The Tower of Babel - The End of the Beginning

Though the events recorded about the tower of Babel take up a scant 9 verses in the Bible (Gen 11.1-9) its effects are visible through the ages and are revealed not only in the languages we speak, and the physical differences among people groups; but the account also foreshadows the times at the end - and the "man of lawless"  foretold in scripture (2 Thess 2.3-4).  As we move inexorably further into the last days, the account of the events of Babel remind us not only of the lawless leader - the antichrist - to be revealed, but also of the heart of the people who refused to obey God, those making them easy targets of deception. It serves as a warning: will you be among those who believe and obey, or refuse to obey and believe, are deceived and suffer God's judgment? This discussion reveals us not only about the true meaning of the events at Babel, but serves as a reminder that God wants everyone to "repent and believe the good news." (Mark 1.15)

Transcript

Normally you start with a little anecdote, but I'm going to be going over a lot of stuff tonight. [Checking the screen] We're up there, good. So I'm going to skip the anecdotes and jokes and then I'm going to hop right in.

We'll start with a quick review of the account of the Tower of Babel. Some say Bay-bel. I have a reason, it  makes more sense to call it Bab-bel, we'll get to that. So after the flood,  we have the account of the flood, Genesis six through eight,
and after he comes off, God gives Noah and his family the promise of the rainbow. He's not going to flood the earth again.

And he gives them a command, go forth and fill the earth.
Right after that, shortly after, the people go down from Mount Ararat and they find a plane in Shinar. Shinar is a place that has a flat land and they decide they don't want to build or they don't want to be dispersed. They want to stay there and build a name for themselves, create a name for themselves.

So they decide that they're going to build a city and a tower to create a name for themselves, a tower that's going to reach into the heavens. God sees what they're doing, goes down and says, "Well, you know, if they continue this, they're going to be encouraged and I don't want to do that." So he stops it by changing their languages and they're dispersed over all the land. So that's a summary of what we're looking at.
 

And as we go through this, as we complete this, we're going to see that the first 11 chapters of Genesis is a foreshadowing of all the major historical biblical events from Adam and Eve in the garden to the Tower Babel. You guys may recognize this.
Anybody been to Ken Ham's Answers Creation Museum or Arc Encounter? So this is, I think the top is from the museum.
The second one is from the Ark. Great place. If you haven't been there, highly recommended.

But anyway, Genesis 1 through 11 foreshadows the major events of the Gospel and the World History and we'll see that the events at the Tower Babel are the end cap for this foreshadowing of events that we see in Genesis 1 through 11.
So as we go through, I'm going to make some points. I'm going to point out signposts and endpoints.

So the sign points are going to be represented with this symbol over here. And this is something that's going to foreshadow something at the end or something to come. So it's happening in the past in the days of Noah or at the beginning and it's going to foreshadow a time at the end.

And then I'm going to point out when we see a completion of something or something that's an established fact, I'm going to mark it with this truth flag. Something that we know to be true, something that's happened, something that's verifiable.
So I'll be pointing those out as we go along. So there is our truth flag and what we're going to see as we go through the results from the Tower Babel, I'll give you a little  foreshadowing myself.

We're going to see the origin of distinct languages, the origin of distinct people groups and genetic traits, the origin of distinct nations, the origin of the city of rebellion, which is given a famous or perhaps I should say infamous name.
We'll do that.

But let's start with the depiction. All right, so you may see a depiction like that on our website. We had a picture like this.
It was by Pieter Brugal back in 1563. A lot of people have depicted it as a round tower spiraling up. Most scholars, archaeologists believe it was not something round, but it was what is called a ziggurat, ziggurat, which is basically a stepped pyramid.  If you want to build something strong, something sturdy, something that you can build high, something that's easy to build, what you're going to build is a ziggurat because it's very sturdy, very big foundational base.

And you'll see that these ziggurats are marked by these steps in front because they typically put a temple tower at the top. So the steps so you can get to the top, unlike the pyramids, they have no steps. The ziggurats typically have a step. And this is the one that's in southern Iraq. Saddam Hussein tried to restore that one.

But we're going to start with who some people believe built the tower. We're going to look and see if that belief is correct.
So if we look at the first century historian, Josephus, Jewish, he was charged by the Romans to give account of the Jewish nation because the Jews were kind of a thorn in their side
and they wanted to understand them. So Josephus writes this massive tome, actually writes two. And he talks about the antiquities of the Jews and he has an account of the Tower Babel.

And he identifies Nimrod as the builder of the city and the tower. If you look at some modern commentators, this is David Rohl. He's an Egyptologist. He's done a lot of work in this area and other areas concerning Egypt. He also thinks that Nimrod is the builder of the tower. So what we're going to look at tonight is, is that a correct view? Is Nimrod the builder?
 

And this is a commonly depicted tower here. This is Etemenanki in Babylon. Some scholars will say this was the original tower Babel. We're going to look at that. Is this it?
We're going to take a look at that. So let's start with an example, examination of Nimrod.

Who is Nimrod? So scripture tells us that Cush was the father of Nimrod who grew to be a mighty warrior on the earth.
He was the mighty hunter before the Lord. That's why it said like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before the Lord. Then it talks about the first kingdoms being in Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh in Shinar. And then it goes on to talk about where he went and built.

So on the right here, you see I give you a little genealogy. So starting with Noah, you see that Nimrod is a descendant of Noah. You see the flood here was 2349 BC. So that's just to put it in context. But what I want to point out most importantly is this name - that he is listed as a mighty hunter. So let's look at this enigmatic Nimrod.

So who is he? Can we identify him? If you look at the scholarly book, it's called the BDB, the Brown Driver Briggs. It's a lexicon of the Hebrew language used for looking up the words in the Old Testament. They identify his name as a Babylonian, God or King. Egyptologist David Rohl, who I previously  mentioned, thinks he is Enmerkar in this Sumerian myth called Enmerkar and  the Lord of Aratta. We're going to come back to that.

Doug Petrovich, now you may have seen him. Have any of you seen Is Genesis History? Very good documentary on establishing the truth of Genesis. He was in it. He believes that Nimrod is Sargon the first of Akkad and he says he can make that case "with absolute certainty."

We have the late archaeologist David P. Livingston who identified him as Gilgamesh as the Gilgamesh and the epic of Gilgamesh, the Gilgamesh epic. And then we have a number of commentators who say, well, what's more important is the meaning of the name. They say the name means "to rebel" or "we will rebel". You see that, for instance, in the Moody Bible commentary. If you have an NIV study Bible, they say the same thing.

So let's look at some of the clues that we have and see if we can identify who this Nimrod is or even if it's worth identifying.
So first of all, as I said, he is called a mighty man. It's listed three times the word in Hebrew is "gibbor". It says he's a mighty hunter. The question is what did he hunt? Was it animals or as a hunter was it men? Was he more a warrior type hunter or was it both?

