is rising, and God has to step into history in a big way to stop it. The only thing that the Bible prophesies that will do the job is the Second Coming of Christ, and the events associated with it. So you better be ready. It’s going to happen soon.

The second inviolable prohibition began in the Garden of Eden. There were two special trees in the Garden; the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Genesis 2:9). As a person who believes in God and the Bible, I believe that they were real trees. I have no problem believing that God could create trees with such fruit. It is well known that God told Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. It is not so well known that He did not forbid them to eat the fruit of the Tree of Life until after they sinned! If they had left the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge alone, and eaten the fruit of the Tree of Life, they could have lived forever. Such was the life-giving power of the fruit of the Tree of Life, that they would still have lived forever if they had eaten it even after they fell (see Genesis 3:22-24).

God drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden to keep them from getting at the Tree of Life after they fell. The extreme measures He took to see that they stayed out make it clear that He considered the possibility of them eating the Fruit of the Tree of Life a very serious danger. Why? The probable answer is found in I Corinthians 15:50; "flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God". If Adam and Eve had acquired eternal life after they fell, they’d have been lost beyond salvation. If they could have passed that eternal life on to their children, as they did their sin, the whole human race would have been damned. The only way God could save mankind was to let death reign (Romans 5:14). Like it or not, we, in our fallen state, do have to die to go to Heaven (Hebrews 9:27).

Yet there is something going on in the field of medical science that could at least open the way for us to eventually give ourselves biological eternal life. It’s called the Human Genome Project. It’s an international genetic research project that is being coordinated via the Internet. ^[5^]. The goal is to locate and identify every gene in every chromosome in the human cell. (The arrangement of the genes in a cell is called the "genome"; hence the name of the project.) The next step will be to learn exactly what each gene does. The present phase of the project may be completed as early as 2001. One of the main centers for the project is the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Scientists there are using a robot called the "Genomatron" to do over 300,000 DNA tests a day. The results each laboratory produces are being shared with all the others via the Internet. In 1995, in the United States alone, the project was funded to the tune of $225,000,000.00. And every country that has a genetic research establishment is involved in the project.

Scientific predictions of the benefits of this are typically conservative (real scientists are almost always conservative with their predictions). But they are promising things that will at least extend the average human lifespan. These benefits are expected to include genetic treatments for cancer, heart disease, diabetes and mental illness. But the overall goal is to learn at the most fundamental level how a human develops from an embryo, and how genes influence health, disease and personality. This knowledge will make genetically engineered humans a real possibility. It is therefore at least possible that the Human Genome Project will enable us to learn how to give our bodies the ability to perpetually renew themselves. If our bodies could do that, we could stay young and live forever. As has been said by others, the only causes of death will be accidents and war. But there is no way the God will allow us to do that. At least not for long.

Meanwhile, there is another movement going on in medicine, howbeit less formally, called Longevity Research, also known as the Longevity Movement or the "life extension movement". This movement seeks to increase the human lifespan by enabling people to stay young longer. It is not as well organized and coordinated as the Human Genome Project, and unfortunately it includes some obvious quackery and dishonest marketing claims. For all that, some real progress has been made. It is quite likely that if a person started applying what is known right now about life extension when about 2 years of age, he could add thirty years to his lifespan. And most of those extra years would be youthful and productive. That is to say he’d live to be at least 100, and wouldn’t start getting really "old" until he was at least in his 80’s. Dr. Karlis Ullis of the UCLA School of Medicine specializes in helping his patients to extend their lifespans. His methods include diet and exercise, vitamins and hormones. He is also treating himself, and has gone on record saying that he plans to live to be 150!

Relevant to this is the fact that we have already significantly increased the average human lifespan in this century. In the year 1900, the average lifespan of an American was 47 years. By 1993, it was 75. That is an increase of 28 years, about 60%. Most of the increase in the human lifespan that has taken place in recorded history has taken place in this century. This increase in longevity has already begun to cause social and economic problems. It is beginning to produce political problems as well, with a new block of voters with special interests emerging: the aged. It was once assumed that a person over 65 years old was too old to work for a living and needed to retire. This is no longer true. This writer’s mother was still working for a living in her early 70’s. A person 60 years old can now look forward to as much as three more decades of active life. This situation will soon force major changes in how society deals with aging. Longevity Research will make the problem worse.

Social and economic problems, however, are insignificant compared to the spiritual problems associated with increased lifespans. It was the Lord, in Genesis 3:22-24, who drove the fallen Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. So it follows logically that He won’t let fallen man give himself biological eternal life. It was also the Lord, in Genesis 6:3 and Psalm 90:10, who decreed the shortenings of the human lifespan, first to 120 years and then to 70 years. With the present average of 75 years, we are still within the limits of Psalm 90:10: "The days of our lives are seventy years, and if by reason of strength they are eighty years….". God must have had reasons for limiting our lifespans so it also follows logically that He won’t let us extend our average lifespans much beyond what they are now. At least not for long. But as stated, we probably could increase our lifespans by another thirty years right now by applying everything that’s known about life extension as an integrated program. Thus far, relatively few people are doing so. But as Longevity Research and the life extension movement grow, more and more people will.

