SPEAKER_01
0:20 I want you to picture this. 0:22 There are bricks stacked instead of stone and tar instead of mortar. 0:26 This is humanity's first mass engineering project, and every single person on Earth speaks one language, and they're all working towards one goal. 0:36 Now, from a distance, this project seems like unity. 0:39 Looks like humanity is finally getting its act together, but if you get close enough to hear what they're actually saying to one another, you'll hear the real motive. 0:47 Let us make a name for ourselves. 0:50 Guys, welcome back to this week. 0:52 We're talking about Hell's Hydra. 0:54 That is the five-headed monster that I think Satan is using right now to just absolutely dominate and deceive people in modernity. 1:01 On day one, we talked about fundamentalist Islam. 1:04 Day two, we talked about socialism and communism. 1:07 Yesterday, on day three, we talked about LGBTQ plus activism. 1:10 And today we're talking about globalism. 1:12 So today we'll be in Genesis 11, and I'm going to read the entirety of the historical account of the Tower of Babel, starting in verse one. 1:19 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 1:22 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 1:27 And they said to one another, Come let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. 1:31 And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. 1:34 And they said, Come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. 1:43 So let's actually just pause right here to consider that last sentence again. 1:47 So it's a direct rejection of God's command to fill the earth. 1:50 They replaced God's plan to disperse with a plan to consolidate, a plan to centralize, a plan to build a monument to their own supposed unity and glory, right? 1:59 So essentially they were scared of being scattered and decentralized. 2:02 They were afraid that they would lose control of a single unified human system. 2:06 Let's go back to the text, verse five. 2:08 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 2:13 And the Lord said, Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. 2:19 And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 2:23 Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech. 2:28 So the Lord dispersed them from over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 2:34 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, and from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth. 2:43 So some people think that this is God feeling threatened, right? 2:47 But that's not what's happening here at all. 2:48 We have God stating a fact about what a unified, God-defying humanity is capable of if they are not restrained. 2:56 So he scatters them and confuses their language, and he places the name Babel on it. 3:00 It becomes a monument to human confusion forever. 3:03 So why should this story matter to you? 3:06 It's because every impulse towards a global consolidation of power, whether that's you know financial or political, cultural, economic, technological, whatever, it carries the same exact DNA of what happened with the Tower of Babel. 3:19 It seems like a no-brainer, right? 3:21 It's one system, it's one currency, it's one set of laws and rules and one set of institutions making the decisions for everybody, it's super clean. 3:28 It's all got the explicit goal of preventing the kind of decentralization and disagreement that keeps any single human power from being absolute. 3:35 It's always sold as unity, as progress, and as you know, solving all the problems that you know no single nation can ever solve on its own. 3:45 But it's never sold honestly, is it? 3:48 Because ultimately this is what it is. 3:51 Let us make a name for ourselves. 3:54 And when you look at the totality of Scripture, it doesn't treat national and linguistic distinction as a design flaw that needs to be engineered away. 4:01 I mean, remember, God Himself came up with the idea and imposed it at Babel as a check on human ambition. 4:08 When you get to the book of Revelation again, uh the ultimate hope isn't a flattened, homogenized humanity, it's a multitude. 4:17 Again, the text says from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, from every tribe and every tongue is another way that it's said and translated. 4:25 So they're all standing before the throne. 4:27 They're very distinct, but they're all unified in one thing. 4:32 Christ. 4:34 That's ultimately the answer to humanity's ambition. 4:37 It's not humanity uniting together under the force of one man-made system, but humanity united by God under one actual king. 4:45 So to all of you listening to this, I want you to be suspicious. 4:50 Yes, I want you to be suspicious as a matter of biblical instinct. 4:55 I want you to be suspicious of any system, whether that's political or corporate or religious, that asks you to trade local loyalty and local accountability and national identity and distinction for a promise of global unity and a stronger name for the institution running it, right? 5:13 So some people would call that instinct paranoia, but that's not the case at all. 5:16 I mean, some people might look at you and say that you're being nationalistic or xenophobic, but it's not really that either. 5:22 It's Genesis 11 read correctly. 5:24 Because again, watch the pattern. 5:26 Consolidation sold as safety, centralized control sold as progress, and descent treated as a real danger to be prevented by force. 5:36 And this warning is for you individually as well. 5:39 As a man, you will be tempted to build your own tower, to build your own name, to build your own legacy, to build your own reputation, all constructed apart from God's blessing, design, and timing. 5:49 Now that's different from building a godly, gospel-centered legacy, but we need to stand firm and we need to make sure we're not going that direction, right? 5:57 And whether it's for you as an individual or for the people of your community, just remember that your unity can never come from a tower. 6:06 It comes from the cross, where God builds one people out of every nation, every tribe, and every tongue.