Well, good morning. I'm glad you're willing to put up with some more pre-recorded messages. If you look behind me, you might recognize this. This is my trailer, and it harkens back to a message that I gave pre-recorded again about four years ago. In fact, it was in August of 2021.
I recorded a message from this trailer. That was I I won't say a spoof, but it was a um It was a take on the future. And by the way, in 2021, the future year that I was pointing to in that video that I was pretending that it was 2025, this year, right now. And that video caused quite a bit of stir, so much so that I decided I should probably never do a pre-recorded video like that again because you had to get to the very end of the video to understand that it was actually a spoof. I was actually speaking from four years in the future, surmising how things might become in terms of persecution for the Christian church.
In fact, if you've missed that, if you'd like to go back and take a look at it, I recorded it on August 15th of 2021. And if you go in our archives online at mscbc.org, you can find it. Just look for the date, August 15th of 2021.
Now, this series I'm starting today, I was thinking of doing in the same way, but I'm not going to. But I was tempted to because what we're going to look at over the next eight, perhaps nine Sundays, are issues that I believe will unfold in the future and actually in the very near future. future as it pertains to our beliefs. And uh and I just thought I'd be more straightforward and say this is what I'm thinking. Partially, too, is because I'm not exactly sure where we're going with this.
I've been praying that God would lead me through this. uh like I do in all the series that I peach on. But this particular one is uh Even at this point, as I'm recording this first one, I'm not exactly sure where this is going to go. And I'm not exactly sure what the total application of it is, but I have a sense in which there is a danger looming. And that's how I got here today.
I had originally planned from about six months ago to come up with a series that addresses the chief dangers to believers, to the elect. And those dangers, I started, I made a list. I made an eight-fold list. Not a bad list, actually. But as I prayed over it and lingered over it for several weeks, suddenly God completely changed my direction and came up again with the major topic of major dangers to believers, but from a completely different direction.
So where we're going starting today is that completely different direction. And let me show you how we started there, how I started there, and what triggered me to start thinking in these directions that God eventually amplified in my thinking. It came about as I was reading Genesis eleven.
Now, Genesis 11 is where we introduce the character of Abraham. And from Genesis 11 on through the rest of Genesis, you see it's a story of people: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's 12 sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel. I mean, so starting in chapter 11 of Genesis, we move from what looks like a creation story into a personal story about Abraham and his descendants. But in the middle of chapter 11, an amazing thing happens, and we usually turn a blind eye to it because it seems so crazy. That we don't know what to make of it.
But I was reading that, and suddenly a gigantic aha. fell on me. And what is it?
Well, it's the Tower of Babel. Is the Tower of Babel?
So let me just read it to you really quickly. It's from chapter 11 of Genesis.
Now the whole earth, the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, Come, let's make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. And they said, Hey, come, let's build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let's make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.
So the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, Behold, They're one people. and they have all one language. And this is only the beginning of what they will do, and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let's go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.
Verse eight So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off the building they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel. because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth, and from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth. And it suddenly dawned on me Babel has been undone. And so, this first video is about the undoing of Babel.
But what is this? What does this say to us? I mean, this is an event. The Tower of Babel event was like. four millennia ago.
And from that point on, The separation geographically of the peoples and the separation due to the confusion of their languages has persisted. And it has slowed the progress of mankind in a particular direction that God wanted to slow. But now, with the advent of One of these Suddenly, Babel has been reversed and reversed in a very portable way.
So I asked myself, and I prayed about it: God, is this a big deal? Is this a huge juncture in something about mankind? What does this mean about the fact. That what God did so long ago has now in our generation, and not just in our generation, but in the last ten years, in the last five years for many of us, has suddenly been effectively reversed. What does that mean?
And and Are we on the cusp of a major change in terms of the relationship between mankind and God because of this? It was a big deal back in Genesis 11, and now that big deal has been undone. Done, the undoing of Babel.
So, what does that mean?
Well, at first I didn't know, and even right now I'm not totally sure. But what I am sure of is the fact that It took us four millennia to undo what God has done, and And in the two aspects, the two aspects, one, about confused languages, and two about being dispersed over the whole face of the earth. The second one I'll address is straight up, and this is very obvious. We all have phones now. We all have phones like this, that we not only can talk across town, but we can talk across the states and across countries and to the other side of the world.
Dorothy just went and came back from uh uh a trip with Thrive in Australia. It was easy just to call her up. And so that distance which took fifteen hour flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne, Australia, suddenly we could transcend with one of these devices in a split second, and it cost me nothing.
So the distance, the distances, the geographical divides that God put in place at Babel, the geographical where He dispersed them, suddenly are meaningless to us because we have one of these, We can completely transcend that geographical distance. There is no distance anymore because of one of these. That's number one. That's the geographical dispersion that you find in Genesis 11. But then the languages.
That's a fascinating thing. Google Translate came in very handy for me when I was in Vietnam. I mean, I could take my phone, I could aim the camera at a sign, for instance, that I wanted to know what the sign meant, and I could aim it at it, and it would just show me what it says in English.