In short, we can expect the Second Prohibition to be violated soon. But God did have reasons for it including that stated above and more. It is possible to discern at least two of them. One has to do with the possibility of people getting saved. It has been known for some time that most people who get Born Again do so before they are 30 years old. Although there are exceptions, the older a person gets, the less likely he is to accept Jesus Christ as his Lord and Saviour. For people who aren’t believers at age 70, the probability of their ever becoming believers is virtually zero. People get set in their ways as they get older. That can mean that they get hardened in sin and unbelief. Some Christian leaders, notably Billy Graham, have suggested that a person can go so far into sin that He can’t be saved. God was very likely referring to this problem when He said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever…." (Genesis 6:3). He set limits on our lifespans to limit how far people can go beyond the spiritual point of no return. There is reason to believe that the effect of sin on the human race has been cumulative throughout history. Humans reach the point of no return earlier in life than they once did. That’s why God let the human lifespan drop to where it was in 1900. But we have already reversed the trend, and we will soon take our lifespans beyond God’s limits.

The second reason for the shortening of our lifespans is a link that can be discerned between longevity and human creativity. It is well known that before the Flood people lived to an average age of 900+ years. What isn’t so well known, but can be clearly seen in the Bible, is that they developed the beginnings of technical civilization very quickly. Noah knew enough about shipbuilding to make an Ark 550 feet long. Ships that big weren’t built on a regular basis until the late 1800’s. The people of Babel knew how to make kiln-dried bricks and build with them. This is skilled labor, knowledge that must have originated before the Flood. Genesis 4:19-22 says that two men, Jubal and Tubal-Cain were the inventors of two whole fields of human creativity; music and metalworking respectively. They wouldn’t have had a scientific foundation to build on. Therefore they would have needed a long process of trial and error to develop their knowledge and skills. Thomas Edison had to do a lot of trial and error experimenting while inventing the light bulb. But he had a team of highly skilled technicians to do most of the hands-on work for him. That saved him an enormous amount of time. Jubal and Tubal-Cain couldn’t have had such teams; the skills didn’t exist. They were able to achieve what they did because they lived so long. Both God’s driving Adam and Eve out of the Garden and His shortenings of the human lifespan were intended to limit both man’s sinfulness and man’s creativity. It is known that in our time potential scientific breakthroughs have been lost, or at least delayed, because scientists’ careers were cut short by death. Besides unity and unlimited communication, increased longevity is a third factor that can enable human creativity to threaten God’s plan of salvation for the human race.

If nothing significant happens to stop or delay us, within the next half century or so we will almost certainly learn how to give the average person a lifespan of at least 120+ years, thus violating the limitations of Psalm 90:10 and Genesis 6:3. The Human Genome Project may even open the door to biological eternal life. If this happens, there will be practically nothing of a technological nature that we can’t do. Many of our dreams for the future involve very long-term projects; projects that will take so long to complete that, with current lifespans, the people who start them will have no hope of living to see them completed. This human factor might prevent such projects from being started. The Longevity Movement will change that. Yet some of these projects involve violation of the Third Prohibition: humans leaving earth to live permanently on other worlds.

As stated in the Introduction, "Where Is The Promise?", there are multiple reasons from Second Coming Prophecy to believe that Jesus will come soon. Now we begin to see from the "Babel Rising" situation that the soon returning our Lord isn’t just likely. It has to happen. There is more reason to believe this that will be discussed in the following chapters. But for now, remember what happened to the unfaithful servant in Matthew 24:48-51. Be a faithful and wise servant! "Your redemption draweth nigh!"

4. The Third Prohibition: Space Travel and Humans Living on Other Worlds

In the last chapter of this booklet, we discussed the spiritual and scientific consequences of increased longevity, the second of the Three Prohibitions that God has placed on the human race. The third, as has been stated, is that mankind cannot leave the earth to take up permanent residence on other worlds. Violation of the first two Prohibitions will enable man to violate the third, and it won’t be long before it happens. As this booklet was being prepared, the writer learned of several new developments in the area of space travel that will hasten the day that it happens.

For years following the Challenger disaster, space travel wasn’t "politically correct" in the United States. Therefore, there hasn’t been much about it in the mass media for the past ten years. The average American is oblivious to what is going on in the field of space exploration. Because Christians tend to be especially ignorant of scientific matters anyway, they are even more so. All that most U.S. citizens have heard about has been minimal reporting of space shuttle flights, and there has been some attention given to the Hubble Space Telescope. Actually, in view of a feature article in Life magazine commemorating then tenth anniversary of the Challenger disaster, the success of the "Apollo 13" movie, and the more recent announcement about the discovery of possible evidence for life on Mars, that seems to have changed. Space travel is alive and well and moving steadily forward. In fact, it may be about to take another great leap forward. A new beginning is in progress.

We occasionally hear about the Russian "Mir" space station, but little detail has been published. Yet this space station, which has been in orbit for ten years, is as big as five Greyhound buses arranged in a "U" shape. It is manned continuously . Russian cosmonauts, and even a few American astronauts, have been staying in it for months at a time. What they are learning in the process about how human bodies adapt to long periods in zero gravity will pave the way for people to stay in space for far longer periods. Even for life. It is worth noting, once again, that this station, which was built by the Soviet Union, is now being supplied by the United States. This is an example of the rising international unity that is going into space travel. Furthermore, it is a little-publicized fact that about 2/3 of the research done on space shuttle missions is for the purpose of acquiring knowledge needed to advance the cause of space travel.

