Midweek Series - Reliance on Government

This week we look through the lens of Nimrod and how society is setting up to repeat what happened before the Tower of Babel.

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to a Path Redemption of the Podcast, the midweek series. This is my name is Daniel Arona, and just remember the simple truth: the Father loves you, Jesus loves you, and the Holy Spirit loves you. Again, so talking about this midweek series, last week we talked about the fact that we are walking into a post-Christian society. And during this midweek series, I'm going to do my best to tell you if things are happening with current events, but do a deeper dive into specific subjects and topics from really kind of a bigger picture standpoint and about how the beast system is being set to unfold. And I think that this is really key, particularly to us understanding about what is happening. And if you listen to my podcast regularly, you know that I truly believe that the Lord Jesus Christ is coming back soon. I believe in the rapture of his saints. Um I also believe that in his second coming after the end of the second year tribulation to set up his real millennial kingdom here on this earth. Um, and uh to where he will rule and reign with a rod of iron for a thousand years. Um and then ultimately Satan will be released uh for a short time until finally he is fully defeated along with death. And then we see the the new heaven, the new earth, the new Jerusalem come down, and that all of us that are that believe in Christ, that are righteous through his righteousness, not through our own, will live with him and and the Father forever and ever. So for all of eternity. So, you know, that's what I truly believe. I think that's what the book of Revelation bears out, that's what prophecy bears out, um, in terms of the book of Zachariah, the book of Joel, some other Daniel, a bunch of different different prophets that are in there, portions of Ezekiel, portions of Isaiah as well. Um, but that's that's a different study for a different time. But this week I want to focus on something that has significant implications and how I believe that this will play in terms of the end. But before I get into that, again, last week, as we kind of talked about going into a post-Christian society, I want you to understand that everything that's going to be taught here going forward in this series is going to come from that premise that we are in a post-Christian society, meaning that Christian morality, um the things that the of Christ, the things that uh that that mattered um from a societal standpoint, no longer matter, that Christian beliefs, particularly Western beliefs, are no longer important to the world. So I want to be clear about that. That is the premise here, because once that is removed, and once Christ is no longer on that, say, throne of Western society, and you have people in the West saying, and I heard uh people say it this week, that uh white evangelicals are a cancer to the United States. When that belief starts to permeate, we have to prepare ourselves and be ready for what's coming and understand exactly what is about to happen. So um we've got to make sure that we're ready and we're prepared. That's why I always say to make sure you're intimate with the Lord, make sure you're focused on the things of Him, and make sure that you are putting in the work. Amen. I still believe that. But this the next couple of episodes, I want to focus on artificial intelligence. And there's going to be a lot that is going to happen with artificial intelligence that is coming online. There's a ton of articles in preparation for next week's episode. Uh I would challenge you to go listen to Yuval Noah Harari's uh speech at the World Economic Forum that happened last week uh talking about artificial intelligence. It's only about 18 minutes. It's on his own personal YouTube site. Um, but it is fascinating when you think about it in terms of global geopolitical, but particularly from a prophetic standpoint. But before we get into that next week, I have to lay a foundation here about what the whole goal of what is coming and really what they're gonna try and do. And that is complete reliance on government for everything. There's gonna be a man of sin that's gonna arise, the son of perdition, who is the Antichrist, um, who is going to rise and he's gonna have all the answers to all the world's problems. And that's prophesied in scripture, we know that, but we have been we have seen this before in scripture in a different way, but with Nimrod. So I want to talk about that today, and I want to talk about Nimrod as a picture of the Antichrist, and I'm gonna show you how Nimrod wanted everyone to rely on him and his government for all things. This lays the foundation for what is going to be coming next in regards to artificial intelligence that we'll talk about next week. But I really want to focus on the Tower of Babel this week and how it pertains. And I'm also going to tell you some things here about the global implications here around this alone. So Genesis 11, one through nine says, Now the whole earth had one language and 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. Then they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly. They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar, and they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens. Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, Indeed, the people are one, and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do. Now nothing that they purpose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over all the face of the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, before the Lord confused the language of all the earth. Then from there the Lord scattered them abroad over all the face of the earth. Now, Josephus in antiquities of the Jews, Book one, chapter four, puts it this way. Now the sons of Noah were three, Shem Shem, Japheth, and Ham, born one hundred years before the Deluge, these first of all descended from the mountain into the plains and fixed their habitation there, and persuaded others who were greatly afraid of the lower grounds on account of the flood, so they were very loath to come down from the higher places, to venture to follow their example. Now the plain in which they first dwelt was called Shinar. God also commanded them to send colonies abroad for the thorough peopling of