Discourse Continued
It doesn’t take man but a quick second to turn his heart and mind to and upon himself. Come let us make a name for ourselves. My name should be the highest name in all of heaven and earth. Walls, towers, fortresses, rocks, and bucklers indicates for man fortitude which is simply an attitude of invincibility. A walled city with a tower makes man think that he has escaped the world’s dangers. Who needs God when we have built our towers and are surrounded by our fortresses? Who needs God when our walls can’t be penetrated? His fortified city makes him even to think that he has escaped Me.
Jericho was a walled city. Jericho thought it was invincible. Jericho thought it was safe from man and God. In 7 days, the walls tumbled. All it took was a march, some music, and a shout to cause a thought to be fortified city to crumble; a strategic maneuver that would have never entered the mind of man. Jericho did not expect defeat. Their analysis of the marching multitude didn’t show the type of weaponry that it would have taken to damage the gates and the walls of the city. There were no battering rams, no heavy artillery, no chariots with horses. Their thought to be victorious was based upon what they could see. Their defeat was in Who they could not see.
The world today rests in its securities, its walls, its advanced technologies, which can tumble and crumble in an instant and leave the world stunted. The world today trusts in its weaponry and its highly nuclear advances. The world today trusts in the names it has built for itself, America…the Great. Babylon thought it was great as well. Nothing that man has invented, implemented, nor accomplished is fortified. He that has an ear to hear…Let him hear.”
So….the building of the tower of babel brought on the very thing that the multitude did not want. They did not want to be scattered. The building of the tower showed that the multitude had become confused in their thinking, which led to rebellion. Wrongful thinking leads to rebellion. The changing of their language which is another strategic maneuver, erupted such confusion that the multitude had to scatter. They had to separate, they had to obey the instructions of going out and populate the world. Judgement at this time was to save man from himself and to still preserve faith in the earth.
The world today has built and is still building towers of Babel; towers that lead to confusion and scattering. The towers are jobs, churches, relationships, worldly pleasures, sexual immoralities, fame, fortune, lust, and greed, and of course…pride. Of course, one would not expect churches to be included in the list of Babel towers, but church has made the list. I define a Babel Tower as any erected thing or person which or who consumes you to where there is no place for Me nor the lifestyle and works that are required by me. A Babel Tower is anything erected that severs fellowship with me and sometimes severs the relationship with me. Satan’s pride severed our relationship. His sin transformed our union. I really need the readers to understand this. Your towers of babel can sever and transform our fellowship. Your towers of babel can destroy a perfect union. Through Jesus Christ believers and I have a perfect union. Despite present imperfections please know that the believer and I have a perfect union because of your REDEEMER, HIGH PRIEST and MEDIATOR. Yet there can be some powerful towers built in the lives of believers that can destroy the union. Let me paint a scenario that will give clarity.
“Jesus” Gabriel calls as he enters the office of the Savior. Jesus looks up at the beautiful angel to let him know that he has his attention. “How can I help you, Gabriel?” the Savior asks. “Your Father has summoned you to an audience with him, Most Holy One.” Gabriel replied. A broad smile appears on the face of Jesus. He loved his time with his Father. Jesus rose quickly from his desk. “Right away” Jesus replies as he steps from behind the desk. He greets the angel with a kiss on both cheeks and the two turn and begin their walk to the throne room. Upon entrance of the throne room both Jesus and Gabriel bow low before the Father with neither of them being in a rush to rise because as they bow great abundance of love fills them as they reverenced the Great I Am. In fact, it is the Father who releases them both so that he can address the purpose of the summon. Gabriel is dismissed as Jesus mounts the steps to sit on the throne with and next to his father. He plants a kiss upon the Father’s forehead and seats himself on the throne next to the Father. Jesus looks intently at his father thinking within himself that this could be the time that he is released to retrieve his bride from the earth. “
“Son” the Father begins; “it has been quite some time since you have come referencing this list of people” The Father said to Jesus showing him the list. “It has been quite some time since I have heard from any of them. What has happened?” the Father asks. Jesus takes the list and looks at it very intently as sadness fills his heart and tears fills his eyes. He adjusts Himself on the throne and begins to call off the names on the list and gives the reasons why the persons have not communed with the Father. ” A we blessed with the high paying job, and he is all about self and money. We, the Holy Spirit and I are tugging, calling and unctioning. A doesn’t seem to want us anymore. B has received the deceptions that all of her accomplishment has been obtained through her very own efforts, so she has said that she doesn’t need us, nor does she want us. C finally got the wife that he’d been long asking for. She has all of his time now. He doesn’t want to be bothered with us anymore. Pastor D was able to build the largest church in the state having the most members in the state and he doesn’t take time for us anymore. His time is spent maintaining his status in the state and adding more and more people to the building. E became angry that his walk with us hasn’t yielded material wealth and has said that the world offers more than we ever can. His exact words were “Screw you Jesus and all of the heavenly host.” A scout has taken an interest in F’s awesome basketball talents so he has run off to follow what being drafted can mean. G has found love she says with a girlfriend from high school, and she is now following that path and doesn’t want to hear anything from us about it so she has turned away. She says she doesn’t want my prayers or my way of life.” H was elected President. He says he doesn’t need us. He says that he is God because he willed the position to be. The list that Jesus holds is lengthy, yet he continues with name after name after name and reason after reason after reason. The Babel Tower has reached the sky.
Let’s go down to Nineveh and travel backwards. Nineveh was a great city, and its wickedness was as great as its greatness. Nineveh was the capital of the well dreaded Assyria. Assyria at this time in biblical history was the world’s cruelest enemy. Assyria was well despised and for good reason. Let us record some of the history that was found referencing Nineveh.