We're told he had a kingdom so thus he was a king with centers of his kingdom in Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh all in Shinar. And then he went and built Nineveh, Rehoboth Ir, Calah and Resen, which is between the two.

So if we summarize what we know, first and foremost is that he was a mighty man. And here are some of the mighty men that you see in scripture.  Gideon was called a mighty man.
Same word, gibbor, Goliath. That gives you an idea. You know how big Goliath is? He is listed as a mighty man. Saul and Jonathan, David, King David, as well as David's elite guard.
You know, David had this guard of three men who were his personal guards. They were all listed as mighty men.

And then he's listed as a hunter. Now interestingly, the hunter motif is used in the ancient days for a king. A king is often depicted as killing a lion as you see in these two reliefs. These are both reliefs of kings killing a lion. And in fact, we even have that motif with David, right? Before he goes to slay Goliath, he's trying to convince Saul that he should let him do
it. David tells Saul, "I have killed both the lion and the bear."
So we even have this killing the lion motif in the Bible.

So killing a lion is often used for kings to show their might and their power. And we have this of Nimrod. He ruled over kingdoms. Josephus says he was a tyrant king. Now Josephus, I don't know where - he does this embellishment. I don't know if he has extra [biblical] data, but he says that Nimrod was mad at God and he wanted to make sure he was mad because God flooded the earth. And he wanted to make sure that if God ever decided to flood the earth again, though he promised not to, if he ever decided to do that again, he had a place to flee to. He was going to make this tower tall enough so the floodwaters couldn't reach him.

So that, according to Josephus, is Nimrod's plan. One of the reasons why he wanted to build it. The Living Bible translates "gibbor" as king. So once again, we're back to that king motif.
Now David Rohl, that Egyptologist, believing that he also is a king, believes he should find him in what is called the Sumerian king list. That's what you see depicted over here.
The Sumerians kept a list of their kings.

Now they've got these huge - overlong times for the reign and they put their reigns in the thousands of years. So obviously that's not correct, but they believe that the listing of the kings is correct. So Rohl thinks he should be able to see Nimrod if he's a real king and the Sumerians kept a list of all the kings, he thinks he should find them there. So he comes up with this intriguing suggestion concerning the name.

So what he finds is this Enmerkar. Kar is actually appended to the name Enmer means hunter. So now he makes this comparison. We have Enmer the hunter and Nimrod the hunter. They both have hunter at the end of the name. But he's got a problem.

So the original Hebrew did not include vowels. So he suggests if they're just looking at the consonants, Enmer would be this top. But the name is Nimrod. So he has this extra D he has to contend with. So what does he say? Well commentators suggest that it was added to make the account about rebellion. Rohl notes that well there are a bunch of puns in the Old Testament. And so using a pun to make it about rebellion.

It's actually true. There are a number of puns in the Old Testament. In fact we're going to look at a number of them just so you can see that it really is the case. And Roll suggested the D was added to turn Enmer and to Nimrod. So he thinks that Enmer and that pagan story is Nimrod. But his suggestion about puns doesn't work. And one of the reasons it doesn't work, there are a number of reasons, but one of the reasons is if you look at how puns work it doesn't really work as a pun.

So how do puns work? Puns work generally because they refer to real words that people are familiar with. So this past summer I had to renew the license plate on one of my cars.
And I got the notice in the mail and this is what it said.
"Oh, Cell no!" So every adult here knows what this pun is playing on. He's made a word play there.

We went to see Hoover Dam this past summer.
This is the entrance, the signs that you see this is an overhead view. And they made a number of puns on the name Hoover Dam. So and they were all on the word dam. If - when we took the tour - so we took the tour and the tour guide said, "Do you know the picture policy here at Hoover Dam? You can take all the 'dam' pictures you want." That was their joke. And when you get to the souvenir shop they've got all these "dam" mugs.

So you see they're playing on words that everybody knows everybody would instantly recognize. That's how puns work.
You would recognize the words because the real words.
The problem with Rohl's suggestion is that Nimrod is not a common word. It's very uncommon. When you look at the BDB - and we looked at before - this is Nimrod and you
can see the meaning is "wholly unknown." And in fact it's probably a Babylonian name which cast doubt that it refers to rebellion. If it's some Babylonian god or some king, it's not referring to rebellion.

So his pun idea does not work. And there are other problems.
Another one, so if you start with what he started with, he started with the consonants NMR. So I looked up what is NMR in Hebrew? Well it turns out NMR, the 'Namer' is a leopard which is very interesting because you'll see that in the Bible the leopard is associated with the antichrist. I'm going to come back to this. Very interesting association.

So the word for rebellion is marad. And so you would have marad which is here, NMR or MRD in Nimrod. But since he starts with Enmer, he needs to add the D whereas if he had started with something else, he would need to add the N.

Point being that when you look at this, his suggestion doesn't work. And his problem is since he doesn't believe that the Bible is inspired, he gets things backwards. He believes it starts with some pagan account instead of what God gave to in this account, in this case Moses. He believes that the Hebrews drew from the Sumerians because he believes that the Sumerians is an older culture when actually the account came from God. God gave it to Moses, Moses brought it down. So he's got it backwards. But since like many secular commentators, he doesn't believe in the inspiration of the Scripture, he doesn't believe in the validity of the Scriptures, he gets a number of things wrong. And I'll point out a few more as we go on.

So we're going to go look and see if we can identify this tower and we want to do it based on historical truths. And we want to do it to make sure when we're looking at these historical truths, they have to be within the historical timeframe. So here's some dates that we're very certain of. If you start with creation, that was about 4000 BC. This is going by Bishop Ussher's chronology. Some of you may have heard Bishop Ussher. He did a chronology based - starting at Genesis, going through the genealogies and all the accounts. And he came up with a data of 4004. Some people question it. I looked at it somewhat closely. I think there were a few errors around the time of the Exodus, but when you're talking about the original date, I would say that's pretty accurate.

We're confident of the date of the flood. That was about 2349 BC. Date of the Exodus, 1446, very confident of that date based on 1 Kings 6:1. It gives us a clue. The destruction of Jerusalem, very confident. We know when that happened, when Nebuchadnezzar came in and destroyed Jerusalem, 586-587 BC. And we know the birth of Jesus. We're in what? 2025? So some 2025 years ago. This is off by a few years because of some errors they made. You can ask me about them later. But his date was probably, his birth was actually probably around 5 or 6 BC. But, you know, 5 years, is minuscule compared to the thousands of years other people think it's off.

So as we look, we want to compare things to this time frame and make sure that they're falling within the right time frame because if they don't fall within the right time frame, something's wrong. They have to be consistent with the Word of God because we know that all scriptures God breathes, 2 Timothy 3.16. So we want to make sure it agrees with what scripture says. And we don't want to reject supernatural events because they're supernatural.