the earth, that they might not raise seditions among themselves, but might cultivate a great part of the earth and enjoy its fruits after a plentiful manner. But they were so ill instructed that they did not obey God for which reason they fell into calamities, and were made sensible by experience of what sin they had been guilty. For when they flourished with a numerous youth, God admonished them to again send out colonies. But they, imagining the prosperity they enjoyed, was not derived from the favor of God, but supposing that their own power was the proper cause of plentiful condition, they were in nay, they added to this their disobedience to the divine will. The suspicion that they were therefore ordered to send out separate colonies at being divided asunder, they might be more easily oppressed. And look, this aligns with scripture as in verse four of Genesis eleven, where it's clear they did not want to be scattered abroad and did not want to repopulate the earth, despite the command that God gave Manoah in Genesis 9 1, where it says, you know, so God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So let's put this in perspective for a second. God told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. They chose not to. In fact, fear caused their issue. First, that God would destroy the earth again, and two, that they did not want to leave the comfort of the group. We are only three generations removed from Noah at this point, and you can't tell me that people didn't know the story of the flood by this time. It's taken several years to get to this point, but as Josephus said, they were so ill-instructed that they did not obey God. Now Hosea 4, 6 says, My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, because they have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priests for me, because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. This principle always applies. You have to know what God wants of you and do it. So whether it's you know raising up a child in the way they should go when they are older, they will not become not easily depart from it. But regardless of what it is, you've got to know what God wants. And look, this was not a short process. They committed and willfully did this in defiance of God. They made brick. Look, they they heat treated it to speed up the process rather than allowing it to sun dry. They built a city, they built a tower, they wanted to make a name for themselves. And look, we do the exact same thing, right? We make excuses, you know, that's that eventually will separate us until we reject the Holy Spirit. We often rush to go away from God rather to him. Where there's nothing wrong with the cities that they built, but up until this point, they had not had cities after the flood. And building a city and plopping yourself down behind your walls when God wants you to move is not acceptable. You know, they built that tower, and it's not just about the comfort of the city or the place where we are, but rather it's about building the defiance of God. And look, we justify ourselves before God to try and set ourselves on that same level as God. There's no difference here. And that's exactly what these people were doing, and that's what you see in current society as well. You see people that will say, Oh, well, if I'm God, then whatever decisions I make are divine. And I'm sorry, you hear celebrities say that, you hear a lot of people say that, but but regardless, that's not true. There's only one God. That's the path to rebellion. These are the first steps, but the people during the Tower of Babel had help. Their king was a man by the name of Nimrod. Genesis 10, 8 through 12 says, Cush begat Nimrod, and he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord, therefore it is said like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord. And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel, Erach, and Akkad, and Kalnah in the land of Shinar. From that land he went to Assyria and built Nineveh, Rehoboth, uh Ear, Kalah, and Rezin, between Nineveh and Kalah, that is the principal city. Now Nimrod was a mighty hunter before the Lord. This word that is used has a double meaning. The first is a hunter in the traditional sense. The second is a hunter and subduer of men. He was the leader during the time of the Tower of Babel, and was clearly the founder, as this was the beginning of his kingdom. Josephus gives us some additional context. Now it was Nimrod who excited them to such an affront and contempt of God. He was the grandson of Ham, the son of Noah, a bold man and of great strength of hand. He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God as if as if it was through his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured that happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing that no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them into a constant dependence on his power. He also said he would be revenged on God if he should have a mind to drown the world again. For that he would build a tower too high for the waters to be able to reach, and he would avenge himself on God for destroying their forefathers. Now I want you to think about this, right? He gradually changed the government into tyranny, seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God but to bring them into a constant dependence of his power. And look, we've seen that with communism and socialism for numerous times, right? But they they start with a religion first. If they can create an atheist religious atheist region or an atheist nation, then what they will do is they will force the people to rely on the government at that point because it's the only way they can turn them from God. And I find that fascinating, right? We as Christians have to be ready to understand that the world is going this way. And I'm going to talk about it next week. But the world is going this way. So if we don't understand that, and we don't hold fast to our first love, which is Jesus Christ, then we will fall in that same trap by turning away from God and finding complete reliance on the government. So, and that's the whole goal here. That's going to be the goal of the Antichrist, is to provide all things for all people that he may be worshipped. And that's the that's where the beast system comes into play, and that's what a lot of the things that we're going to talk about in this midweek series is going to come to pass. So