The military rulers, as in many other nations, could be a brutal breed. They ruled their empire and subdued nations with absolute terror.
I destroyed, I demolished, I burned. I took their warriors prisoner and impaled them on stakes before their cities, flayed the nobles, as many as had rebelled, and spread their skins out on the piles [of dead corpses] many of the captives I burned in a fire. Many I took alive; from some I cut off their hands to the write, from other I cut off their noses, ears and fingers; I put out the eyes of many of the soldiers.” (Timeframe 1500-600 BC by Time-Life Books) Assyrian War Bulletin (1000 B.C.).
I slew two hundred and sixty fighting men; I cut off their heads and made pyramids thereof. I slew one of every two. I built a wall before the great gates of the city; I flayed the chief men of the rebels, and I covered the wall with their skins. Some of them were enclosed alive in the bricks of the wall, some of them were crucified on stakes along the wall. I caused a great multitude of them to be flayed in my presence and I covered the wall with their skins. I gathered together the heads in the form of crowns, and their pierced bodies in the form of garlands.”
“I felled 50 of their fighting men with the sword, burnt 200 captives from them, and defeated in a battle on the plain 332 troops. … With their blood I dyed the mountain red like red wool, and the rest of them the ravines and torrents of the mountain swallowed. I carried off captives and possessions from them. I cut off the heads of their fighters and built there with a tower before their city. I burnt their adolescent boys and girls.”
“I cut their throats like lambs. I cut off their precious lives as one cuts a string. Like the many waters of a storm, I made the contents of their gullets and entrails run down upon the wide earth. My prancing steeds harnessed for my riding, plunged into the streams of their blood as into a river. The wheels of my war chariot, which brings low the wicked and the evil, were bespattered with blood and filth. With the bodies of their warriors, I filled the plain, like grass. Their testicles I cut off and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers.”
Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons. Another son, Esarhaddon, became his successor. Esarhaddon treated his enemies just as his father and grandfather had treated theirs: “Like a fish I caught him up out of the sea and cut off his head,” he said of the king of Sidon; “Their blood, like a broken dam, I caused to flow down the mountain gullies”; and “I hung the heads of Sanduarri king of the cities of Kundi and Sizu and Abdi-milkutti [king of Sidon on the shoulders of their nobles and with singing and music
I paraded through the public square of Nineveh.
Ashurbanipal, Esarhaddon’s son, boasted: “Their dismembered bodies I fed to the dogs, swine, wolves, and eagles, to the birds of heaven and the fish in the deep…. What was left of the feast of the dogs and swine, of their members which blocked the streets and filled the squares, I ordered them to remove from Babylon, Kutha and Sippar, and to cast them upon heaps.”
When Ashurbanipal did not kill his captives, he “pierced the lips and took them to Assyria as a spectacle for the people of my land.”
NINEVEH
First mentioned in Gen. 10:11, which is rendered in the Revised Version, “He i.e., Nimrod went forth into Assyria and built Nineveh.” It is not again noticed till the days of Jonah, when it is described (Jonah 3:3; 4:11) as a great and populous city, the flourishing capital of the Assyrian empire (2 Kings 19:36; Isa. 37:37). The book of the prophet Nahum is almost exclusively taken up with prophetic denunciations against this city. Its ruin and utter desolation are foretold (Nah.1:14; 3:19, etc.). Zephaniah also (2:13-15) predicts its destruction along with the fall of the empire of which it was the capital. From this time there is no mention of it in Scripture till it is named in gospel history (Matt. 12:41; Luke 11:32). This “exceeding great city” lay on the eastern or left bank of the river Tigris, along which it stretched for some 30 miles, having an average breadth of 10 miles or more from the river back toward the eastern hills. This whole extensive space is now one immense area of ruins. Occupying a central position on the great highway between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, thus uniting the East and the West, wealth flowed into it from many sources, so that it became the greatest of all ancient cities. About B.C. 633 the Assyrian empire began to show signs of weakness, and Nineveh was attacked by the Medes, who subsequently, about B.C. 625, being joined by the Babylonians and Susianians, again attacked it, when it fell, and was razed to the ground. The Assyrian empire then came to an end, the Medes and Babylonians dividing its provinces between them. “After having ruled for more than six hundred years with hideous tyranny and violence, from the Caucasus and the Caspian to the Persian Gulf, and from beyond the Tigris to Asia Minor and Egypt, it vanished like a dream” (Nah. 2:6-11). Its end was strange, sudden, tragic. It was God’s doing, his judgement on Assyria’s pride (Isa. 10:5-19).
The prophet Nahum describes Nineveh as a city of bloodshed. The city exercised ruthless military tactics. Historians gives depictions of Nineveh that are not recorded in the bible yet are very much accurate. Nineveh being as prosperous as she was, was also the very epitome of evil. Historians have recorded the violations of the gender boundaries as did Sodom. Nineveh was very prideful. Nineveh was also the center for the worship of Ishtar whom they believed was the fertility goddess.
The Assyrians created the greatest empire of their time, taking on all comers with ferocity. There were many points at which their conquests became part of the biblical story. One of the most prominent was Manasseh of Judah, who appears to have picked the wrong side by backing rebels against Ashurbanipal. According to the Bible he had led his people into idolatry, for which there was bound to be retribution. His reward was capture by Ashurbanipal, who in characteristic fashion put a hook through his nose and dragged him away. It seems that the experience made Manasseh repent and abandon his polytheism.
2 Chronicles 33: 9-10-20 MSG (The Message Bible)
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