So there are a lot of scholars who would say, well, that can't happen because it's supernatural. But we believe in a supernatural God. We're not going to throw out something just because it's supernatural like a lot of archaeologists and Egyptologists do. Okay. So now this is our foundation for our investigation of both Nimrod and the Tower. These are the things that we're going to look for.

So accordingly, the first thing we can reject is the Rohl's  suggestion because since he doesn't feel that the scriptures are inspired, he feels to believe, he feels free to say that the whole account is copied from a pagan source. Well, I don't believe it was copied from a pagan source. And he suggests that the hero's name, the pagan hero's name was used and changed to
make it a story about rebellion.

And so he misses the entire point of the account. Not only does he miss the entire point of the account, which I'll get to, but he misses when the account was written. So since he doesn't believe in the chronology of the Bible and he doesn't believe it came from God, he says, well, when would the Hebrews have seen this? Well, they probably would have seen it when they got carried off into captivity by Nebuchadnezzar. Well, what was that? Well, that was 586, 587 BC. So he moves the whole account from slightly after the flood to the date of the captivity. So that is entirely wrong.

Plus, he misses the entire supernatural event of the changing of the languages. So he believes that it's just some misinterpretation by the Hebrews. They didn't understand what was going on, so they just made it up. So he just rejects, like other secularists, he just rejects the whole thing. So we don't want to do that. So let's get back to our question.

Who is Nimrod? Well, I'm going to suggest that more important than who he is, is what he represents. God didn't give us a whole lot of clues about who he is. So if Petrovich is right, he's Sargon I. But I don't think that's what's important. I think it's what he represents as a symbol that's important. So his significance is that of being a foreshadow of something to come.

So what does he do? He was a builder of-- was he the builder of the city and of the tower? And are there reasons to believe that he wasn't the builder of the city and the tower? So let's look at the record. And in passing, if you were, again, at the Arkin counter, this is their depiction. This is Ham and his wife.

They call her Kazia. I believe that they picked up that name from extra-biblical texts. So, but what I find interesting is Ham is generally considered the father of dark-skinned people,
but they depict him as basically the same shade as his brothers. He's not dark-skinned. The dark-skinned genes, according to the AIG, came from his wife. Well, we're going to look at that, too, when we get to that. So I just thought I'd point that out so when we come to it. And if Ham is indeed the progenitor of dark-skinned people, then Nimrod was probably dark-skinned as well.

I think that makes sense in terms of who his father is. So let's look at Nimrod's sign as a signpost of future events. So we know he was a mighty man. Mighty men are kings and warriors. His name was Nimrod. Some suggest it is reminiscent of rebellion. I would suggest that it's more reminiscent of the leopard. 'Namer', I believe, is closer to Nimrod than 'Marad'. So one way or another, this is a guy who's against God. He uses his strength and power as a weapon to hunt and conquer. He became a king in Babylon and these other cities. And then he left Shinar and went to Assyria and built some other cities.

So he became a king in Babylon. So how did that happen? Did he just stroll in and they say, "Make me a king." Did they just vote him in as a king? Or as a mighty man did he go in and conquer? So let's map out his exploits. So here is Shinar. There's Babylon, Erech, Akkad, Ur and Nippur, which some believe is Calneh. There's some question - and all of these are in Shinar. And the Bible says this was the beginning of his kingdom.

Then it says he went and he built Nineveh, Calah and Resin, which is between the two. So that's where he went and built. So if he started in those lower cities and he built the others, then it looks like he became a king in cities that were already existing. So the Bible says he went and built these cities up here. It's very specific. He went and built Nineveh, Calah and Resin. He didn't build any of these cities. So if he didn't build any of these cities and this is the area, Shinar is where the tower is and the city, then it looks like he wasn't the builder of that city.

He went and built cities in Assyria, but not where Babel was. So it appears that the initial cities where he became a king were already existing. So the city where Babel would have been already existed, which means he didn't build it. And if he wasn't the builder of the city and perhaps not the tower, what is his significance? Well, I would say he is a signpost on a lawless one. Why? Because what are we given? Genesis 10:10. He is a mighty man, as revealed, who begins to conquer. And what do we see? At the end times, we see a powerful man, who is revealed, who goes out to conquer. Revelation 6:2.

He's a mighty man wielding power who conquers and rules. And at the end of time, we see both from Daniel and from Revelation, this little horn, he's called a powerful man wielding power who rules with authority. Very much like what Nimrod did. So I see him as signpost, a foreshadowing of the lawless one, as the Apostle Paul calls him, of the one to come, mentioned in Second Thessalonians and in Revelation 13.

Particularly when you consider Namer, the name is a symbol, the leopard is a symbol of the Antichrist. John records "the beast I saw resemble a leopard." [Rev 13.2] So if you're going to make a pun, I think that's closer to Namer than to Marad. So let's go on to the tower.

There are lots of questions about the tower. So the first question that they ask, right, was the tower was built in the land of Shinar? So did Shinar exist? And of course, we have scholars on both sides of the issue. And I'll play you a clip from both, from one who supports it and one who doesn't. So here's one who doesn't.

 [Video] "No knowledgeable person believes the account of the Tower of Babel as historical fact, or that all the races and language of the earth sprang from this one little area in Mesopotamia."
[Dr. Rocco A. Errico, Professor of Aramaic Studies]

So there's the con side,  the pro side - Did it exist?

 [Video] "The biblical story of Babel is completely consistent with all of the evidence. Anyone who denies this fact is simply engaging in fantasy or speculation." [Dr. John Oller, Jr. Professor of Linguistics]

So as I said, you can find scholars on either side. You probably find a scholar for whatever you want to believe. But what you should do is do the research. Look at the evidence, which is what we're going to do. We're going to look at the evidence tonight. So what kind of evidence?

Well, we're going to look at hard evidence such as the writings from the ancient cultures. We're going to look at bricks that have writings on them found at the location. And some of these bricks have names on them. One of those names being Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon.

[Video] "So Jeff, as you know, there is many bricks have a stamp in the Ishtar gate. And the stamp belongs to King Nebuchadnezzar. And now I will show you what they wrote. 'Dinger Nakudu Uri Ussar,' it's meaning Nebuchadnezzar. 'Lugal Kadin Geraki,' it's meaning King of Babylon."

So we have these bricks with Nebuchadnezzar's name on it. And these bricks were used to build the Ishtar Gate. This is a recreation of the Ishtar Gate, which was the entrance to Babylon. So that's one type of evidence we'll use. We have another example. So from Nippur in Iraq, there's the name of a kingdom, which is Ur, and the king's name is Ur-Nammu.

