This is an 8 minute read.

How We Got Here (in case you missed it…)

In Part 1 of this blog series, I introduced the concept of Babylon as a spiritual world power, and a philosophy, and a system that is destined to suffer the full weight of God’s wrath at the end of the age. Like a giant hamster wheel, Babylon leverages the carrot of Satan’s original lie about the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in order to distract each one of us from discovering and pursuing our God-given birthright. If you haven’t already read Part 1, and if you don’t like dropping into the middle of a deep conversation without the full context, you might want to go back and read Part 1: What is Babylon? now, before continuing with this post. I’ll wait here for you…

Ready to proceed? Good, now that we have a general idea of what Babylon is in the abstract, it’s time to build out a more practical understanding of its system. My goal in this post is to expose the root of this insidious weed so that in future posts we can start to see how it actually impacts our lives under the surface.

To that end, let’s return again to the book of Genesis a few hundred years after the worldwide flood, where we find the origin of the very first postdiluvian city:

Now the whole earth used the same language and the same words. It came about as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. “Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.

Genesis 11:1-9 (emphasis mine)

Babel, in the land of Shinar, is the prototype of the city of Babylon that would later become the capital of the Babylonian empire. Babylon started at Babel. At first blush, you might read the story of the tower of Babel and wonder at God’s motive. The post-diluvian population of Earth had joined together in unity to build a city and a tower. What’s so wrong with that? Sure, God had commanded Noah and his family to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (see Genesis 9:1)—a command, it seems, that their descendants ignored when they settled in Babel. But wouldn’t that temporary disobedience have resolved itself over time as the population naturally grew and expanded? I mean, they couldn’t stay in Babel forever. At least not if they kept having babies (which humanity tends to do naturally and without the need of persuasion). So what was so wrong with the apparent unity at Babel? Isn’t it a good thing when humanity willingly works together toward a common goal? Why would God interrupt that dynamic and drive them toward ethnic division? The answers to these questions expose the root of the spirit of Babylon and explain God’s fierce wrath toward her at the end of the age. But before we go there, we need to answer one other fundamental question…

Who Planted This Weed?

Many theologians and ancient historians agree that the building of the city and tower of Babel was instigated by a legendary man named Nimrod:

Now Cush {the grandson of Noah} became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the LORD; therefore it is said, “Like Nimrod a mighty hunter before the LORD.” The beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh, in the land of Shinar. From that land he went forth into Assyria, and built Nineveh and Rehoboth-Ir and Calah, and Resen between Nineveh and Calah; that is the great city.

Genesis 10:8-12 (emphasis mine, bracketed text added for context)

Nimrod started his kingdom with Babel, and based on what we read in Genesis 11, we can speculate that only after God scattered the people by confusing their languages did Nimrod move on to expand his footprint into the northern region of Assyria. Again, nothing overtly villainous is mentioned here. That’s not to say he was a good dude, but putting aside whatever it means to be a “mighty hunter before the Lord,” on the surface the only clear biblical evidence of Nimrod’s evil is the rotten fruit of the civilizations he founded, particularly Babylon and Ninevah. But we are looking at Nimrod as an archetype to understand Babylon, not the other way around, so what can we learn from these verses?

Consider that Nimrod is the first clear example in scripture of a human leveraging the notoriety garnered from the excellent exercise of his God-given gifts to build dominion over people. Nimrod was made to be a hunter, and he became a mighty one. That was good and right before God—especially given that, after the flood, God explicitly granted humanity permission to kill any animal for food (see Genesis 9:2-3). But leveraging fame to organize and (by extension) subjugate mankind to serve his own purposes and build his own kingdom? In other words, people, lording it over other people? That was never God’s will for humankind.

God originally designed the family unit to be the extent of human authority over humans. In the family unit, a father and mother have authority and responsibility over their children until their kids are mature enough to exercise their own authority. Parents pass their knowledge and wisdom on to their children, who are meant to synthesize that light and love together with their own as they discover and walk out their own unique purpose on earth. Then the children pass that increased package of blessings on to their children in due time. The mantle was to pass from parent to child to grandchild and so on, in a generational sequence that would enrich the earth with an ever-evolving and increasing revelation of the order and beauty of God’s character. And God intended every family to express different aspects of His divine nature. Each member was free to unpack their giftings and callings in an organic, creative, mostly-unmoderated process in harmony with whatever land they expanded into, growing and flourishing through the challenges of life within the context of their burgeoning generational heritage. That is how the kingdom of God was meant to expand from the Garden of Eden to the untamed earth over time.

Nimod rebelled against this model. He short-circuited the process. He created a system that fed into humanity’s insecurities, allowing people to feel like they were part of something special—some bigger cause—while they spent their lives building Nimrod’s kingdom rather than growing in their own authority. By following Nimrod, they gained the comfort and security of the crowd, but they traded away the freedom, creativity, responsibility, and risk required to grow in God’s character and unpack His purpose for their lives. And since everyone bought the lie that they could join forces to build a tower of brick and mortar to “reach into heaven,” (which, if you recall from Part 1, was essentially the same shortcut offered by the serpent through the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) they all became focused on one purpose—a lesser purpose than the one they were designed for. A purpose that promised protection, enrichment, and power, while actually keeping them weaker and poorer and smaller than God intended. That is the root of the Babylonian system.

When Weeds Spread

That’s how it all started, but we know that the spirit and system of Babylon didn’t perish at the tower of Babel. Its effectiveness was significantly impaired when God confused the language of the people, but like a dandelion in the wind, its seeds were dispersed as the people scattered across the earth. No longer could the system be used to consolidate the entire population of Earth into a single kingdom for a single purpose under a single ruler. Instead, various smaller kingdoms began to arise as groups rallied around gifted men who leveraged the lie of Babel to enrich themselves on the backs of others. Every once in a while, exceptionally charismatic and ambitious rulers would emerge to build empires from smaller kingdoms, but whether small fiefdoms or massive empires, the Babylonian system was always the root lie that empowered the few to dominate the masses throughout history. And its essence has remained the same even as its influence has grown behind the scenes, forever striving to overcome the boundaries God enacted at the tower of Babel.

What’s Next?

This is a good spot to pause. Hopefully, I’ve given you some things to chew on until the next post, when we’ll take what we’ve just learned about the root of Babylon and use that pattern to start identifying a few examples of the Babylonian system at work in our lives today.

Go to Part 3: The Babylonian Two-Step for the next entry in my “Time to Leave Babylon?” series.

Also, please use the comments section to let me know what you think so far, or ask questions if you have them.

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