[11]

V Indicates Scripture or other reference inserted at the end of this chapter.

 

Chapter 11          A tale of two tower-builders:
     Babel and America.

And they said, “Come, let us build us a city and a tower,            whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name,       lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
                                        Genesis 11:4a 

In the Bible, towers were often used as symbols of strength; and the people of the Bible would choose which tower they would place their trust in. The Lord Himself was sometimes described as a “tower,” and Godly people placed their trust in Him and Him alone. The other towers were symbols of satanic power, and rebels against God placed their trust in them. All of those Biblical towers are still around today, in one symbolic form or another. And to this day, people still reveal to the world – by the towers they choose to place their faith and trust in – whether they worship God or the devil[02].

King David was a man who loved God and trusted in the strength of God, no matter how many “Goliaths” came against him during his lifetime. Here is one of the many Scriptures in which David sings of his deep love for, and his unflinching faith in, the living God:

I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler (shield), and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

Psalm 18:1-3

David calls his God “my high tower” because the Lord is far higher, far mightier, and far more glorious than any tower ever built by man and dedicated to the devil.

The best-known satanic tower in the Bible is the infamous tower of Babel, which was described in Genesis 11:1-9a: 

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Come, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And the Lord said, Behold, the people are one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel.               

“Shinar” was in the land of Babylon, now called Iraq. Men built a city there because they wanted to set up a society where they could be independent of God. The “tower that reached to heaven” was their religious center; it was intended to wield spiritual authority over the people of the city, even if they “spread out over the face of the whole earth.” God destroyed their rebellious little empire by confusing their language – and that’s how false religions have been destroyed ever since. Religious leaders still bicker and fight to get their own way; they still set up their own little sects when they don’t get their way; and the next thing you know, the whole “tower” is collapsed and the people are left with nothing to worship but a lot of “religious rubble.” As the Word of God assures us in Psalm 127:1, “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

America built two towers at the World Trade Center which symbolized the “American brand” of rebellion against God. In the prophecy that this book is based on, God reveals what America’s “national sins” were (and, for many Americans, still are):

1: Worshiping our institutions of higher learning (the city of Babel); and
          2: Worshiping our institutions of religious tradition (the tower of Babel).  

Genesis 11:1-9 tells us how and why God destroyed the tower of Babel. To see why the World Trade Center towers were doomed to fall, and to understand what America should do now that they have fallen, let’s look at the parts of God’s prophecy that relate directly to those towers:   

I permitted the disciples of Satan to destroy the two towers of the World Trade Center – to command your attention, and to open the eyes of your understanding.

 

Hundreds of years ago, I sent a special blessing from heaven for people who had a personal relationship with My Son Jesus, and who wanted freedom to worship Me. I gave them a land called America. I blessed America because she opened her doors to My people whom I called out from the entire world. I gave America, through France, the Statue of Liberty – which was My invitation to come to America to worship MeV1. That was the invitation I extended to the world: to serve Me, and to worship Me, in a land where they could do that without loss of freedom. That is why I blessed this land so incredibly: because, for more than three centuries since the day My servants signed the Mayflower Compact, which dedicated this land to My glory and to the advancement of the Christian faithV2, America has given the peoples of the entire world the freedom to worship Me.

 

But then you started to worship blessings instead of Me. You started worshiping your institutions – your institutions of higher learning, and your institutions of religious tradition. Then people from all over the world flowed into America to study your institutions, and to be associated with your institutions ... not to worship Me. Your institutions were symbolized by two great towers you built in the greatest of your cities, overlooking the Statue of Liberty. Those two towers represented your worship of the institutions that you created.

 

My prophet Isaiah prophesied, in Isaiah 30:25, that those towers would fall with a great loss of life. And now the people who worshiped your institutions of high technology and higher education, corporate wealth and religious tradition, are wondering, “What happened to America? Where is our security? What shall we believe in? What shall we do now?”

Now that the twin towers have been destroyed – now that the American brand of rebellion has been exposed – what are you going to do?  

In the prophecy that God gave to America regarding the fall of the towers, He told all of us exactly what He wants us to do: repent.