[Video] "Abbas recognizes the inscriptions. It's cuneiform, an ancient system of block writing, first developed in this area around 5,000 years ago. It is the oldest written language ever discovered. He reads the ancient script.
'Urdinger Namu, Lugal Urimki,' it's talking about the King Ur-Nammu, the founder of the Ur three dynasty, King of the land, King of Sumer and Akkad, King of Ur, the meaning is very
clear. Ur-Nammu.'" [Abbas Al-Husseini-Archaeologist]

So I pointed this one out because of course Ur is another city mentioned in the Bible. That's where Abraham is from. And being in the Bible, of course, you had scholars who had to say, "Well, Ur never existed." Therefore Abraham didn't exist. So now they came up with these bricks and now they have to backtrack and say, "Yeah, I guess it did exist because we've got these bricks, not only with the name of the city, but the name of the King of the city."

So similarly, we have tablets that mention Shinar. Critics doubt it that Shinar existed, but now we have these tablets:

[Video] "For centuries, skeptics challenged the Bible's accuracy on the Tower of Babel because they believed the land of Shinar as referred to in the Bible had never existed. To understand this point better, we asked Professor David C. Duel, an expert in Old Testament studies, to explain.
'Scholars and students of the Bible questioned the location, even the existence, of the land of Shinar. They knew that Babylon existed from eyewitness ancient historians such as Herodotus and Strabo, who claimed to have seen the great city. But they had no proof, apart from the Bible, that the area around Babylon was ever called the land of Shinar. Then in the early part of the last century, archaeologists brought forth thousands of cuneiform tablets, like this one.
On such tablets from Egypt, Syria, and the Hittite and Hurrian kingdoms was the name Shinar in various pronunciations.'" [David C. Duel, Professor of Old Testament]

So once again, the Bible was proved correct. There was a land called Shinar, and they've got thousands of tablets with the name inscribed on it. So the answer to question one, did Shinar exist? Yes, it did. How, what about the next question?

Well, did Babel exist? So once again, we have to be careful about this, and we want to make sure the evidence is pointing to what we think it is. Is it pointing to the right place? Is it pointing to the right time period? Because we looked at these bricks from Nebuchadnezzar with Nebuchadnezzar's name on it. Are they in the right place? Perhaps not. We'll have to investigate that. Are they in the right time period? Well, definitely not.

So, when we look at our time period, Nebuchadnezzar was there, 586, and the Tower of Babel is way back here. That's over a thousand years difference. So if you're trying to use those bricks to prove the Tower of Babel, you're off by over a millennium. So no, you can't use those bricks.
But did the city exist? Well, to answer that, we have to understand the relationship between Babel and Babylon.

There are some who believe that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, built the Tower of Babel. Well, why would they believe that? Well, we've seen already that it's impossible because of the time period, but why would they think that? They would think that because you have to look at the word "Babel." And before we look at the word "Babel," we've got some dynamics involved. So let me explain.

So this is a Hebrew word. [עמּנוְּ אֵל] Unless you study Hebrew, you probably don't recognize it, but as soon as I give you the meaning and say the word, you're going to recognize it instantaneously. So the translation is "God with us." The word we usually use is "Immanuel." So one, this [God with us] is the translation. This [Immanuel] is a transliteration. In other words, they just took the Hebrew characters and put them in the characters that we understand.

What difference does that make? Well, it makes a big difference. So let me give you a couple examples. So you take the same phrase, "Immanuel" that's it transliterated. Translated it's "God with us." And you look at Isaiah 8.8.

"And the stretching out of his wings shall fill the breath of thy land, O Immanuel." Here they transliterated it. They didn't translate it.

You go down two verses, and in 8.10 it says, "And it shall not stand for God is with us." They didn't say, "And it shall not stand for Immanuel," because what does that mean? What it means is, "It shall not stand for God is with us." So now, that's a wordplay, actually, right? You see, he's playing on God's name.

And so, [the] first thing you see that it makes a difference whether you translate it or you transliterate it, and the context, [matters] right? The context for 8.10 demands that you translate it and not transliterate it. So that's going to be important. I'll give you one more.

This is another Hebrew word. [צְבָאוֺת]This is "zava'ot." It's a phrase used 245 times in the Old Testament. So you probably think that's important, right? If they use it that many times, 245 times. The transliteration is "zava'ot." And that's not "sabbath," right? This is the word "sabbath." [שַׁבָּת]It's not "zava'ot." It's "shabbat," they would say. The translation is "hosts," and we find this word in James 5.4, while it's a transliteration.

So in the King James, you read "the Lord of Sabaoth." And I always wondered, what in the world is that? Because it's not the Lord of the Sabbath. That Lord of the Sabbath would be "shabbat." Lord of the Shabbat. What it means is the Lord of Hosts, or as the NIV translates it, the Lord Almighty. So it's a reference to God, and it's referencing Him in all His glory.

But if you translate that, transliterate the word and just transliterate it, "sabahoth," you have no idea what that means, because it's not "sabbath." It's not a word in English. So once again, you have to understand the difference between whether they're translating or transliterating. Okay?

So then, one more thing before we get to our look at Babylon. I mentioned that there are a lot of puns in the Old Testament. Puns are used to emphasize a meaning in the text. So Rohl was correct when he pointed that out. So we look at the name "Adam." He was so named because he was taken from the "adamah," the ground. Adam, "adama," you see the pun there? So I was watching this YouTube video that was trying to say that Adam wasn't taken from the ground. I'm like, "Well, why is he named Adam?" Which is based on ground. It's based on the... He's basically named dirt. And he's basically named dirt. So why God name him that if he's not taken from the ground?

Then we have "Eve," "Chava," so named because she would become the mother of the "Chay," "Chay," living. It's that symbol that they often wear, the "Chay" symbol. That's "Chava."

How about man and woman? "Ish" and "Issha," like in Hebrew, like in English, woman is based on man. Hebrew is the same way. "Issha" came from "Ish," right? God took a rib and created woman. So you have "Issha" from "Ish." Once again, the words are emphasizing the point of the text.

How about Cain? So named - which is "Qayin," so named because Eve "Qanah" or acquired him, brought him forth. There's another point we'll make on this later. She has an interesting belief on this, I believe.

And then we can look at Moses, "Moshe," so named because Pharaoh's daughter "Mashah," him from the water. So "Moshe," "Masha," you see there's another word play there.
So there are all these word plays in the Old Testament that are used to re-emphasize the text.

All right, now that we understand that, let's take a look at the word "Babel." So this [בָבֶל] is the word "Babel" in the Hebrew. The first thing that we're going to note is that it's been transliterated. It has not been translated. So when you translate the word "Babel," the word is "babylon." And now you understand why some people believe that Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, could have built the Tower of Babel because when you translate the word, it is "Babylon."