Meanwhile, an international program is going on for the construction of the "Freedom" Space Station. The launching of this station will begin late in 1997. It will consist of a framework the size of two football fields, to which modules for different purposes will be attached. They will be used for living, various kinds of research, and the beginning of commercial Zero-G, total vacuum manufacturing. There are a variety of high-tech products that can be made better, or only made, in zero gravity, which can’t be produced on earth, and/or total vacuum, which is expensive to produce on earth, but both exist naturally in space. Later, the station will be used as a staging area for permanent return to the Moon. It might even be used for tourism. The design of the "Freedom" Station will allow it to be enlarged indefinitely.

To facilitate the construction and operation of the "Freedom" Station, new types of spacecraft are being developed. Russia is working on heavy-lift launch vehicles capable of putting payloads of 100 tons into orbit. (Note: the first Sputnik, launched on October 4, 1957, weighed only 184 pounds.) Great Britain is working on a vehicle called the HOTOL (an acronym for "Horizontal Take-Off and Landing). It’s a space shuttle the size of a Boeing 747 that will both land and take off like an airplane. It’s primarily for carrying passengers. The United States is working on a new space shuttle design called the Venture Star. It will take off and land vertically, carrying 40 ton payloads. The first prototype, an experimental vehicle called the X-33, should fly before the end of 1999. All these things will expand space flight to the point that there will be several dozen people in space at any given time.

In the original tape recorded lecture with which the "Babel Rising!" concept was first introduced to the world, it was said that the high cost of space travel was one of the main things that was holding back progress. It was also said that in time, as machinery and techniques are perfected, the price of space travel would come down. This prediction may be about to be fulfilled. Right now, it takes an unbelievable $10,000 to put a pound of payload in orbit. NASA officials believe that the Venture Star will reduce the price tag to only $1000. That in itself will be a massive drop in price. Ten times as much space flight for the dollar! But that may only the beginning. There are two private companies that are developing their own launch vehicle designs. They are anticipating being able to launch payloads into space for less than $10 a pound. 1000 times as much space flight for the dollar! That will open the door to an explosion of progress in space travel. Their rockets should be flying within ten years.

All this is what’s happening now. But there are ambitious plans for the future. As stated, once the "Freedom" Station is up and operational, work will begin on a permanent return to the moon. This will not be accomplished with little one-shot capsules as in the Apollo program. Rather, there will be a fleet of completely reusable trans-lunar passenger shuttles. They will make regularly scheduled trips between the earth and the moon. There will also be large unmanned vehicles that will drop huge payloads of materials and equipment on the lunar surface. A permanent colony will be set up. It’s first purpose will be for research and exploration. Later it will be used for mining and manufacturing, and eventually even for tourism. The Moon Colony should be operational in 30 years if not sooner. If the recent apparent discovery of water on the Moon proves true, it will further reduce the cost. There is concrete reason why people who go there to live and work will never come back. It would be prohibitively expense, even with the reduction in costs mentioned above, to regularly shuttle workers back and forth from the moon. But the Moon’s gravity is only 1/6 of the earth’s. Workers who spend more than a year there might be unable to physically re-adapt to living on earth, so they’d have to spend the rest of their lives on the moon. The Third Prohibition will have been violated.

But this is still how manned spaceflight begins. After the Moon Colony has reached the level of mining and manufacturing, work will begin on a "space city". There are plans for the construction of huge space stations capable of holding small, self contained civilizations of 10,000 people or more. They will be built at the "La Grange Points" (named for the scientist who discovered them), places in space relative to the earth and the moon where gravity is neutral. Anything placed in orbit at a "La Grange Point" could be expected to stay there forever. The "space cities" will be built with materials mined and manufactured on the moon and shot into space with huge electric launchers called "mass drivers" or "rail guns". This will be much cheaper and faster than launching things from earth.

These "space cities" will serve a practical purpose for the further advancement of space travel. They will function as orbiting shipyards for the construction and maintenance of a fleet of completely reusable, fusion powered interplanetary spaceships. The "cities" will also become transit points for people outward bound for planets, and eventually, the stars. The ships will begin the exploration and colonization of other planets and moons in the solar system, and beyond. (The fuel for these ships, Helium 3, will be mined on the moon.). It has long since been decided that the first destination will be Mars. Plans are already on the books to "terraform" Mars; that is, to change the environment of the Martian surface to make it like the earth. There are plans to capture and mine asteroids and comets to obtain raw materials for this project. It will take about 200 years, which is the first major place where extended lifespans will come in handy for space travel. And here’s a scary thought: scientists are seriously considering the idea of genetically engineering humans to adapt them for living in space, on Mars and on other worlds. The Human Genome Project will help with that. Again, people who go to live and work for long periods in "space cities" or on other worlds will probably never come back. Administrators will want people with extended lifespans for this purpose. There will be fewer retirements and deaths to deal with that way.

This is how space travel begins. But as any science fiction fan knows, that’s not how it ends. The ultimate goal of space travel is not colonies on the Moon and Mars, and a few "space cities". It’s interstellar, and eventually, intergalactic travel; the dream of humans traveling to other star systems and setting up knew civilizations, even empires, on worlds as yet unknown. In view of Genesis 11:6, we will eventually do this if God gives us the time, but the question is, when? It isn’t likely to begin in the next few decades, but it could easily happen within the next 100 years. And that’s thinking on the basis of technology we expect to have. If an unexpected breakthrough gives us better technology (especially for propulsion) it could be much sooner. The first manned interstellar probes may be launched before the Solar System is fully explored.