In chapter 8 of this book, we explained that repent means: (1) to agree with God that you have been doing the wrong thing; and (2) ask God to help you do the right thing[08]. In chapter 8, we focused on the first act of repentance that all of us must make – we must repent of the sin of not placing our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. After that, we must live a lifestyle of repentance. As we repent of every sin that God points out in our lives, we remain free from the power of sin here on earth.

By allowing the disciples of Satan to destroy our twin towers, God has very emphatically “pointed out” America’s twin sins of worshiping our educational and religious institutions instead of worshiping Him. To understand how we “slipped into” these sins,  let’s examine ourselves as a nation. Let’s take a good, hard, honest look at the facts of recent American history.

How America “slipped into” the sin of worshiping our institutions of higher learning.

For centuries, God blessed America above all the nations of our time. He kept our shores safe from foreign invasion. He gave us freedom to worship Him in Spirit and in Truth. He gave us the financial wealth to send out thousands of missionaries, who carried the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the world. He brought America through the “Great” Depression. He gave us victory over some of the most satanic mass-murderers of history: Adolf Hitler; Josef Stalin; and the Japanese war-lords. He gave us a strong and thriving economy, which allowed all Americans to employ the gifts that He had given them. And, on top of all that, God gave America the greatest blessing any nation could ask for in this world: children! There were so many American children born in the years right after World War Two, we still call them the “baby-boom generation.”

America’s baby-boomers were the richest, most spoiled, most selfish, and most ungrateful generation in history. While their parents worked and saved to give them “everything we never had,” they had nothing but scorn and disdain for their parents’ values. They mocked the God who blessed them. They murdered millions of babies by abortion – for their own convenience! – and said it was their “right” as free Americans. They thought their security was on Wall Street. They thought humanity’s future was in high technology. They thought of “culture” in terms of clever gadgets that let them exchange information, talk on the phone, listen to loud music, and watch TV. And all of this is what they proudly called – “progress.”

Many psychologists explained all this away by calling it “normal teenage rebellion.” It was rebellion, all right – but on a Hitlerian/Stalinist scale. It was spread throughout America by the same tactics used by the Nazis and Communists in Europe – constant classroom indoctrination by liberal university professors; plus constant media messages (propaganda) by liberal “experts” who said America was responsible for all the problems of the rest of the world. Social “experts” told us we were wrong to enjoy the blessings God had given us. Child psychologists like Benjamin Spock told us the Bible was wrong to encourage parents to discipline their childrenV3. Worst of all, as the liberals tore America’s moral fabric to shreds, most Americans just sat back and let it happen. For some reason, the men and women who worked to build this country, and fought to defeat the totalitarian regimes that threatened our freedom, accepted the idea that those university-trained liberals were “the experts.” But looking back, we can see that all their “expertise” adds up to the same thing that Satan told Adam and Eve: “If it feels good, do it!”

How could all this happen in our great universities, which were originally established to teach the eternal Truths of God, and to teach social and scientific courses based on those Truths? How could our Godly educational system degenerate to the point of, “If it feels good to your flesh, looks good to the world, and doesn’t get you in trouble with the devil, do it!” The answer to that question is long and complicated, but it can be summed up in one word: Hegel.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was a German philosopher who made a major impact on the European and American universities of his day, and greatly influenced “the father of Communism,” Karl Marx. Hegel taught that there was no such thing as absolute truth, in the Bible or anywhere else. However, said Hegel, any “reasonable” person could find the “reasonable” truth on any subject, through a process of “thesis/antithesis/synthesis.” Simply take one point of view on the subject (the “thesis”), put it up against the exact opposite point of view (the “anti-thesis”), and you will arrive at a reasonable compromise point (the “synthesis”). For instance, if Dick said 2 + 2 = 4, and Jane said 2 + 2 = 6, Hegel’s “reasonable synthesis” would be: 2 + 2 = 5!

Common sense tells us that two plus two do not equal five. Common sense goes on to tell us that Hegel’s “reasoning” cannot be applied to Mathematics, Medicine, Engineering, or any other profession based upon provable facts. That was no problem for the Hegelian philosophers. As they moved into more and more universities, they stuck to the “argumentative” fields of education such as Sociology, History, Political Science ... and Religion – fields in which two plus two can add up to four, six, or any other number that a “reasonable” professor wants to make of them. 