So that would make sense to some people. We've already seen he's in the wrong period. So it can't be. This is where he lived. [586 BC] And this is where the Tower of Babel is [Shortly after the flood which was 2349 BC]. So that's one reason he can't be the builder. We have some other reasons which I'll get to. But while we're on Babel, I want to point out the word play that is used on the name "babel."

So the scripture says that is why it is called "Babel" because there the Lord confused the language. And since they transliterated the word, well, they had a choice. You can transliterate it or you can translate it.

If you transliterate it, you keep a word play because we have this word "babble," which means incoherent speech, which is kind of what was going on. So we get that idea, but you miss the meaning of the word, which is "Babylon." In Hebrew, when you read it, the city was called
"BaBeL" because there God
"BaLaL" ed the language.

You see that? "Babel," "Balel," very close, the word play. It's only different by one letter. And the point is God is trying to get you to remember that at "Babel," he "Balel"ed - confused - the language. So by transliterating the word, you sacrifice the meaning. Right? You miss that, what God confused was "Babylon," not this "Babel" that we don't understand.

What is the significance? Well, if you look at Benedict Arnold, you have an immediate association with that name, don't you? What do you think about when you see that name? "Traitor," right? How about Judas Iscariot? Same thing, "traitor." How about Satan? You have a connotation with that name? Right? "Evil, fallen angel."

So names have connotations that bring things immediately to mind. And I would suggest that the same thing should happen when you think of the Tower of Babel. God was trying to get you to think, when you hear "Babel" or "Babylon," you should think of 'the sinful city of confusion'. He made the word play, "babel," "balel." That's what he wants you to remember.

There's a word play for a reason, as we saw in the other cases. So Babylon is a sinful city of confusion. Which brings us to our second sign post. That's what Babylon is. It's a foreshadowing of a system of rebellion that we're going to see in the future in scripture, particularly at the time at the end. It figures prominently in the book of Revelation. I'll point it out later.

But to answer the question, "Did Babel exist?" yes, it's actually the city of Babylon. We know where Babylon is. So did the Tower of Babel exist? Well, let's look at that.

So as I was saying, some believe Etemenanki is the tower. Let's start by trying to identify the location. So I thought we should look at what the Bible listed as the first of Nimrod's  City. That makes sense, where he would build the tower. And Scripture tells us the first of the cities were Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh, all in Shinar.

So if that was the first city, and this is where he began, it would make sense. At least it seemed to make sense to me that this is where they would build it. So what are going to be our criteria? So I identify 12 things we could use to identify the site of the tower, but we don't need to go through all 12. We actually only need to go through seven of them, seven key ones.

So is it in the right time period, which was just after the flood? It's a city in Shinar, within that region of Shinar, in Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers. They were a people living in peace with one language, so they were not at war with one another. It was a city existing with one name, and the name was changed to Babylon. That's what God did. They had plans to build a bigger tower. The language was changed instantaneously, so they spoke many languages when the building stopped, and the building of the new city and tower was abandoned without force, without violence.

So these are going to be the clues that we're going to use to identify where the original tower was. So one of the first they list is Babylon, and the name is Babylon. So a lot of people think that the tower of Babylon is in Babylon. Makes sense, right? So in Babylon, we have this tower, which I pointed out, Etemenanki. This is what's left of what they believe to be the remains of that tower. This tower was destroyed. Some people believe it was destroyed by Alexander the Great when he came and did his conquering, but it's not there anymore. But there are problems with it being in Babylon.

First of all, Babylon was conquered many times. There's a list of all the people that conquered the nation of Babylon. So they were not a people living in peace. There was evidence, as I said, that the tower was built by Nebuchadnezzar. Here's a tablet that shows, this is how they got this depiction of Etemenanki, because they have this "Ste-la" [stele] as they call it, and on, it has this seven-tiered tower with the inscription "Etemenanki, Ziggurat of Babylon," and identifies Nebuchadnezzar as the builder.

This is why, this stone is another reason why a lot of people believe that Nebuchadnezzar built the Tower of Babylon. They've got this stone. But as I pointed out, he's in the wrong time period. He cannot have built it. There are other disqualifications. [James] Fuller notes, he's a historian, he notes that by the time Nebuchadnezzar started his building, in order to have the manpower to do it, he imported people from all nations everywhere, people who were speaking different languages. So if he's importing people from all over the nations, then the dispersion event that happened after Babel has already happened.

And it changed the languages. If they're speaking different languages, that's also already happened. So he cannot have been the builder of the original tower, because all the events that we're looking for have already happened. So this Tower of Babel, that some people say is the Tower of Babel, that's not the Tower of Babel. That's a Tower of Babel, it was built by Nebuchadnezzar. Many years later, possibly destroyed by Alexander, or maybe a number of other armies, because some say it's been built and rebuilt a number of times. Anyway, it doesn't exist now, and it's not the Tower of Babel. So we're going to move on.

Erech, also known as Uruk, part of the city known as Babylon, populated from 21[00BC] to 70[BC]. Problem was it wasn't abandoned in the time period after the floods. So if it was populated during all this time, the text tells us that they abandoned the city. The city [of Erech] was not abandoned. And it had a temple, but it didn't have a tall ziggurat, or a tall tower. So probably not that one.

How about Akkad? This is a mask that they believe is from Akkad, from the Akkadian Empire. But they've never really found the city, which kind of makes it hard, if you can't locate
the city, it's going to be hard to locate a tower within the city. Even so, it has problems. It was never called Babylon. And again, the Akkadians were one of the people who conquered Babylon, so they were not a people living in peace.

How about Calneh, which some people think is modern-day Nippur. Now that's uncertain, because depending on how you translate Calneh in the Hebrew, you could also translate it as "all of those together", meaning all the cities that were before, all together, and then it follows with in Shainar. So some scholars believe it's saying that this is where all the cities were located. Others take it as Nippur. I'll take it to be another city, Calneh as Nippur. And if that is the case, it did have a ziggurat. This is a depiction of it. And there was a temple mound there. This is a mound, and this structure here is a modern structure that archaeologists built so they could do their work. But once again, they weren't living in peace. So Nippur is in the middle of two warring factions, Babylon and Akkad, or in Ur. So Ur is down here, and here's Babylon. And it was right in here.

So this researcher, Jeff Allen, posits that it was built sort of as a United Nations to kind of keep peace between the warring city-states. So if that's the case, this is definitely not one people living in peace, as the text describes, if you need a United Nations to keep the peace. And there's no record it was ever called Babylon. So it's not Calneh. It's not Nippur.

Then you have Ur, where Abraham is from. They have this great ziggurat. It was built with big [baked] bricks, as the text says, with bitumen between - a type of tar. So that's all good. But Ur has a number of disqualifications too. So there are lots of signs of ritual sacrifice. The city was taken by violence and rebuilt a number of times, so they were not a people living in peace.
In fact:

 [Video] "George Heath White searches for clues on an ancient tablet that contains shocking details of how Ur falls.
Re-inscribing the ancient symbols helps him decode the poetic script. The painstaking process gradually reveals the true horror of the last days of Ur.
'So the text reads, "Urima, Gishtukal, Sahagin, Sangazi, Iake."
And that translates as, "In Ur, weapons smashed the heads like pottery."
The next line, "Izi, Imadan Gub."
Fire approached.'"