The human drive toward interstellar travel is stronger than the average Christian may think. The UFO phenomenon, TV programs like "STAR TREK", and movies like "STAR WARS" and "ET" have been fueling a subtle but real public demand for interstellar exploration. The biggest success in space exploration in recent years is the Hubble Space Telescope. It is being used almost exclusively for interstellar research. Hardly a week passes by that some new discovery it has made isn’t announced in the scientific media. Recently, the discovery of planets orbiting other stars has made headlines in the mass media. Once we know that there are other planets like ours, and know where they are, the demand will increase for starships to go and check them out. If the starships come back and report that there’s potentially valuable real estate out there, it won’t be long before the fleets of colonizer ships are on their way.

Extended lifespans will also play a big role in interstellar travel. Forget zipping around between the stars "STAR TREK" style, and don’t expect us to be able to just jump from planet to planet like "Dr. Who". With the best technology we really expect to have in the foreseeable future, even the shortest interstellar voyages will take tens of years. For a person with a normal lifespan, going on an interstellar flight would be like going to prison for life with no possibility of parole. There is a parallel to this in America's guided missile submarine program. When one of those nuclear subs goes to sea, it usually stays submerged for three months. The crews have to be specially screened to be sure they can take the psychological stress of being restricted like that. Being in a starship would be worse than being in a nuclear submarine. But for a person with an extended lifespan, it could also mean coming home to 50 years of back pay with compounded interest and still being young enough to enjoy it. For colonizers, extended lifespans would mean being able to travel to other worlds, establish homesteads, start families, and become the patriarchs of new civilizations. People would go for it.

Some scientists have said that we’ll have to get this world straightened out before we can travel to other worlds. They may know science, but they should study history. Back in the 19^th Century, people were leaving Europe for the United States by the millions because Europe was so messed up. The same thing is happening in Latin America and Southeast Asia now. A century from now (if the Lord tarries), people may be willing to give up everything they have to travel to other worlds. They’ll be emigrating from an increasingly overpopulated, impoverished, polluted, and politically oppressed earth to begin new lives on new worlds. Even with the best technology we can expect, we won’t have interstellar travel like our current intercontinental travel. But we can seed the whole universe with human civilizations given enough time. God, however, isn’t going to give us enough time. If He does, our expectations concerning the Second Coming are very, very wrong. But if they are, then God’s promises aren’t true either. Do you believe that?

This is where the "BABEL RISING!" situation comes to a climax. The Biblical prophecies about the Second Coming of Christ, and the outpourings of God’s wrath associated with it, are all about things that happen specifically on earth. See, for example, Revelation 8:5. There is just no place in the prophecies for people living on the Moon or Mars, let alone on planets orbiting other stars. For the prophecies to be fulfilled in any way that resembles our expectations, the whole human race must stay on earth until the Second Coming. And this is true no matter what doctrinal view you have about the Second Coming. In Acts 17:26, Paul says, "And He (God) has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings". Thus far, God has allowed us to inhabit most of the land on earth, even Antarctica. But there isn’t even a hint in the Bible about God allowing humans to live anywhere else. One possible objection to this could be based on Matthew 24:31, which speaks of the saints being gathered "from one end of heaven to the other", and several similar verses. But these verses, properly interpreted, refer only to the saints being gathered from the most distant places on earth. The "Good News Bible" renders it "from one end of the world to the other". That is the correct interpretation. Acts 17:26 suggests that God has plans for the human race that involve parameters of both time and space. History has shown that He will intervene in human affairs any time that our corrupt creativity threatens to interfere with His plan. He has done it more than once!

Our corrupt creativity is now threatening God’s plan to a degree that makes the threat posed at Babel seem trivial by comparison. The threat grows greater with each new breakthrough in science and medicine. There are also "wild cards" in this situation; the possibility that unforeseen breakthroughs could result in some of this progress happening a lot faster than now expected. Here is an example of what I mean: when I was about 10 years old (early 1950’s), I had a precocious interest in space travel. So my parents gave me a book entitled "The Real Book About Rockets And Space Travel". It dealt with the subject in a broad and factual but elementary way. It had one chapter that was devoted to "ray guns", the standard weapons of science fiction. The writers said that though they couldn’t say that ray guns were impossible, they had no idea how a ray gun would work. That was the early 50’s, and it was less then 10 years after the book was published that the first laser beam blazed out of a synthetic ruby crystal. Right now, Boeing is building a fleet of special 747’s that will be armed with laser cannon for the U.S. Air Force!

I might add that when I was a boy, my father, an educated man, told me that it was impossible to build a rocket ship and go to the moon. He lived to see himself proved wrong.

There are a number of wild card possibilities that are actually in the early research stage: New sources of unlimited power that consume no fuel and produce no pollution or radiation; structural materials over 100 times stronger than anything we have now; faster-than-light communication, and, yes, believe it or not, maybe antigravity and space warp travel. If these things become reality, we are going out into space the way Europeans came to America. And computers much smaller yet much more powerful than what we have now are almost certain.

