All Mine Series

[Play “Imagine” by John Lennon.]

Wow. Sounds like “Heaven on earth,” doesn’t it? “Nothing to kill or die for” … “No need for greed or hunger/A brotherhood of man” … “Imagine all the people/Living life in peace … Sharing all the world … And the world will live as one” (www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/johnlennon/ imagine.html#). It could be … depending on who’s in charge.

What John Lennon is attempting to describe in his song “Imagine” is world peace and world harmony … a world where there are “no countries.” In the kind of “globalism” or “universalism” that he describes, where there may be no countries but … humans being what humans are … there will no doubt be a ruler or a group of rulers, amen? History is filled with attempts by powerful countries and powerful leaders to create the kind of world that John Lennon dreamed about … including the Bible. Let’s take a brief look at how they turned out.

One such leader with dreams of global power and world domination would be “Nimrod.” According to Genesis 10:8, Nimrod was the son Cush, making him the great-grandson of Noah. Genesis 10:9, describes Nimrod as “a mighty hunter before the LORD.” When we hear that Nimrod was a “mighty hunter,” you probably picture someone that hunts and kills animals. A more accurate picture would be that of a great warrior who hunted and captured people and regions and united them under his control. The Bible says that his kingdom included “Babel, Erech, and Accad, all of them in the land of Shinar. From that land he went into Assyria and built Nineveh” (Genesis 10:10-11). The name “Nineveh” means “seat of government” (www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Nineveh.html) … which we would describe in today’s language as a “capital.” According to the Bible, Nimrod was “the first to become a mighty man” (1st Chronicles 1:10).

The thing about power is that it attracts people. According to the Bible, Nimrod’s “seat of government” attracted people to Shinar. As Shinar’s population and Nimrod’s power grew, an idea began to develop: What if we ruled the whole world? “And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:3-4).

That’s how it starts … with a need for protection, for self-preservation. The idea of building a city with a tower that reached to heavens was to make a name for itself … a name that sent a message, a name that commanded respect … even fear, perhaps … but definitely one that created an image or a sense of power … like Washington, DC, New York City, London, or Moscow.

Shinar’s power was its growing numbers and its technology. They had developed a technology for making bricks that were hard as stone and they could make a lot of them … instead of making walls of clay or having to carve them out of stone. Even today we have this desire to build towards heavens and are impressed by those who build them.

In the late 1920s, car mogul Walter Chrysler decided to build the world’s tallest building as a, quote, “monument to me” (Andrews, E. 10 Surprising Facts About the Empire State Building. www.history.com; August 27, 2018). Of course, the name of the building was … and still is … the “Chrysler Building” in New York City. General Motors executive John J. Raskob and former New York Governor Al Smith decided to build an even taller building … and the race for glory and prestige was on. When Chrysler found out that the Empire State Building was going to be a thousand feet tall, he added a stainless steel tower on top of his building to make it 1,048 feet tall. Not to be bested, Raskob and Smith added more floors. In the end, the Empire State Building won, reaching 1,250 feet. It remained the world’s tallest building for nearly 40 years … until that honor was taken by the first World Trade Center Tower in 1975 (Andrews, Ibid.).

Anyone know what or where the world’s tallest building is today? It’s the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai. Built in 2008, it is 2,217 feet tall and is listed as the “greatest engineering achievement” in the world (Cary, Z. Top 15 Tallest Buildings in the World. Earth & World, January 20, 2021).

The Tower of Babel was meant to be a symbol of Nimrod’s power … which reached to the heavens. The symbol was meant to impress, to intimidate, and to draw people to it since it could be seen from a great distance. The residents could look to their walls, to their great numbers, and to the great Tower of Babel and feel safe … “otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:9) … which is exactly what happened when God put a stop to what they were doing. The residents of Shinar and Nineveh had good reason to fear being broken up and scattered as it would leave them vulnerable to the same kind of power-hungry tribes and nations who, like them, had a desire to conquer and absorb their neighbors in attempt to do what Nimrod did … build a global empire.