So clearly these were not people, one people living together in peace. They were conquered. The city was not just abandoned. They were conquered and taken over and people were killed.
It's not what it says about the tower and the city. So this is not the city either. It's not Ur.

So my conclusion here is that it's not one of those ten cities listed as one of Nimrod's first cities that he went and conquered. Can't be. They do not fit the description. So we'll have to expand our search here in more cities and we're not going to take the time to go through all of these today. I'm just going to point you to one in which I think it is, which is Eridu down there.

So does Eridu meet the seven criteria, which are, it has to be in the right time period, has to be located in the plain of Shinar. They have to be one people, one language living in peace, not warring. They weren't fighting with each other at the time. They had plans to build a big tower. The language was changed and along with that the name was changed to Babylon and the city was abandoned in peace. It wasn't conquered. It wasn't taken over. It wasn't big war. They just stopped building and left. That's what happened. So does it meet these criteria?

So let's look at the time period. Eridu. Described as the oldest city, in fact, one recorded claim is that it was divinely authorized, the first divinely authorized city. So if we go back to this, Samarian kings list. So they list Eridu as the first city to receive kingship from the gods. So this is pagan, so they believe they're gods. But the point is they believe it was the first one. After the flood, this is right after the flood, gods said here, go build a city and it's going to be Eridu and you're authorized to do that. It's the point.

So note that in this account, it's right after the flood and it's the first city. So that makes it very early, so it's in the right time period.

And it's located in Shinar. So there's Eridu in Shinar. This is Mesopotamia, the land between the two rivers. And there it is. They were living in peace. There's no record of any conquest being there. Didn't fall due to wars.

They had plans to build a tower. In fact, they had a tower and they had plans to build a bigger one. So there are ruins here of this first tower. Actually it was a series of towers that they kept building on here, the small one here. And then they had plans to build a bigger one. This one outlined in white here. But this new tower was never completed. So this is a different view.
This is the smaller tower, which was completed. And then they had plans to build this huge thing, huge tower. You see how many multiple times, much larger this tower would have been.
"Let us build a tower up to the heavens." This tower would have been able to go there. So they have plans, but it was never completed.

The language is recorded as having been changed. Interesting.
So here we have, once again, referring to Enmerkar and the Lord of Arata, this pagan myth. But the myth references the god Enki, who is called the Lord of Eridu, the city that
we're looking at. And this Lord of Eridu is said to have "changed the languages in their mouths."

Now they've got the wrong god, but they've got the right event. Where do you suppose that they got this idea that languages were changed in people's mouths? That's a very strange idea.
You don't see that happening very often. I would suggest that in the same way that you have ancient people seeing dinosaurs, that's why they can draw pictures. You have people who saw the event.

So I do my museum tours, and I point out that there are ancient people who've seen dinosaurs, for instance, here in Angkor Wat. So temple complex in Cambodia. They have pictures of animals on the temple. And if you do a close up, you will see this picture of a stegosaurus.
This temple is some 800 years old, how could they see a stegosaurus? It's not like they had paleontologists running around back then. How did they draw this picture of a stegosaurus?

Or you can look at this chateau in France. Chateau Des Chamboud, 16th century.  If you do a close up, they have a picture of a sauropod dinosaur. Where did they see a sauropod dinosaur in the 16th century? I would suggest to you that they saw these dinosaurs, and therefore they could draw them.

And in the same way, there are people in the history of Eridu who saw the change of the languages in people's tongues. Therefore they wrote about it. There was a change of the language in their tongues. I would suggest that there are people in their history that experienced it, and that's why they wrote about it on this tablet.

So we have the evidence that in Eridu, the language was changed. And while we're here, I want to emphasize this is a great miracle that secularists won't point out. But if you've seen The Ten Commandments, right, Cecil B. DeMille, this is a depiction of the parting of the Red Sea. Great movie. This is an AI depiction of them not being able to talk to each other after the language has been changed at Eridu. So they're kind of angry, right? They used to be able to talk, and now they're babbling, as we get from the Bible. They're babbling in each other, and so they're kind of angry. But don't miss that this is a huge miracle. I put it on par with the miracles of the Exodus. This is a huge thing. So just point that out.

The name was changed. Eridu was also called Babylon. But Petrovus points this out that the king of Babylon also called himself, the king of Eridu. And in the 18th century, King Hammurabi from the code that we're familiar with referred to himself as the king of Babylon. He was crowned in Eridu. And in fact, they had a religious quarter, Esagila, which was eventually moved to Babylon. But originally, it was at the site of Eridu, and then the name was changed to Babylon. So we have numerous references to the name of Eridu being changed.

And in fact, Josephus notes that in his account. When you read through his account of the Tower of Babel in his Antiquities of the Jews, he says, "The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon." So if it's now called Babylon, it used to be called something else. Unfortunately, he didn't tell us what that something else is. But Babylon used to be called something else. So the name definitely changed.

So people like Rohl and other secular scholars kind of missed this. They missed the fact that the name was changed because God changed the name. God did it so they can't acknowledge it, right? But God changed the name, and even Josephus acknowledges that.

And Eridu was abandoned. It was not conquered. This is a history of Eridu. And they note that Eridu appears to have been abandoned. And by the time that the Akkadians rose to power way back here, it was already abandoned. By the time Babylon started being conquered all these times, Eridu had already been abandoned, just like the scripture says.

So we have all this evidence that points to the city that the original tower of Babel was in Eridu, and the name Eridu was changed to Babylon by who? By God. God called its name Babylon because there he "balal"ed, confused the language. And here we have a picture. This picture is by Doug Petrovich from Is Genesis history?. This is his depiction.

And this is Rohl's picture in his book, Legends. And you'll note that these are basically mirror images. If I were to flip this, this would look essentially like this. So this is essentially the synoptic gospel problem. You know, in the synoptic gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke - you have passages that are essentially the same. And so scholars wondered, why are these passages the same? Is somebody copying from somebody? Probably. You know, if you go to school and you turn in a paper that's like somebody else's paper, what is the teacher going to say?
You copied this, right? That's what they're going to tell you. Same problem with these texts.

So you have Matthew and Luke writing the same thing. So either Matthew copied from Luke or Luke copied from Matthew. Most people think Mark was first. So most of them think people copied from Mark. And sometimes you see Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have the same text. The question is who copied from who? Either A copied from B, B copied from [A] C, or A and B copied from C. Some third party.