In Revelation 1:7, John says, "Behold, He (Jesus) is coming with the clouds, and every eyes will see Him". Even now, it’s hard to understand how this prophecy can be literally fulfilled. How much more so if mankind is spread all over the Solar System, let alone the whole universe? It took only a handful of men working in unity to give us aviation. Another handful gave us electronics. Right now, thousands are working together to give us space travel. Some of them are trying to give us interstellar travel. Give them enough time, and they’ll succeed. However, people living in self-sufficient colonies on other worlds (and except for those near the earth they’d have to be) would be able to escape the Tribulation (or, if they were Christians, they’d miss the Second Coming and the Resurrection). No matter how you look at it, He’s coming very soon! "Even so, come, Lord Jesus!"

5. Man Most High?

In the previous chapters of this book, we’ve discussed the ways in which human creativity presently threatens God’s plan of salvation for the human race. We’ve shown that God has to intervene in human affairs soon in a big way or history will go beyond the point where the prophecies of the Second Coming can be fulfilled in any way that resembles our expectations. In this chapter, we will look at a deeper problem that underlies both the original Tower of Babel story and the present "Babel Rising!" situation. We begin by remembering what the people of Babel said before they started building: "let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad" (Genesis 11:4). What was going on there? Was it not the human race trying to assert control over its destiny? They were not, as some have ignorantly said, trying to reach Heaven and take over from God (He would have laughed at that; see Psalm 2:1-4.), but they were trying to take charge of their future on earth. Which is to say, they were trying to collectively be their own god.

The First Commandment given by God in Exodus 20:3 is "You shall have no other gods before Me!" But we know that this commandment has been violated again and again. Yet in our time, the worship of idols has been on the decline. Even in India, which has the most wide-open idol worship of any nation on earth, the number of "true believers" in Hinduism is on the decline. For the wealthy and educated, their adherence to Hinduism is often more culture than faith. But while the human race is gradually abandoning the worship of "graven images", we’ve found a new god to worship: ourselves! We worship human achievement, achievement in science and business, achievement in sports, and achievement in entertainment. In fact, it’s in entertainment that it’s the most obvious. When someone is called a "movie idol" or a "Rock’N’Roll idol, there’s more truth to the term than the person who uses it realizes. Consider the candlelight vigils that are annually held outside the Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee on the anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death. That’s out-and-out worship! But though idolatry in our society is most blatant in entertainment, it is by no means limited to it. In sports, the biggest events are the Olympic Games. These games began as an outgrowth of ancient Greek idolatry. As this is written, people are standing in line all night to get tickets to New York Yankee playoff games. Did you ever see people stand in line like that to get into a church service? The worship of man by man is everywhere in our society, worldwide.

In the realm of science and medicine the idolatry isn’t so obvious, but in it’s long term goals, at least, it’s definitely there. In the Introduction, the modern proverb "What mind can conceive, man can achieve" was quoted, which is supported by Genesis 11:6. There is another proverb that is a corollary to this, that comes from the world of science and technology: "The impossible takes a little longer". Again, this is mankind saying that there is nothing we cannot do, given enough time. If, that is, we act in unity with unlimited communication. We are created in God’s image. Therefore we are creative. And we are created collectively in God’s image, if anything, more than individually. This becomes obvious when you compare what we can do as a team to what we can do individually. Mankind, acting in unity with unlimited communication, becomes to all practical purposes a second God. (I do mean a "God" with a big "G".) Mankind, collectively, can say, "Is anything too hard for me?"

The root of the problem goes right back to the lie of Satan in the Garden of Eden: "You shall not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God", (Genesis 3:4 & 5). When Adam and Eve, ate the forbidden fruit, they were trying to become gods apart from God. They did acquire a moral consciousness, however limited. They also acquired death. Ever since then, the human race has been on an endless quest, consciously or unconsciously, to acquire the God-like knowledge that the forbidden fruit failed to deliver, and the eternal life we lost. The priests of ancient Egypt sought it. The astrologers of ancient Babylon sought it. So did the ancient Greek philosophers. Confucius and his colleagues in China sought it. The Alchemists of the Middle Ages sought it. True, many cultures despaired of it and gave themselves up to low-brow idolatry and debauchery (the Canaanites of Joshua’s time were an example). But in all the major civilizations, there were those who sought it. In the long run of history the quest for God-like knowledge and eternal life has survived, and in the past few centuries it has grown tremendously.

The statement by the Angel Gabriel in Daniel 12:4 is a prophecy of the near-fulfillment of this quest that we are seeing in our time: "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase". We are closer to achieving this goal than any of our ancestors ever dreamed of being. Computers and the Internet are part of the fruit of this quest, and they’re helping us on our way. {I’m creating this booklet with a machine that wasn’t even dreamed of when I was born.} The nearer we get to achieving the goal, the greater our inclination to worship ourselves as gods becomes. But the goal will not be achieved until we give ourselves biological eternal life, and also consummate another goal; reacquiring the dominion we lost.