Now my phone wasn't quite capable enough to be able to do real-time audio translation, but many of our phones currently are. And if your phone can't do it right now, very soon within the next year or two, when you replace your phone, you will be able to. There will be no problems with talking to people who do not share your language, and no problems with talking to them 8,000 miles away in the world. Babel has been undone. Babble.
has been undone.
Now the abilities for computers to do this have been Various stages of Complexity and development over the last 10 to 20 years. But this is the first time that we've had it so portable that we can stick it in our pocket and it actually becomes a part of our everyday moment-by-moment experience. There are no barriers to language. There are no barriers to geography. All of Babel has been undone.
It's just taken us I don't know. for millennia to do it. But what does that mean? It it all I know is it's a really big deal. It's a very big deal.
Now, if you go back to the Tower of Babel for a second, we can answer some of those questions. Like for instance, let me just read for you. There was, you know, they built the Tower of Babel. And they said, let's have our tower reach up to the heavens and let's make a name for ourselves. Lest we dispersed over the face of the earth.
Well, a name for ourselves is saying that we have a reputation, we have a power, we're no longer dependent upon a God in heaven who kind of keeps us down. We can now elevate ourselves up to where God is. And that's the. That's the prideful arrogance. That causes God to come in and say, We need to do something about this, but not just the arrogance of it, He realized that.
Mankind, like in the garden, based on the lie from the serpent, is desirous to make himself like God. And as he gains competence to do those things, he starts to believe that he can actually make himself God. He can actually take the place of God. He can actually evolve himself into the status of who God is. And so God says we need to slow that down.
We need to slow it down.
Now God knew that in four millennia we would overcome that that impediment And now that it's come, what does that mean?
Well, the bottom line is that man's prideful arrogance about becoming like God, based now upon science and the accomplishments of science, and these supercomputers that we carry in our pockets. Man now can actually start to realize what he was trying to aim for in Genesis 11. He can, quote unquote, make a name for himself. and not a name that's connected to God. A name that basically represents humanity, period.
Man can become God.
Now that's always been the intention of mankind. But with well with the addition of these tools at our side. it suddenly has become doable and thinkable.
Now, is that a danger to us as believers?
Well, let me address that just at the end. Let me just add one more thing before I get to that and close this off. And that's the fact that the confusion of the languages, although it hampered mankind's ability to realize his prideful and sinful goals of becoming like God, of making himself like God, Although it slowed him down getting there, It hasn't slowed the gospel. at all. Which is fascinating.
There is a unified approach to sharing the gospel across many nations and across many tongues that this curse seems to not have affected. God has reversed the Babel curse. When it comes to communicating the gospel, and made that effective and to be able to move on without that hindrance. And what's my A number one case in point to prove that? Pentecost.
Pentecost. You remember Pentecost? Let me just read you a couple passages from Pentecost.
So the apostles are filled with the Holy Spirit. They're speaking in other tongues as the Spirit gives them utterance. And it says in chapter 2 of Acts, verse 5: Now there was dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. Remember the Babel dispersal? They're back here, every nation under heaven.
And at this sound, the multitude came together and they were bewildered because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. Babel undone And they were amazed and astonished, saying, Aren't these not all who are speaking Galileans? That is, they're untrained, there's no way they can actually be trained to be able to undo the Babel curse because they're stupid, they're ignorant, they're uneducated.
So, how is it, they said, how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, the residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia and Egypt, and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and the visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans, Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God. And they were amazed and perplexed, saying, What does this mean? But others were saying, They're just filled with new wine. Yeah.
So So when it comes to the gospel, God can easily undo the curse. The hampering of the lack of languages and the different peoples from different nations. And sure enough, we see this from the first century on to our present century. We see the gospel moving throughout the world. With some impediment from the curse of languages, but not a lot.
There are missionaries that go out and learn languages and stay there for quite some time to adapt to the culture, to adapt the language, to speak in those places. But sometimes supernaturally, like at Pentecost, God can just. Snap his fingers and reverse that curse. And he can accomplish what he wants to because of that.
Well, the Gospels had a head start because God can reverse Babel at any time he wants to. And he did at Pentecost. And I can tell you some other stories which are fascinating, first-hand and second-hand stories of how the Babel curse has been reversed for the purposes of the kingdom of God. I mean, I've seen that. I've seen that.
The curse doesn't affect that. But now. The unbridled passions and pride and ambitions of mankind have been unbridled due to the fact that the curse of Babel has been reversed.
So now the horse race, the foot race, has started to take off in a different direction.
Now, The evil in man's heart, and this is the bottom line, and this is just obvious, the evil in man's heart. That is that is Um made evident through arrogance and pride of Babel. Making a name. yourself. That evil will now advance at speeds we've never before imagined.
And as as mankind unifies globally, globalism Mankind will say that we are gods in ourselves, what we can now accomplish by using these wonderful little devices like this. That do so much for us. I mean, and these will just continue to get more and more capable. This is a central processing unit from a computer. That's not only in your handheld device, but it's in servers worldwide and made available through the communication services of your phone, giving you kind of the impression that you're more powerful than you really are in your phone.