That's what I think happened here. I think they both took somebody's depiction and used it in their own works. I don't think this is original with either one of them. It's probably somebody else's, but that's just my speculation.

So anyway, did the Tower of Babel exist? Yes. It existed and it was in Eridu.  Was it completed?

So was the Tower completed? Well, we can't tell from the ruins. So this is the ruins that's left in Eridu. So you can't tell, I mean, as there was a mound there, you can't tell if that was a
Tower or not. So we'll look at the scriptures. If you look at the Hebrew, they use the word for build. It's banu. It's imperfect in Hebrew, which indicates action in process. So if you look at scriptures who translate from the Hebrew, you have the translation that" "the Tower that the men were building." So present tense, they were building the Tower.

You can also look at the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Masoretic text. It's called the Septuagint. And they have the word 'ōikodomēsan, which is an aorist, which indicates completed action, which means it would already be done. So then you have translations like the ESV, which say, "the Tower which the children of the men had built". So some would say the Tower the men were building, others would say the Tower the men had built.

So we won't be able to determine directly from scripture since we have conflicting accounts. So which is correct? Context determines meaning. A primary rule in understanding scripture. So what does scripture tell us? "The LORD scattered them from all over the earth and they stopped building the city." Interestingly he doesn't mention the Tower. It just says he met - they stopped building the city. Why is that?

I would suggest it's because it's not mentioned because there was one Tower that was already completed, that smaller Tower in the corner. They had plans to build a bigger Tower, but that was never completed. And so yes, there was a Tower and then they had another Tower that they had made the foundation on, but it was never completed. [So it was not mentioned to avoid confusion.]

Could the Tower reach into the heavens? So to understand this, we have to understand the ancient worldview of the heavens. They had three heavens. So the first heavens was the sky. So when you look at the creation account, day one, two, three, four, and five, so on, day two, God separated the waters, right? He started off with water. The first day he separated the light from the darkness. Second day he separated the waters below from the waters above. And what did he call that was in between?

In between he called the raqiya - an expanse, which King James unfortunately translates as "firmament," as if it's something hard. It's not something hard because the raqiya is where the birds fly that you read in Genesis 1:20. The birds are flying in the "expanse", which God called "heavens." So this "expanse" here with the waters above, which is not the picture, that expanse is called "heavens." So the heavens is where the birds fly. So this is what I have depicted here. You see the Tower of Statue of Liberty here. The birds are flying, and essentially what they would consider the heavens.

Second heavens is the stars - outer space. Third heavens is the abode of God, where God dwells, where Paul was taken up. "I know a man who went to the third heavens." [2 Cor 12.2]
That's the abode of God. So could the Tower reach the heavens? Interestingly, God does not deny that they could build a tower that could reach the heavens. What does he say?
"The Lord said, 'If as one people speak in the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.'" He doesn't say, "Ah, don't worry about it. They're not going to be able to build a tower into heavens. They can't reach me."

He says, "Nothing will be impossible for them." None of their plans." And what were their plans? Their plans were rebellion. That's why he objected to what they were doing. So none of the rebellious plans will be impossible for them. So that's why he stopped them. But he doesn't deny they could build a tower into the heavens. Why is that? Heavens is where the birds fly.

This is an AI picture of birds flying around the tower. This is Etemenanki with the tower reaching into the clouds. So they couldn't reach the third heaven of God, but they could reach the heavens where the birds fly. Just to emphasize that, again, in my museum tours at the Field Museum, they have a depiction of the Mayan Temple. Another temple is the Tikal Temple four, the tallest Mayan building. And you can see this temple towers over the trees. The birds fly in the trees, sometimes above it, but this tower is clearly over the trees. This is another one of the buildings in the Mayan complex at Tikal. So clearly they could build buildings over trees which would be into the heavens.

So could they build a tower that reaches the heavens? If you understand their worldview that where the birds fly is the heavens - then yes, they could do that.

So what could we learn from this? What were the effects? Well, of course, one of the key effects was a changing of the tongues, of the language, in their in their mouths. It's clearly a work of God. Here's another signpost, a foreshadowing of God's use of tongues in the future.

So where do we see it again? So in Babel, he uses tongues to disperse people. Book of Acts, chapter two, coming of the spirit, they speak in tongues. God uses tongues to bring them back together. It's like a reverse of the Babel event. Now we hear each other speaking in our own tongues [Acts 2.11] and that brought them together. So the first command that God gave Genesis 9, be fruitful and fill the earth, right? Go. And they said, no, we're going to stay right here, which is why he dispersed languages, He dispersed people using languages.
Then they were there for the Passover [should be: Day of Pentacost] and he wanted to bring them together. And now he uses tongues to bring them together.

So the confusion of the language has led to dispersion of the people. So starting there in the Middle East, they went throughout the whole earth and this caused God's command to be fulfilled. He told them in Genesis 9:1, be fruitful and increase the number reiterating the command he gave to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter one. [Gen 1.28] So God made his will be done.

This is in contrast to the out of Africa secular theory. So since I do museum tours, I like to see other museums that we were after we went to Hoover Dam we went to Las Vegas and I went to the Las Vegas Museum. And there they have this depiction of the out of Africa, what they call the out of Africa events. So that's the secular theory of the origins of humans. They call it "Out of Africa."

Most museums aren't as in your face as this Las Vegas museum is. I've never seen one that actually called it out of Africa. They have the same theory but they don't tell you that's what the theory is. This one actually tells you, yeah, we believe this out of Africa theory. So what is this out of Africa theory? So instead of being out of Shinar, they believe it was out of Africa, Northeast Africa, some 300,000 years ago with the initial population, about 10,000 people.

And it was out of Africa here instead of out of Shinar, which would be here. So those are two different events, two different evidences that we can actually test and see which one is true.
Were the effects of the Babel event what we see or were the effects Out of Africa what we see?

So what do we see from after the babble event? We see new people groups, new language groups, new genetic distributions with a decrease in the gene pool, diversity coupled with genetic entropy, which led to a decrease in the longevity of lives of people.

So starting with the dispersion, so you had the three sons of ham, Shem Ham and Japheth. They were dispersed throughout the Middle East. So there are where the brothers went. And what are the implications of this dispersal? So the men went to these various places here. The women followed the men.

That led to people groups with distinct languages and superficial distinctions and traits like skin color, eye shape, because they were now isolating gene pools all predicted from the babble event.

You also have a geographically distributed but locally concentrated Y chromosomes, right? So the men dispersed. The women followed the men. So the men went to these various places. The wives went with the husbands. This means that you have local variations of the Y gene because the men were going to various places, but you had women of all types going with these various men. So you have widely distributed Y chromosomes.

You started out at Babel. They believe there are originally 20 languages. There are approximately 7,000 now, but you wind up with about 20 languages. [Out of Babel.] And you can trace the actual gene pools that were distributed.