In Genesis 1:28, God gave mankind dominion, that is, power and authority to rule, over the earth and everything in it. But when man fell, the dominion was lost and passed to Satan (see John 12:31 & 14:30). Now the earth is cursed against us. Mankind wants the dominion back. And to fully assert that dominion, we want it not only over the earth, but over the entire universe! This idea didn’t originate with this writer, it’s been around for a while. It was vividly expressed in the title of a science fiction novel that was published some years ago: "STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND" ^[6^]. by Samuel R. Delaney . This needs some interpretation: "STARS", in the science fiction/space travel sense, means not just the stars, but the planets that orbit them; in other words, entire solar systems. "IN MY POCKET" means "in my possession" and/or "under my control". "LIKE GRAINS OF SAND" means "in uncountable numbers". In other words, at least entire galaxies. The human race wants to collectively stretch out its hand, seize control of the whole universe, and say to itself, "This is mine! I am God!" That’s why the goal of Star Trek is "to go boldly where no one has gone before". This idea now finds its clearest expression in science fiction, but given time, like Jules Verne’s fictional submarine "Nautilus", it will find expression in fact. ^[7^]. Remember what God said in Genesis 11:6: "nothing they imagine to do will be withheld from them". But no way will God give us enough time.

There is a further purpose to space travel that is also related to our desire to be our own gods. This purpose was, I believe, first noted in Christian circles by C. S. Lewis, in his science fiction novel "OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET" ^[8^]. The purpose is to achieve eternal life for the human race as a whole. Mankind fears death, not just as individuals, but for the whole race. We know how many species have already become extinct on earth. ^[9^]. Since the advent of nuclear weapons and biological warfare, we have begun to fear our own extinction. Recently, we have learned that the collision of a comet or asteroid with the earth could wipe us out. We also know that the sun could someday "go nova" and incinerate the earth. But we have the idea that if we can establish enough self-sufficient colonies on enough planets around enough stars in enough galaxies, no one war or natural catastrophe could ever wipe us out, and the human race will survive forever.

C. S. Lewis expressed this idea in fictional form as the reason why his villain "Weston" built a spaceship and went to Mars. Toward the end of the book, though, Lewis gave a broad hint that he wrote the book to express theological ideas that he didn’t think would be well received as non-fiction. So he took the idea seriously. And it isn’t unique to him. The late science fiction writer Robert H. Heinlein (one of the most famous of this century) was well known for saying that "the earth is too small a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in". Which is to say that he believed in the idea. This idea has also been expressed by others in the fields of science and science fiction. It is a real driving force behind space travel.

In short, the most fundamental reason; the true spiritual reason, for all the effort that’s being poured into scientific and medical research is man’s desire to manifest his own imagined divinity. This is true regardless of whether or not any particular researcher has that idea consciously in mind. Most, by far, certainly don’t. We are talking here about what mankind wants collectively, not necessarily about what individuals consciously want, though some definitely do. As shown in chapter 2, unity doesn’t have to be conscious unity to be effective. As anyone who has been a Christian for long knows, the Church as a whole is the Body of Christ, Jesus is the head and every Christian is a part (I Corinthians 12). Well, the unsaved world to some extent functions as a body too, but the head is Satan. Satan hasn’t done too well at getting people to worship him directly (though some people do). So he’s settling for getting man to worship himself. If the "body" of mankind worships itself, and Satan is the "head", then guess who is really being worshipped? When "the man of sin…sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God…" (II Thessalonians 5:3 & 4), it won’t be some mythical offspring of Satan. It will be man worshipping man (or we might say, it already is!) The true Temple of God is not some glorified rockpile in Jerusalem (see Acts 7:49-50). It’s the human race! At least that’s what we were created to be. See I Corinthians 6:19. But we think we’re gods, and we’re trying to prove it to ourselves.

From what the Bible says about him, Satan at the present time is confined to this earth (Revelation 12:9). That’s another reason why man is also so confined. C. S. Lewis also expressed this idea in "OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET" and the other two books, "PERELANDRA" and "THAT HIDEOUS STRENGTH" ^[10^]. of his famous space trilogy. (His "Bent Eldil" is obviously Satan.) But if unredeemed humanity is allowed to spread its rule throughout the universe, Satan’s rule spreads with us. If unredeemed humanity acquires biological eternal life, Satan’s kingdom will last forever. He’ll be able to turn the entire universe into a living hell, literally. No way will God allow these things to happen. But, as has been shown, they will happen if God doesn’t intervene to stop it. He must intervene in a big way, soon! In the Garden of Eden, Satan told Adam and Eve that if they did what he said, they’d be like God. Ever since, he’s been lying to us, telling us that we really are. Fallen man, with his foolish pride, wants to believe it. Unfortunately, there is some truth to it, but only in a limited sense. Christians are "sons of God", but in an incomplete way. We won’t be complete as such until the resurrection. Unsaved people are "sons", if anything spiritually, of the devil. Satan is encouraging us to prove that we are gods by violating the Three Prohibitions. The terrible truth is that if God lets us have enough time, we can. What Satan said wasn’t totally false. It was rather the form of lie that we call a half-truth. As has been said, the First Prohibition is being increasingly violated now. At least part of the Second soon will be, and the same is true of the Third. Unless Jesus comes first.

This is what Christians must expect. If you understand what has been said in this booklet, you can see that the Soon Coming of Our Lord isn’t just a possibility. It’s mandated by circumstances. As Paul said in Romans 12:1 & 2, the rational thing for all Christians to do is be living sacrifices. ^[11^]. As Peter and the writer of Hebrews put it, live like "strangers and pilgrims on the earth". The Soon Coming of our Saviour is a certainty. So be ready! Be aware, that, contrary to popular belief, "the Day of the Lord is darkness and not light" (Amos 5:18) ^[12^]. "Watch therefore, and pray always that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that will come to pass, and to stand before the Son of Man" (Luke 21:36).

