The real tower of Babel
In Genesis Moses wrote of a people unwilling to spread over and populate the world. They said, “Let us stay in one place and build a tower that reaches to the heavens.” Unfortunately even scattered people build towers. The towers they build are of their sins. The voice from heaven said that their sins have heaped up as high as the heaven. God scattered the people at Babel and he will scatter the people who make such heaps of sins.
God remembers these blights and that memory does not accrue well. That is part of why he tells his own people to come out and be separate. They will be corrupted and they will share in the punishment.
Should we make our own little Christian commune?
What does the word from heaven mean to us in the early 21st Century? How do I, how do we in our era “come out” of the world? From all I can gather from my own reading of the scripture, prayers, watching life happen in my family and my church I see no suggestion that the Christian should be running for the hills, extricating themselves from any involvement with non-Christian humanity. There have been experiments like this, and they have their own serious difficulties for the hungers and flaws are carried with those who are coming out of the world.
For us in the 21st Century I think we do best to live where God has placed us. We need to come out of those influences which are ungodly. We need to be salt and light to the segments of the world that we are coupled to. We are not in the end times as the book of Revelation has been accounting to us. Are we near them? Perhaps, but that, too, God will make clear to those of his who are plodding through that terrible era.
Don’t skip church!
So we would do well to participate in the local church. Reading our Bibles and praying, watching church on TV is not enough. The local Christian community is a God-gift that is useful for our own maturity and God’s glory. Of course there are situations within our churches that we chafe at, but we should be there being salt and light to the maturity of that community as well.
On that day of the week that we gather together in a manner we are coming out of the world. God called us to these things. Our tendency is to live, “I don’t like it so it must be bad,” or, ” I don’t like it so it is not important,” or try this, “It is difficult and I don’t understand it so I will skip it.” We would do well to believe: “It must be good if God said it.” From that vantage point go, be, live, do among the Christian community and let the chips fall where they may.
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