The first city built on this planet was an
usurption of God’s idea. It was built as a monument to man’s rebellion against
God. Every city built on this earth was built with that spirit and it will be
that way until New Jerusalem is built by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
“If you’re
going to minister to a city, you’re going to have to focus on that,” stressed
Pastor Richard Jordan at last month’s Soldiers’ Training Conference in Chicago.
*****
“Beginning with the first
city built by Cain in Genesis, God runs a thread all through Scripture showing
that cities are built as the embodiment and expression of man’s attempts to get
away from the curse brought about by his own sin. They are man’s attempts to
raise a monument to his own self-sufficiency; his desire to do it his way.
“Genesis 4-6
describe man beginning to multiply in the earth. Cain said, ‘I’m not going to
do what God said,’ and he built a city. He’s trying to replicate on the earth
what God had said He was going to put on the earth.
“God made
man and on the seventh day He rested and blessed and sanctified that day. He set
that day apart, saying, ‘This is the day I did all of that creation work,’ and
the next Sabbath day was the day His city was going to dwell on the foundations
He placed for it on the earth. Sin stopped that, though.
“In Revelation
21, when He takes care of sin and makes reconciliation for all of that, what
comes down out of God from heaven to dwell with man? That city.
“Cain is
duplicating and counterfeiting what God was going to do, but you don’t just fall
off the back of a turnip truck and build a city. It takes know-how, technology,
etc. What Genesis is telling you is there’s this whole culture being developed.
"By the way,
Cain built the city and named it after his son, Enoch. I love that. He builds a
city as a monument to his own rebellion and says, ‘I’m gonna name it after my
boy so it’s my namesake.’
“In Isaiah,
God said, ‘Woe to them that lay house to house.’ What happens when you live
that way? Well, you hear everybody’s arguments. Pretty soon you’re in them.
There’s a reason that in Genesis 6 the earth was filled with violence.
“You go five
generations from Cain and you’ve got this guy Lamech who took unto him two
wives. By the fifth generation, you’ve got a whole culture of people rebelling
against what God’s doing. When God put Adam and Eve together, how many wives
did He give Adam? Jesus said in Matthew 19, ‘That’s the way it was from the
beginning.’
Here’s an
old article on the same subject:
“You find different cities
expressing different aspects of this rebellion. Babylon, for example,
encompasses all of what the city represents, and in the Tribulation Period is
going to take up ALL of the things that are expressed by the city, bringing to
a crystallized form the conflict between the satanic policy of evil and God’s
program.
“In Genesis 9, God
instructed Noah and his sons to 'scatter and replenish the earth,' but the
response from the post-Flood inhabitants became, ‘No, let’s make us a name lest
we be scattered abroad; let’s build a city in rebellion to what God told us to
do.’
“The building of the city
of Babel by world ruler Nimrod, a grandson of Ham, followed the curse God
placed upon Noah’s son, Ham, and his descendants. Babel was actually an attempt
to escape that curse.
“As ruler, Nimrod worked to
bring untamed man under a yoke of bondage, and the spirit of Nimrod is the
spirit of conquering force and craft and skill.
“Nimrod rules across the
earth from this city, and out of that land goes forth Asher and Nineveh. In
other words, man goes out from Babel and puts the spirit of Nimrod to work by building
more cities.
“Now the city is the center
from which war and conquest is waged. Urban civilization becomes a warring
civilization. In Daniel 1, Daniel’s carried away into the land of Shinar into
Babylonian captivity. In Genesis 14:1, Abraham delivers Lot from Sodom.
“While Babylon represents a
system for the expression and philosophy and program of the Adversary,
Jerusalem represents God’s system of righteousness, but it also represents
man’s failure to meet up to that standard because the law brings bondage, hence
there has to be a new Jerusalem, a new covenant, a new way when God will do for
man—and for the universe itself—what man could never do for himself.”
