How many things wrong can you find with the following
picture?
Now, try the same exercise with a story from the Bible.
Genesis 6 through 9 recounts the story of Noah and the flood, and Genesis 10
contains perhaps the best, most condensed list of biblical baby names possible.
At the beginning of chapter 11 is the story, often overlooked in Christian
studies, of the tower of Babel—the story of a people who try to reach heaven by
building a tower only to have God, in anger, scatter the people and confound
their language. So, what’s wrong with the picture? What did this people do that
was so wrong that God would punish them so dramatically?
Problem 1.
There is a way to get to heaven. In Moses 7 Enoch and the
people he was able to reclaim and convert to righteousness built a city founded
on unity of heart, thought, principal, and behavior. This “Zion” was, in the
course of time, “taken up into heaven” (Moses 7:18-21). The key to their
success comes before the oft-read verse: “The fear of the Lord was upon all
nations, so great was the glory of the Lord, which was upon his people” (v.
17). A society founded on the Lord Jesus and the principles of His gospel as
dictated to prophets and apostles is a society ready to be, through time and lots
of repentance, in the presence of God. The people of Babel had the same goal
but denied the path thereto.
How many today claim a cure or salve for the pains of
mortality and can offer, at best, only a temporary band aid or, at worst,
diversion from true healing. How many offer diversions from commandments and
covenants and yet claim immunity from consequences? How many would draw us away
from our choice to follow Jesus and His apostles simply so they can, as the
people of Babel said, “make us a name” for themselves. Regardless of the
motivation, No construction, whether physical, philosophical, or philanthropic
can lift a person to the level of God for how can mortality raise mortality?
Only God can open the doors to heaven; only God can open a heart to salvation,
and He does it through the ministry of His Son and the teachings of His
anointed servants.
Problem 2.
The purpose of building a tower may not have actually been
to reach the front steps of the heavenly mansions at all. One detail points to
a more devious aim. The record states that the tower-builders used “slime” to
cement the bricks together. The Hebrew word, “chemar“ denotes a water-proof
mortar akin to bitumen. Hence, they built a tower that was to be, not only
tall, but water proof. Coming so recently after the Flood a natural conclusion
would be that these people, knowing how God reacted to widespread wickedness in
the past, attempted to build a place that was impervious to His hand.
God recognized this at their motive when he “came down to
see the city and the tower” (v. 5). He commented that the people (like Enoch’s
people but obviously with a different goal) were “one” and that now, because
they had built this tower, they assumed that “nothing will be restrained from
them, which they have imagined to do” (v. 6). In other words, they thought they
had successfully placed themselves out of God’s reach so that His consequences
for their intended sins could not touch them. This, of course, is impossible
with an all-powerful God in a plan designed on the very principle that we
utilize our agency to the blessing or detriment to our soul.
Contrast all this with
the Savior’s words, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto
the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). There is a way to heaven; there is a way to
reach, not the potential of our mortal abilities but the potential of the
divine within us. As Enoch commanded his people, “teach it unto your children, that
all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of
God, for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence; for, in the
language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only
Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge, who shall
come in the meridian of time” (Moses 6:57).
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