APPENDIX: How God Works In History

In the main text of this booklet, which expounds the "BABEL RISING!" concept, something was said that may bother some Christians: The Soon Second Coming of Christ is mandated by circumstances. God must intervene in history in a big way soon if the prophecies of the Second Coming are ever going to be fulfilled in any way that resembles our expectations. This appendix is provided to hopefully reply to any questions arising from these statements.

I believe that some Christians will be disturbed by my use of the phrase "God must…". To resolve the problem, we will look at what the Bible, and Christian belief about the Bible, say about how God works in history. Our understanding of this issue much begin with a concept that is at the very core of Christian theology; the belief that humans have a free will. It has been well argued that if humans do not have a free will, God could not in justice punish anyone for his sins. This idea has its beginning in Genesis 2: 15 & 17, when God forbade Adam to eat the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The prohibition, with the warning of consequences, would have been meaningless if Adam hadn’t been free to disobey. The idea is reinforced by such passages as Deuteronomy 30:19 and Joshua 24:15. We are free to make moral and spiritual choices, and to act on them.

If God hadn’t given man a free will, there would be no sin and no necessity of salvation. In order to allow men to effectively have a free will, God for the most part must allow men to do as they please. So He allowed man to sin, and then began to work on a plan of salvation. To fulfill His plan and still give man a free will, God uses the device of from time to time intervening in history in an overt way, instead of exercising constant control. If God was exercising constant control, as some Christians erroneously believe, there would be no need for overt intervention. He could do it all "from behind the scenes". However, A pattern of overt divine intervention is so obvious in the Bible that this writer once heard an atheist admitting that the Bible is the only religious scripture that shows a real God stepping into real history. This is no small thing. By contrast, it means that all the stories of gods and their interactions with men in the mythologies and scriptures of other religions are nothing but fantasies. This alone sets the Bible, and by extension, the Christian Faith, far apart from all religions in credibility.

The scale of God’s interventions varies enormously. In the Bible, they can be as small as giving thirsty Samson a drink (Judges 15:18 & 19) or as great - and terrible - as the Flood. In our lives, God intervenes frequently in ways both small and great (to us) in answer to our prayers. Again, He for the most part allows men to do as they please. If He didn’t, there wouldn’t be so much sin and suffering in the world. But He intervenes in a big way whenever man’s sin threatens His plan of salvation. Sometimes, as at Babel, He intervenes long before the problem comes to the point of crisis. At other times, such as the destruction of Sennacherib’s army (II Kings 19), He waits until the last minute. Either way, the whole historical aspect of the Bible is a record of God’s interventions. He may intervene to stop things from happening that He doesn’t want, as shown, or He may intervene to make things happen that He does want, like the Exodus and the First Coming of Christ. Even so, He only overrides a person’s free will when His purpose can’t be achieved any other way. Pharaoh was a case in point; see Exodus 4: 21 & 9:12.

We aren’t robots. Even the best of Christians can suddenly fall away and rebel against God. And sometimes the foulest sinner repents and becomes a heroic saint. There is no guarantee that any person will or will not do God’s will at any specific moment. Only the Lord Jesus always obeyed. So to get things done, and keep His plan on track, God often has to intervene and make things happen. This is also why it’s possible for us to get our prayers answered. He only guarantees to answer prayers that are in accordance with His Will, which is to say, in harmony with His plan of redemption.

When He does override a person’s free will, God is capable of taking control of a person so gently and subtly that the person doesn’t realize it’s happened. Thus a person may look back later and be amazed by what he or she did at a particular time and place. But what the person did may have changed the course of history. It’s a little known fact that Saul’s persecution of the Church in Jerusalem did as much to spread the Gospel as did his later ministry as Paul. See Acts 8:1 & 4. (We’re thinking in terms of people who don’t know the Lord.) When Saul started his persecution, there were over 5000 Christians in Jerusalem, but virtually none anywhere else. God used him to start the spread of the Gospel "to the end of the earth" before he was saved! The persecution by Saul was part of God’s plan, and it is also an excellent example of how rough God will get with His own people when they don’t do what He told them to do. (Special note: The ‘God’ who 'wouldn’t allow His people to suffer' isn’t in the Bible.)

Up until the martyrdom of Stephen, things had generally been going very well for the Christians in Jerusalem. So well that they probably expected to see the entire city converted (Acts 5:14-16). So well that they all stayed in Jerusalem even after the Apostles got whipped (Acts 5:40-42). It took Saul’s persecution to get the Apostles moving out to the rest of the world. When Saul launched his full-scale persecution, most of the Christians scattered to the four winds. And everywhere they went, they preached the Gospel and started Churches. The Church in Antioch where Paul had his first ministry experience was started by Christians who had fled from his persecution! If God gets that rough with His own people, how will He deal with the unsaved when they threaten His plan with their corrupt creativity? "If the righteous will be recompensed on the earth, how much more the ungodly and the sinner?" Proverbs 11:31; "For the time is come for judgment to begin at the House of God, and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel of God?" I Peter 4:17.

