Week 4 August 2026 – REFLECTION ON BABYLON THE TOWER TURNED BEAST

“There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names…This title was written on her forehead: MYSTERY – BABYLON THE GREAT – THE MOTHER OF PROSTITUTES AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OFTHE EARTH.”  Revelation 17:3; 5

Technically, it replicated the ziggurat of ancient Mesopotamia, known as “Gate of God.”  Particularized in Genesis 11:1-9, God’s people by now just as heathenish, built a great city with a tower that would reach the sky.  In Hebrew the name we recognize as “Babel” is rooted in the verb balal, which means to mix, jumble, or confuse. (In NT Greek it became translated as “Babylon.”)   Surprisingly, Noah was still alive, but his great-grandson Nimrod – “The Rebel” – had the tower built. He was the first great conqueror and empire-builder after the Flood.  The historian Flavius Josephus described him as a tyrant who tried to turn the inhabitants away from Yahweh.  So God confused the people rather than destroying them, since annihilation with a Flood had not convinced them to be godly.  Thus Nimrod became the ultimate symbol of defiance against God.  When the Tower of Babel came into view for my young granddaughters, they had a ball tweaking dialogs between the workers. “Don’t go near the scary edge to eat your waffles.  I’m looking for nails to match your cousin’s hairdo. Give me the hammer from that counter at the Hamburger joint.”  (No dressing needed for the Word Salad trending today.”}

Neither the deadly Deluge nor the Babylonian exile could achieve what only Jesus on the cross can do.  In His final Book, the Holy Spirit through John the Revelator comes out swinging against Babylon the Whore.  She is hellbent to oppose and destroy the Bride, the Church betrothed to Christ.  Personified as a woman, this city built on the foundation of presumptuous pride and insatiable rebellion against moral codes and God’s laws, is veritably screaming for His wrath. The days of Jeremiah 29:7 are way past when the punished Israelites were obligated to pray for the peace and prosperity of Babylon to ensure their own welfare.  Now the stern warning is to come out of the city and be distinctly separated down to the smallest detail.  Babylon, formerly “blessed,” is set to be “blasted” to eternal and sorely felt doom. Chapters 2 and 3 of the Apocalypse state 7 times, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.”  The likes of  America, China, and Russia are all mouth, both proudly and loudly so.

Today’s movers and shakers are woefully clueless that the Bible is humankind’s original “handheld device.”  They’d be smart to put down their phones and flip enough pages to learn that sheep and goats no longer will graze in unison to keep their golf courses cheaply groomed.  No GREATEST OF ALL TIME will “surely die,” but live forever to suffer eternal separation from the God whose love and laws they spurned.  The “great white throne” judgment of Revelation 20:11-15 reveals the horror of the “second death.”