The Fate of All Towers of Babel
From The Chalcedon Foundation . . .
“At Babel, men resumed the task in process before the Flood. At Sodom and Gomorrah, Assyrian, Babylon, Rome, and in the modern states, men continue that task. The results are still the same, God’s destroying judgment on man’s Babylonian heart and works. The things which are, God subjects to His shaking, His destroying judgments, so that only those things which cannot be shaken may remain (Heb. 12:18-29).
Man’s attempt to unify man in his sin and revolt against God, and to take owner ownership and control over all possessions from their true owner, God, is smashed. All possessions are a trust from the Lord; the status of civil government is that of a minister (Rom. 13:4), i.e., a deacon or a steward, under God, and the same is true of all men.
This being the case, our work too is a stewardship and a trusteeship and is to be governed accordingly. When God created Adam, and set him in the Garden of Eden, He first commanded Adam to till or work the Garden, and to keep or guard it (Gen. 2:15). Only after that commandment to work is Adam told what he is permitted to eat (Gen. 2:16-17). Before the permission to eat of the fruits and produce came the necessity of being committed to work for the upkeep of the Garden. There were boundaries placed on Adam’s area, i.e., the limits of the Garden, on his diet, and on his activities or work, because the earth and Adam were alike God’s creation and hence totally subject to His law-word.
In Babel, this order was reversed. The city, its tower, and both work and possessions therein were the property of Babel. Stewardship and responsibility were to the state, and work also. In the modern state, we are totally circumscribed by man’s law, not God’s. The boundaries of our life and work, as well as the uses of our money, are regulated by the state. This is the nature of every Tower of Babel, past and present. The future of all Babels is described by the angel of Revelation 14:8, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.”
The church at its worst has never equalled the modern state in its tyranny. It is a mark of the self-willed blindness of our time that men profess to fear a return to Christian rule rather than the statist tyranny which prevails.”
~ R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 1035f
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