There’s a lot of money to be made teaching people foreign languages; we’ve got Babel to thank for that.
In our last study, we saw the United Nations of the post-flood world. We read, “The whole earth had one language and one speech” (Gen 11:1). The people seemed at first to have no communication problem. But they really did, because they had left God out of the conversation! This sounds like the first big mistake, when Adam and Eve believed the serpent who said, “You will be like God.” But humans make pathetic gods—Nero, Hitler, Stalin, Mao. You know the list, and it isn’t pretty. That list will conclude with a final ruler at Babylon, nicknamed “the Beast.” Then the Lord will once more say, “Come, let Us go down” for the last great battle, and those who have given their loyalty to this man-beast and his pseudo-empire will watch its destruction too, and cry, “‘Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour your judgment has come’” (Rev 18:10). The builders here worked with substitutes: “They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt [or slime] for mortar” (v 3). Shockingly, the Lord’s assessment of the project was as follows: “This is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them” (v 6). So He turned their Bab-el (The Gate to God) into Babble (meaning Confusion)—in Hebrew, both words are spelled BBL. Their brains were reprogrammed so they now spoke different languages. Thus He fragmented their knowledge and forced them to scatter. In our day, the computer has allowed the reversal of Babel. Is there anything modern research can’t discover? The program that translates one language to another for you, no surprise, is called BabelFish! Is the time now getting close when God will speak from heaven and say, “Gentlemen, it’s closing time”?