Gen: 11 – Seeking Unity in Fellow Man – Part 2

There are interesting parallels that can be drawn of the people from Nimrod’s time and the people of today.  Men – cities and countries of men – are largely godless and continually strive to make a name for themselves.  A modern-era example in America would be the NASA space program.  The primary purpose of the government space program may be scientific, yes; but consider the great propulsion of national pride behind it.  The desire to ‘make a name for ourselves’ as evidenced by the space race.  Another example may be the current trend of places like Dubai and their extreme expenditure of wealth, largely for pleasure-oriented things.

And as for solidarity, on the level of the country we speak of things like the missle shield for protection, whereas at the planet-level we dream of a future asteroid shield to save us from a life-ending threat.  You could view this as our fear of being ‘scattered’.  And as we live in a day and age where almost the entire world is interconnected and globalized, even among warring nations there remains a general concern for the overall safety and survival of humankind from global extinction and even large scale catastrophes.  We are willing to band together, and have a strong desire to do so in times of crisis or perceived crisis. This trait of humanity itself is not bad or sinful; it merely shows the face of fear in the people, and counter to that, their hope and determination that they can and will overcome whatever the threat is.

The problem with this behavior during Nimrod’s time was that God had promised the man Noah, and his children just two generations ago, after the flood, that He would not flood the earth or destroy every living thing again.  God also acknowledged the inherent wicked tendencies of mankind, and still purposed not to destroy us.  He even blessed Noah and his children.  And so rather than live in the comfort of those promises of God, the people of Nimrod’s time showed by their actions that they either did not know God or they did not trust God and instead saw Him as an enemy in some way.  This is much like the people of today, thousands of years later.  Many do not know God, and many who believe in him choose not to worship him over our human-based emotional concerns, not realizing that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways our not our ways (Isaiah 55:8).

It is intriguing to me how the opinion of antiquity was that Nimrod incited the people to war against God, seeking revenge for the flood (though it is not strongly alluded to in the text.)  Even if they did not believe that Jesus was the Christ, the sages of old could not deny the parallels of their understanding with what ultimately plays out at the end, which had the same general cause behind it: The people being incited against God:

“When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war; the number of them is like the sand of the seashore. And they came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them.” (Rev. 20:7-9)