by Don Clasen
July 30, 2013
The city of ancient Babylon was built on the Euphrates River in what is today modern day Iraq, very close to the original Garden of Eden site. Babylon is a very important city in the Bible for at least two reasons, one political and one religious. Politically it is the first recorded civilization in history after Noah’s Flood and it serves as something of a prototypical symbol of organized rebellion against God. This is because it was founded by Nimrod whose name literally means, “let us rebel.”
The Bible says Nimrod “began to be a mighty [lit. “masterful,” domineering] one in the earth before [lit. “in the face of”] the Lord” (Gen 10:8). A clearly charismatic personality, a “mighty hunter” and a real “man’s man,” Nimrod was something of the world’s first dictator/military strong man who sought to bring the people under his own control. He defied the widely-understood will of God that the descendants of Noah and his three sons were to “replenish the earth” by “scattering abroad” on it (Gen 9:1).
The Big Builder
Nimrod was very ambitious and made himself the king of Babel and a number of other cities (10:10). Either he or his father Cush presided over the building of the famous Tower of Babel that the city of Babylon (the Greek form of “Babel”) was built around. “Babel” means “confusion” because that was where the Lord came down and “confused the language of the whole world.” In other words, they all began speaking a multitude of languages and could not communicate with each other. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth…and they stopped building the city” (Gen 11:9,8 NIV). In this way God ripped them out of Nimrod’s clutches and forced them to do what He wanted them to do originally.[1]
Genesis 11:4 reads, “And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (11:4). What is so interesting is how easily Nimrod and Semiramis persuaded the people to fear what God had plainly commanded and substitute for it a project with a delusional goal to storm heaven to de-throne or challenge Him directly! Thus by dividing their one language into many they could not communicate and were forced to go their separate ways, laying the foundation for the nation-state system in our world today.
Nimrod is a good example of the power of a bad leader’s influence over the masses. He lived probably around the 26th Century B.C. After him, Babylon became mostly a priestly-ruled kingdom, but reached its latter height of glory under Nebuchaddnezzar II who reigned from 605 to 555 B.C. It was during his reign that Judah was carried off into the 70 year captivity.
Mother of All Pagan Mythology As Well
Ancient Babylon also became a type of antichrist religion, developing the prototypical esoteric “mysteries” based on pseudo “truth” that is the false counterpart to true faith in the God of Israel and in time, Jesus Christ. Nimrod also had a beautiful and evil wife Semiramis whom some believe was the real brains behind this system, which included the use of confessionals designed to “gather intel” on the population to better control them. Deities that reflected this couple’s vain view of themselves were developed for worship either by themselves or their devotees. When the people scattered, many of the deities found subsequently throughout the world were simply the same gods developed at Babylon and re-named according to their new-found languages.
Thus, just as Egypt is a type of the “world” that God leads us out of in an Exodus kind of way and into the Kingdom of God, so likewise ancient Babylon is figuratively a type of an antichrist political and religious system set in opposition to His purposes in the earth. She is figuratively the “Mother of All [religious] Harlots” (i.e., false religions) that followed historically, and prophetically the Mother of All (political) Harlots referenced in Revelation 17:5 at the end of the age. In my book, American Babylon, American Antichrist I show that this latter day Tower of Confusion nation is the United States and the colonial mother of a de facto global empire of hegemonic militarism, trade and influence.
Notes:
[1] At this point, the human race was divided into three broad groups as descendants of either Shem, Ham or Japheth, the three sons of Noah. With the introduction of many different languages, the effect was to isolate people into much smaller groups and thus smaller gene pools, causing a greater distinction of appearance between groups. This is the nascent beginning of the different “nations of the earth” (i.e., ethnic groups).