So on the Ark, the people who were, the eight people, Noah and his  wife, his three sons and their wives and we're told that the world was repopulated by the sons of Noah. So these six people, Genesis 10.32. So if you look at the gene distribution, you can count how many X and Y chromosomes, right? X and Y, male and female, double X for the women, X, Y for the men. You can count how many variations we should see. So these [small] X's [in the corner] represent duplicates, so we're not going to count them. So how many X's were used to repopulate the world? Well, you can count them.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. We would expect to see eight variants of X chromosomes if the Babel event is true. And how many Y chromosomes were there? Well, these are all duplicates. All Ys came from Adam, so Noah would have had Adam's. So we would be getting the same Y chromosome, so we would expect one variant of the Y. So what do we actually find?

So these are the two predictions. This is the out of Africa prediction. This is the biblical prediction. The biblical prediction is that it happened about 4,500 years ago with the Tower of Babel event. There were six reproducing couples. We counted. There were eight X chromosomes. There's only one Y chromosome, which is young, and mitochondria DNA, which exists outside the nucleus of the cell, inherited only from the mother. So it's not from the father. Mitochondria DNA is only from the mother. And there were three reproducing mothers.
So we would expect to see three different types of X chromosomes. So what do we see?

What does the data support? The data supports this biblical model. When you go do the genealogical work, as Dr. Robert Carter did, he talks about it in this DVD [Mitochondrial Eve and the 3 "Daughters" of Noah] if you want to see it. If you're looking at the evidence, this is what the evidence supports. So the evidence supports the biblical model of what happened after the Tower of Babylon, Tower of Babel, some would say. None of this [Out of Africa data] is supported. The secular theory is not supported.

Isolated people groups led to isolated gene groups with different expressions of traits. So here you see, if you start with middle brown parents, you can get all shades of people, right?
All different shades of melanin. They represent the genes by A and B, whether it's dominant or recessive. And based on whether you have all dominant or all recessive or a mixture, is where you get the skin shades. And you can tell that from middle brown parents, you can get basically all shades.

This is one couple with fraternal twins. You can see one is lighter and one is darker. This is one generation. One generation, you see these variations. This is the twins a little older. So it only takes one generation to get these shade changes, which is why I wondered, they felt like they had to depict Ham as light skinned when he is the father of dark skinned people. There's no reason, genetically speaking, why he couldn't be as dark as his wife. So that was their choice.
I don't know if they have extra-biblical data. I don't know what they made their choice on. All I'm saying is genetically speaking, Ham couldn't be as dark as his wife, Kezia.

We see a decrease in longevity. So it's not quite exponential. It's pretty close. So I asked Grok. Hey Grok, can you describe this curve as exponential? It doesn't look like it to me. What do you think? You say, well, loosely. Grok says you can loosely describe it. [That way] The point being is that there is a very steep decrease in the longevity of people after the event. And why is that?

Because these isolated gene pools led to a higher rate of genetic entropy, loss of genes. So summing it all up, we see that Genesis 1-11 foreshadows a number of key events in salvation history. This is our symbol for the foreshadow. This is the symbol of something that is completed.

So what we see foreshadowed, we see the first Adam right here in Adam. Answers in Genesis [picture] again. The fulfillment of that, of course, is the last Adam, Christ. That has been fulfilled.

We see a foreshadowing of the first wedding in Cana. [should be Genesis] And we know that coming up is the wedding supper of the Lamb. That's a future fulfillment that's coming, but it's been foreshadowed.

We see the foreshadowing of the first family in Adam and Eve. And we know that God is even now building his family of God for all who believe. "To all who believe, he gave rights to become children of God." John 1:12. So God is in that process right now.

So we had the birth of the Messiah. It's interesting, so when Eve makes this proclamation in Genesis 4:1, she says, "I have..." Well, your Bible translates it, "with the help of the Lord, I have gotten a man." Right? There's no "help of" in the original. What the text records Eve saying is, "I have gotten a man, the Lord." As if she believes from what God told her in Genesis 3, that from you the Messiah is going to come. It looks like she believes that she is born the Messiah. Of course, the Messiah isn't going to come for many years later. It looks like, based on the phrase, that your Bibles don't help  you understand, that she had the Messiah. But the Messiah comes later. That's been fulfilled.

Of course, we have the judgment on all wickedness with the flood. We know that's coming with the lake of fire. That's a [future]  fulfillment. Everybody wants to avoid that. You can avoid that by believing in the Messiah, Messiah Yeshua, Jesus the Christ.

We see a foreshadowing of filling the earth. After they get off the ark, they are told once again to fulfill the earth. Or fill the earth, and that's also in process, God making His family.

We see a foreshadowing of the lawless ruler, and I believe that's Nimrod's place. He is a foreshadow of the lawless one to come, which has been depicted in Revelation 13, Daniel chapter 7, called the lawless one and symbolized as a leopard or Namer, as in part of Nimrod's name. That's a future fulfillment.

We see a foreshadowing of the sinful city of Babylon. And in Revelation, it spends a lot of time talking about the judgment of Babylon, the sinful city, the fall of Babylon the great. And if you had understood, back in Genesis 11, that God basically said, "This is a rebellious city, and that's why I'm changing its name, because they are confused. They shouldn't be doing what they're doing." And that is a type of judgment. It was a light - considering the flood - it's a very light judgment. But the judgment to come is much heavier. That's a future fulfillment.

And then we see the rescue by the personal appearance of God. So they were going to build this city, make a great name for themselves, this tower that reaches up to heaven. Though God can see everything, he decides to personally go down, "come let us go down." [Gen 11.5] God personally goes down. Why? To save them from themselves. What did he say? If as one people speaking one language, they do this, nothing will be impossible for them. So all the rebellion they want to do will be possible. So God personally goes down.

And in the end times, we see Jesus personally comes, why? To rescue Israel and the rest of the world, but Israel from the clutches of the Antichrist, as the Antichrist has the whole world in his power and wants to destroy them. God personally comes, just as he personally came at Babel. That's a future fulfillment.

So we see the account of the Tower of Babel completes the foreshadowing of the types of the events that are in scripture. And after the Tower of Babel, what do you see? You see Abraham, the man of faith. And now from Abraham on, you see an expounding of the gospel of faith. Right?

Abraham is the man of faith. So we're no longer given a bunch of symbols of what's going to happen. Now we see how that faith works out throughout the rest of scripture. So the Tower of Babel ends a series of firsts. It starts with a picture of salvation and it ends with God coming down and saving the people. And then it goes on.

Genesis 12 begins the account of how faith works itself out.
So here we have two depictions. This is, once again, Petrovich's depiction of the Tower. And this is the Answers In Genesis, depiction of the Tower of Babel while it's being built. Either way, I see the Tower of Babel as the end of those beginning events that foreshadow everything that's to come.
Thank you.