User blog:SouthWriter/The City of Man

Having read Genesis 8 through 11 (up to the introduction of the house of Terah), I sought the central verse(s) and came up with Genesis 10:10 -- ''[T}he beginning of {Nimrod's} kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. ''

About 3,000 years later Augustine of Hippo would write a book contrasting the City of God from the City of Man. Moses beat him to it, though he only records the founding of that ancient dichotomy. God had told mankind, through Noah, to spread out and fill the earth, but the nascent human race lacked the faith to do that. Understandably, the collective families resisted this in favor of strength in numbers. After about 200 years, Noah's grandson Nimrod had begun organizing people into the towns in this verse. Verse 11 tells of Shem's son Asshur building more towns. Though Japheth's descendants are listed, no immediate building is evident in the text.

To consolidate power, Nimrod encouraged the people to build a central tower high into the sky. The technology that he had acquired from his grandparents was sufficient to match anything before the flood, so it seemed there was no stopping the project. Mankind would survive, it seems, by their cooperation. The tower was to be an artificial mountain that would survive any floods that might threaten in the plain of Shinar (between rivers). Perhaps the people as a whole did not listen to their grandparents and feared another flood might wipe them out. Perhaps they thought safe place was needed to protect them from God.

It is obvious that the LORD did not agree! Though the tower was huge to those building it, the Creator joked that he was going to "go down" to see what was being built. By the account, he was "impressed," but saw the danger in their disobedience. The remedy was ingenious: confuse their language. From one language, there were to become as many as seventy dialects of at least three language groups. As they spoke to their neighbors all they heard was 'bab ab baba abba,' to such an extent that they had to search for immediate family members and flee in every direction.

Not much has changed in four thousand years. Man has become adept at living without God. Like with Nimrod, man-made "gods" are controllable. Whatever we put our minds to, we can accomplish. We have harnessed the power of the atom, we have eyes in the "heavens" that allow us to communicate around the world. We even have a new "universal" language -- our very own English. The City of Man seems to have come of age.

Just as in the days of Noah, and in the days of Nimrod, God is not asleep. He is watching us. To those of us who believe, God has provided access to His City, even before He finishes building it ! When the final judgment comes, there will be an ingathering rather than a scattering. The City won't be built with human hands, but will be defined by its inhabitants, the chief being God Himself, providing the radiance of his glory!

--SouthWriter (talk) 01:02, January 4, 2016 (UTC)