For instance, a Hegelian philosopher might say that the eighth commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” is just “God’s thesis” or “God’s opinion.” The “anti-thesis”might be a worldly opinion, such as, “It’s OK to steal, as long as you don’t get caught.” The philosopher’s “synthesis” might be something along the lines of, “It’s OK to steal from rich people and big corporations, but not from nice, honest people like yourself.”

That line of “reasoning” is enough to make “nice and honest” people question the absolute Truth of God – Thou shalt not steal! – which is exactly what the Hegelian philosophers wanted it to do. Because, once they had the Truth of God out of the way, it was easy for them to justify the outrageous lies of international communism (“The end justifies the means!”) and the traitorous lies of the U.S. educational establishment (“American capitalism and Soviet communism are ‘moral equivalents’ in the world-wide marketplace of ideas!”).

For nearly half a century, this type of “intellectual expertise” ruled the minds of America’s educational, social, political, and business decision-makers. There was no right or wrong. There was no good or evil. There was only Hegel and his disciples ... until “9/11,” when God permitted the disciples of Satan to destroy those symbols of America’s institution-worship: the World Trade Center towers.

That commanded America’s attention. That was enough to open the eyes of millions of  Americans who had been fooled by the “experts” for so long. Suddenly the American people were shocked free to see what our founding fathers saw so clearly. There is evil. There are people who do wrong in the eyes of a perfect God. God did bless America in the past; and He might bless us again in the future ... if....

If we repent.

If we will turn from our institution-worship, and place our faith and trust in the God who created us and still loves us.

If we have the courage to act upon God’s promise of 2^nd Chronicles 7:14:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble them-selves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin,

and will heal their land.

The World Trade Centers were struck down. But if America still insists on worshiping the institutions those towers symbolized, God will strike those institutions down just as violently and just as decisively as He struck the towers themselves.

America now has a decision to make, as a nation. But what will you, as a free American, do while our nation faces this decision? Will you sit back with Hegel and say, “Maybe all this is only half as bad as it looks.” Or will you agree with God that America’s institution-worship is rotten to the core, humble yourself in prayer, and wait in faith for the Lord God Almighty to heal our land!

How America slipped into the sin of worshiping our institutions of religious tradition.

Our nation was established by Christians, who loved God with all their hearts, and who yearned to be free from the state-supported religious traditions that kept so many people in Europe from worshiping their God in Spirit and in Truth. The heart-cry of these Christians can be heard in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (Article One of our Bill of Rights), which says,

Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The clear intent of the First Amendment was to protect individual Americans from anyone – organized churches, political leaders, or atheist activists – who tried to come between them and their God. It never occurred to America’s Founding Fathers that the Government of a free people needed to be, or should be, protected from religion. In a free society, it was to be expected that Christians would bring their personal principles into their public life – just as any other group of Americans would do. That is why our Bill of Rights so clearly says, “Congress shall pass no law ... prohibiting the free exercise [of religion].”

Under Article 1, Section 8[18] of the U.S. Constitution, it is Congress – not the President, and certainly not the courts – that has the sole and exclusive power to “pass laws”V4. Under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Congress must never pass any law that would prohibit any American from exercising his or her spiritual beliefs – even in the halls of government, even in the U.S. Armed Forces, even in the public schools! Those Constitutional provisions served the American people very well for nearly two hundred years. More than that, those provisions served and honored God’s original purpose for America. As the Lord says in His prophecy:

That was the invitation I extended to the world: to serve Me, and to worship Me, in a land where they could do that without loss of freedom.

Satan and his disciples weren’t one bit happy with that kind of America! Soon after World War Two, liberal activists began calling for a “separation of church and state.” They said this was the “original intent” of the U.S. Constitution! The activists twisted the clear language of the First Amendment to make it sound as if the U.S. Government had been under attack by the Christians in 1776, and the Founding Fathers needed a “wall of separation” to keep protect America’s public institutions from this threatening God. 

The American people didn’t buy that lie. Neither did Congressmen and women who were elected by the American people to pass the laws that govern this nation. How did the liberals get away with twisting the U.S. Constitution so far out of shape that “separation of church and state” actually became the law of the land? They went to the people who agreed with them: politically-appointed judges, who were trained in the thesis/antithesis/synthesis educational system, and who did not have to answer to the American people in any way for anything they did.