All those things put together, man will finally say, If we organize and we unify, We can create a utopia of our own design, and we will be the masters of our universe, and at that point. There will be no need for God. This foot race has now taken off in ways that none of us can ever imagine where it's going to go. I mean, we look back five years. and and go, wow, so much has changed.
And now we look forward. We look forward another five years, and we can't even imagine what that's like.
Okay, so that's the easy takeaway from all of this. Babel has been undone. Babel has been undone. That's a big deal.
So as we push on in this series, We are going to be looking forward in terms of what that means and what are other aspects of it. And how is it that with mankind suddenly fueled to be able to make himself God, to think that he's God, and to convince themselves that God is now useless. We have no need for God because we have made ourselves God because of our cleverness. What does that mean to the believer?
Now Even as we say this right now, you're probably thinking, well, I'm immune from that because I know who God is. I have a relationship with God. I mean, so what if mankind takes off at a crazy pace? Trying to fool himself into thinking that he's God and he has no need for God. That's not a new thing, but we're going to see it happen in ways we've never anticipated.
But the bigger question, and this is the one I want to address, is: is this actually? The real danger to us, other than the list that I made before, is this a danger, and how is it a danger? How are we s that susceptible? Because it says biblically that Satan's going to work in such a way that he's going to try to even deceive the elect. Could we be deceived because of this?
Now, one caveat before I finish, and it's this: you're probably thinking, oh no. Jim's going to go all negative about phones. He's going to say, like back in the The days early on when I was a believer, when people were burning vinyl LPs, right? And Jim's going to tell us we need to go burn our phones. Right, we need to go destroy our phones, get them out of our pockets, out of our purses, out of our places.
We need to create a life without one of these things. I'm not going to go there. I'm not going to go there. You don't have to worry about that. In fact, I feel somewhat responsible that these things actually exist.
And because the last many years that I worked for HP, I worked to create a. A business segment for HP. In the cellular phone market. In fact, not too many people know, one of my assignments was to actually, I built the first factory tester. For cell phones in the world, I designed it.
So I had to understand the entire cell phone protocols, the networking, the radio transmission, the whole nine yards. In fact, we built a small-size cell site in our division, and so we could understand, see if we understood the protocols. And we could actually turn on a phone and have a phone call conversation with the cell site on my desk.
So, I know a lot about cell phones, and that really spurred the production of cell phones for automatic tests in factories, and that was used all around the world. And I was also involved some years later with an international initiative to make. $2 billion of extra revenue for HP based on the emerging digital cell phone market.
So I feel somewhat responsible for where these things have come from to some small degree. But I'm not going to say these are evil. These are tremendous tools. tremendous capabilities that for the gospel can be used in tremendous ways. And I'm not going to debate that.
It's a very powerful tool. But in the same way that it's a powerful tool for how we can use it for the gospel, it's a commensurately powerful tool for evil. And in the face of the Babel effect, it's really something in that respect.
So I'm not going to say throw these away. But I am, I suspect, because I'm not sure of all the ramifications we're going to hit on in the next several weeks. I suspect that what we're going to do is say we need to be knowledgeable about what It may entice us towards, and how it might be corrosive. To our relationship with God.
So that's what we're going to explore. And like I say, I don't know all the ends of that just yet. I'm fascinated to find out where these things are going to go as well. But all I know is this Babel has been undone. For the first time in the history of mankind.
Babel has been undone. So what does that mean? And is it a threat to us? And are there ways that we can shore up our defenses against it? And is there a way we can continue to use these extraordinarily powerful tools for the gospel while at the same time?
Defending ourselves against any potential corrosive effects. And what are those corrosive effects?
Well, that's what we're going to look at over the next several weeks. We're going to look at those one at a time. Uh And I just don't know what this means, but I am really fascinated by the fact that in my lifetime, so much has changed. Technically, about the computer world and about the ability to carry that kind of power in your pocket. We'll see where this goes.
So, I'm going to pray right now, and you can pray with me, even though it's a recording. And we'll pray for God's guidance on this. All I know is something gigantic has happened. And I don't want it to uh we don't I don't want it to To be missed by us. And I want us to be wise about listening to God, about.
How we defend ourselves against something that Satan would intend to even deceive the elect on.
So. We'll see how that goes. Let me just pray really quickly.
So, God, I thank you for the fact that you open our eyes to the world around us. I pray that you would give us humility ourselves, even in the midst of this growing awareness of this battle that is raging around us. We pray for your wisdom, God. We know that without your wisdom, we are sitting ducks in a world of deception from Satan. And so, we pray that over these next weeks that you'd give us your wisdom and your insight.
And as everything goes, Father, We need your spirit in all these circumstances, not just for wisdom, for power, for insight, for all these things. God, we want to be. humble in your presence, and we want your role in our lives to be magnified and not eroded. By these things.
So we're yours now, and our ears are open. We pray you'd guide us and lead us as we take a look at these things now. Thank you for all you do in our lives in Jesus' name. Amen.
Okay, well We'll see you next time and uh and I want you to be praying about this as well. What effect has this had on your life spiritually? spiritually, And that's what I'm going to be exploring in a bunch of different areas.
So, thanks for listening and We'll try this again next day.