God has intervened in history many times by overriding a person’s free will. In the process, He will sometimes even exploit man’s sinful nature to achieve His purposes. This was the case with Pharaoh and Saul, and it was especially so in the case of the Crucifixion. (Note: the sins are still the sinner’s own decision and God will hold him [or them] accountable for them.) But His most fearful interventions are when He uses the forces of nature (by the way, "nature" was originally "God’s nature"), as He did in the Flood. You might be interested to know that God’s intervention with the forces of nature didn’t end with the Old Testament period. Have you ever noticed that almost all the ancient pagan temples of Greece and Rome are in ruins? (Except the Roman Pantheon, which was turned into a church). They were some of the most massive and splendorous structures ever built, and they didn’t fall into ruin by neglect. It just so happened that on July 21, 376 AD, just about the time that the Christian Faith was getting the upper hand over idolatry throughout the Roman Empire, one of the biggest earthquakes in known history shook the entire eastern Mediterranean region. It leveled most of the pagan temples. This left a lot of usable cut stones available for rebuilding. The Christians happily confiscated the stones and used them to build churches. It was divine intervention through the forces of nature that terminated Greco-Roman idolatry.

If this writer is correct in what he understands certain passages of Scripture to mean, then during the Great Tribulation God will intervene with the forces of nature in ways that will make the Flood look like mercy killing. (It was!) Which brings us to another major aspect of God’s interventions in history: He usually lets His people know what is going to happen. These warnings are a major part of prophecy. In Amos 3:7 we read, "Surely the Lord God does nothing unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets". This is a direct allusion to God’s pattern of intervention. Before He intervenes in any significant way, whether through dreams, or visions, or "a still, small voice", God lets one or more of His prophets know, and they in turn warn the others, whether the others are obedient or not. It is a regrettable fact that those who are not obedient, yet are deceived into believing that they are obedient (a common condition in Bible times, and in our day as well), will not receive the warnings and will often persecute the prophets, even unto death. But God warns them just the same.

The reason He does this is that He wants people to know that whatever happens is His doing. It is all too easy for godless people and even disobedient Christians to dismiss acts of divine intervention as coincidence and happenstance. It has been done even with things as bad as the great earthquake of 376 AD. (That’s why so few people today know about it.) God is concerned not only that people know that it is His doing when He acts, He is concerned that people simply know that He exists. Perhaps the most basic of all spiritual problems is unbelief. In the Book of Isaiah, chapter 44:6-8, God claims proof of His existence by His being able, through His prophets, to accurately predict the future. In the Book of Ezekiel, we find God saying again and again that some specific thing was going to happen "and they will know that I am the Lord". Elijah’s fire on the altar was proof of God’s existence and sovereignty . It took a lot of convincing for the Israelites of the Old Testament to fully and absolutely accept that the God of Israel was the one true God. In fact, it took the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile in Babylon to finally do it. But after that, the Israelites never engaged in large-scale, wide-open idolatry again. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, etc., plus the terrible events that fulfilled their prophecies, finally got the message across. What will it take to get the message across to the Christians of today? Let alone the unsaved.

When God tells His prophets that something is going to happen, He also puts Himself in the position of being required by His own divine nature to bring to pass the thing He has said that He would do (Isaiah 48:11). If this were not so, He would be a liar, and no better than a man. It is true that once in a while, as in the case of Nineveh following the ministry of Jonah, God in His mercy relents. But if He does, then there is always a clear-cut reason for it. Jonah’s preaching produced what had to be one of the greatest episodes of mass repentance in history. In that case, the repentance of the people of Nineveh would have been meaningless if God hadn’t relented. He will also "repent" of the intent to bless if the people He intends to bless are disobedient ^[13^].. But most of the time, what He says will happen, happens. God has prophesied the Great Tribulation. He has promised the Second Coming of Christ, and the Resurrection of the Saints. He is obligated; required by His own divine truthfulness; to bring it to pass. And if circumstances threaten the fulfillment of those prophecies, as we have shown they now do, then God will act quickly. He had to pour out the Flood upon the earth. He had confuse the languages at Babel. He had to send His Son to die for our sins, and raise Him from the dead. And now, He has to step into history in a big way again. SOON!!!

1. Actually, though, it won’t be 2000 years from the beginning of Christianity until circa 2026-2030 AD
2. This is not just my idea, I have seen these words in print. Also, I presently work in the corporate administration department of a major international investment bank, and I have "insider" information about what is happening in the world of big business on the international level.
3. Update: They are now on the market, but so far are being used only for selling movies. But the computer use of them will come.
4. My company.
5. If you want to check this out for yourself, and you have a computer online, open Yahoo and search for the word "Genome". Check out what you find. You’ll be impressed.
6. Don’t read this book if you see it. It’s actually homosexual pornography disguised as science fiction. But this gives us a clue as to where these ideas come from: our sin nature!
7. The first nuclear powered submarine was named the "Nautilus" in honor of Jules Verne.
8. Go ahead and read this one. To give credit where it is due, my initial inspiration for the entire "Babel Rising!" concept came from the writings of C. S. Lewis.
9. Over 90% of all known species are now extinct, and more disappear every year.
10. You can read these, too, but be warned, the third book is not light reading. It’s the heaviest fiction Lewis ever wrote. Furthermore, Lewis suggests some very dangerous theological ideas in these books. Read with caution.
11. The Greek word translated "reasonable" in Romans 12:1 (KJV) is logikos , transliterated "logikos", and it means just what it sounds like; logical.
12. The Hebrew word "Yom", usually translated "day", doesn’t necessarily mean a 24 hour day, but rather can refer to any specific period of time. As used in the passage above, it refers to the entire Great Tribulation.
13. See Deuteronomy 28:63.

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