*****
Church steeples and
obelisks originate from the Tower of Babel, showing yet another example of how
thoroughly Satan’s religious system permeates our world.
“The Tower was part of the
city, and literally it was the symbol of the purpose and the enterprise of the
city which was to seize for themselves what belonged to God. Who owns heaven?
That’s His dwelling. The whole issue here is the deification of the creature.
“The city codifies and gives
collective force to humans, bringing that ‘I’ Complex—that independent spirit
of rebellion—into a mass.
*****
“There
are only two times in all of human history when the whole world knew God. One was in the Garden of Eden
and the other was after the Flood when it was just Noah and his family.
“The problem isn’t that man
can’t know God; it’s that they willfully walk away from God. So, the problem
isn’t the heathen who don’t know; the problem is that what they do know, they
reject.
“Romans 1 goes back
historically to Genesis 11 and it doesn’t say that the people didn’t glorify
God; they just didn’t give Him the supreme position as God Almighty.
“It’s the theology of a
humanistic system to elevate man. They’re exalting themselves, and their whole
goal is to change the glory of the uncorruptible God, and to deface and defy
Him because they’re ‘so wise.’ They can do it themselves. They know better than
God so they’re going to do it their way. The result is Romans 1:24-25: ‘Wherefore
God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to
dishonour their own bodies between themselves. [25] Who changed the
truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the
Creator.
“You know, the greatest
judgment God could ever give a person over to is just to leave him to himself.
What the world out there calls sophistication and liberation more often than
not is just testimony to fact God just left them to themselves to bear the
bitter consequences of their own sin all by themselves with no restraint.
“The product of Babylon is
uncleanness. If you don’t live in line with God, you’re unclean. I call you to
notice they worshipped and served the creature MORE than the Creator. It isn’t
necessary to completely throw God out and Babylon doesn’t do that. They just
worship their own will more. They don’t give Him top billing.
“What Revelation 14:8 tells
us about future Babylon, she’s fallen but not before she’s made all the nations
‘drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.’ Revelation 17 and 18
represent the two great chapters about the fall of Babylon.
‘The details are held until
there for a very special reason. The Antichrist is going to use Babylon’s
system of Baal worship during the tribulation. Now, its modern manifestation among Christendom is embodied in Rome and
the Protestant churches that are sympathetic to the Roman system.
“The Antichrist uses the
system of Baal worship to rise to power, sitting on the great whore, but once
he’s in power, he destroys her because it stands in his way.
“The reference to the kings
of the earth and merchants in Rev. 17:18—it’s a political system that dominates
the governments of the earth and every area of life, commerce and the economy.
It’s a universal worldwide dominion. This system goes out and engulfs
everything.
“Today, the battle is not
in the physical realm—taking a physical city here and a physical city there.
Today, we battle in a spiritual realm and we do it by working by faith.
“But the forces that are
opposing themselves are the same and in the final culmination. . . You see, the
reason the last seven years of that 70th week of Daniel . . .
the reason all the conflicts of the ages crystallize themselves in that one
period of time in the Tribulation . . .
“When Revelation 19 uses
the word ‘hallelujah’ that’s the first time that word ever appears in the
Bible. The host of heaven is shouting ‘hallelujah’ as a result of Babylon
sinking down and being destroyed. It doesn’t come any sooner. Not until
Babylon’s gone does heaven cry ‘Hallelujah!’
“You see, one day God’s
going to purge this earth, and righteousness is going to reign from the city of
righteousness, New Jerusalem. Revelation 3:12 calls it ‘the city of my God.’
“In the Millennium, they’ll
have that wonderful city. Revelation 20:9 calls it the ‘beloved city.’
Revelation 21:10 calls it ‘that great city.’ There’s Jerusalem. There’s where
God is dwelling and that city is going to take charge. It’s exciting to me to
know God’s going to purge this earth of all rebellion and establish a city from
which His righteousness reigns.”
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