For years, liberal lawyers marched into our courts – especially the U.S. Supreme Court – and filed lawsuits against school districts that allowed students to pray to God on school property. They filed suits against government agencies that made public-policy decisions based on the Word of God. They kept at it for years, until they wore America down, and our “public sector” became almost as godless as the Soviet Empire was under Stalin. Today, there are many liberal lawyers in America who will defend the Ku Klux Klan’s right to hold a racist rally on the front steps of an American courthouse – but if any Christian high-school student dares to pray to God at a football game, they’ll drag the coach and the principal and every Christian parent in the school district into that same courthouse for the crime of “violating the separation between church and state!”

The church could have fought back when the liberal activists first began to chop away at the American way of life ... but it didn’t. Bible-believing Christians could have written millions of letters to their Senators and Representatives, demanding that they pass laws that would guarantee our freedom to worship God when and where we chose ... but they didn’t. Instead, the American church chose to relax its own standards so it could “fit in” with the rest of society.

Year after year, one Christian denomination after another fell away from the Godly ways that had made it a bastion of righteousness for generations.

Year after year, more and more churches found themselves with nothing to hold on to – except their man-made religious traditions (which didn’t upset the liberals one bit!).

Year after year, personal holiness was ignored by more and more American pastors – in their sermons; in their counseling; in their own lives.

Year after year, habits and lifestyles that the Bible clearly calls “abominations before the Lord” became “acceptable alternatives” in the American churchV5.

Year after year, God’s Word became “just another opinion” in more and more American pulpits. Millions of American Christians had been brought up on the uncompromising words that Jesus spoke in John 14:6, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.”  But, as their own pastors began to compromise the pure Word of God, even those Christians began to say, “Maybe there are other ways that are just as good as ours. After all, those people believe in their ideas as much as I believe in Jesus. And, after all, this is a free country....”

Decade after decade, this spiritual compromise wore the church down. Today, the level of personal morality in the American church is no different than it is in any other segment of society. Today, the divorce rate is higher inside the church than outside. Today, many American churches are little more than entertainment centers for grown-ups and baby-sitting services for children.

Today, millions of Christian parents have turned their spiritual teaching responsibilities over to one of these churches. They dump their kids at the Sunday School door, head for the mall and a “good morning’s shopping,” and blithely assume “the church” will teach their kids the Word of God. Praise the Lord, some churches still do. But all too many American pastors and Sunday School leaders just teach our children what they learn from psychology books, the opinions of TV stars, or worse. And then those mall-hopping parents are shocked when their children come home from church and tune in to the same pornography, sadism, sexually-explicit ads, and satanic orgies that the rest of the world watches on TV and over the Internet!

After two full generations of spiritual decay, America looked a lot like the satanic city on the plain of Shinar, and the American church looked hopelessly like the tower of Babel. But then, on “9/11,” the towers fell – and millions of Americans who had been comfortably worshiping their Babylonian religious institutions began to cry out, “God bless America!”

“God, do something for us!”

Will He?

He wants to. With all His heart He wants to – because God is love. But will He? Or – to put the question in terms of God’s righteousness – can He?

He can not – unless we repent.

God can not help us – in fact, He can only go on in His work of spiritual reformation, He can only bring us as far down as those terrorists brought the twin towers – if we dare to keep on worshiping our institutions that glorify His (and our!) enemy.

On the other hand, God cannot help but bless America – if we will run from our spiritually dead towers, flee to His forgiving arms and say, just as King David said,

I will love thee, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower. I will call upon the Lord, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

We all worship at some spiritual “tower.” We have no choice in that matter – God created all of humanity to worship some thing – or some One. Like it or not, worship we must, and worship we shall[01]. The only question that you, as a human being who was blessed by God with a free will, must face today is:

Will you worship at the same kind of institutional towers that God declared dead on the plain of Shinar?  

Or will you worship, in Spirit and in Truth, at the High Tower which is the living God!

 V1  The inscription at the base of the Statue of Liberty

 

Send me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the helpless, tempest-tossed to me.

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

                                 Emma Lazarus

 

V2  The Mayflower Compact (signed on November 11, 1620).

 

IN The Name of God, Amen.

            We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the Grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furthering of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.