now, assuming the account of Josephus is correct, which makes a lot of sense, Nimrod, seizing on their fears, comes trying to be a savior to them and making them recognize that it is not God that they derive their blessings, but from themselves. I'm a self-made man. How many times have we heard people say that? You know, I've worked hard and I've earned everything that I have, and I'm sorry. And yes, hard work matters, and you gotta work because uh, you know, the Bible says very clearly, if a man doesn't work, don't let him eat. But at the end of the day, though, we have to realize that everything that happens is by the grace of God in our lives. But they weren't thankful to the Lord, they stopped being thankful. And Paul says in in Romans 1 that the first step to a reprobate mind is to stop thanking the Lord. In Romans 1, 20 through 29, 21, it says, For the f since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. So since creation shows that this would apply to Nimrod and also to the Tower of Babel as well, but Nimrod could not accomplish this on his own. He needed a willing people to go along with him and recognize him as the Savior and their complete dependence on him. Josephus goes on here and says, Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God. Now I want to time out here for a second there because the world is being prepared, and there are generations that are being prepared to be very ready to follow a Nimrod character, which is going to be the Antichrist. And not only that, but they you even see now people that people esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God. People ask me all the time, how in the world do you, as smart as you are, as thoughtful as you are, follow Christ? How do you believe in a flood and a Noah and and the things in the Bible? And I tell them straight up, because I have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, and you have no idea the miracles that he's done in my life. But there's a people that don't understand that. And there's people that literally look at us as though we are a cowardice for believing in God. I just quoted a quote from you to you earlier about us being a cancer to this nation. That's what they believe because we put our trace, our our faith, and our trust in God. So he goes on, Josephus does, and they built a tower, neither sparing any pains, nor being in any degree negligent about the work, and by reason of the multitude of hands employed in it, it grew very high sooner than anyone could expect, but the thickness of it was so great, and it was so strongly built that thereby its height, its great height seemed upon the view to be less than it really was. It was built of burnt brick, cemented together with mortar, made of by Tumen, that it might not be liable to emit water. When God saw that they acted so madly, he did not resolve to destroy them utterly, since they were not grown wiser from the destruction of the former sinners, but he caused a tumult among them by producing in them diverse languages, and causing that through the multitude of those languages they should not be able to understand one another. The place wherein they built the tower is now called Babylon, because of the confusion, that language which they readily understood before. For the Hebrews mean by the word Babel confusion. Now Jasher is going to give us some additional context in Jasher 9, 25 through 26, where it says, And the building of the tower was unto them a transgression and a sin. And they began to build it, and while they were building against the Lord God of heaven, they imagined in their hearts to war against him and to ascend into heaven. And all these people and all the families divided themselves into three parts. The first said, We will send into heaven and fight against him. The second said, We will send into heaven and place our own gods there and serve them. The third part said, We will ascend into heaven and smite him with bows and spears, and God knew all their works and all their evil thoughts, and he saw the city and the tower which they were building. Now, in the end here, the exact same thing is going to happen. If you read the book of Revelation, it talks about people cursing God. It talks about people being angry with God, wanting to fight God, wanting to fight Jesus Christ, all of those things are going to are going to happen. You're going to see the exact same mentality happen during the tribulation. And guess what? I mean, we build a tower in defiance too when we don't want to go with God when with whatever God wants us to do. And we'll hide behind it. But God will always get his way. His will will be done. It's better that we humble ourselves and see him for who he is first. But in terms of the world, we see the world in a very similar situation. There are a lot of scared people out there. They are scared of climate change, scared of disease, scared of violence, scared of the whole host of things. There's going to come a man who will seem to have all the answers. He will play on their fear, and he will play on their fear of climate change, play on their play on everything, play on equality, play on safety and security. He will turn people to believe that their good things come from him and his government. They will rely solely on government for everything. Their food, their life, all will be governed by this Nimrod type person. I'm talking about the Antichrist. More so we have reached the point where there's defiance of against God as well. And next week we're going to talk about jobs being taken away by artificial intelligence and more jobs really not being created in the traditional sense. And we know that there's already a subsection of the world that relies on the government for all things. This is going to continue to happen. I personally believe we have now seen the beginning of the transition to complete reliance not on God but on government. The pattern that is shown by Nimrod is the same pattern that is happening today and will ultimately lead to the Antichrist. And look, there's currency changes that are coming, there's digital ID things that are coming. All of this is going to lead to one man leading the world in complete defiance to God. He will lead just as Nimrod did and make people believe that everything they have is out of themselves. And look, we've already headed back there from a language aspect as well. If you Google it, and I'm not going to read it here, but if you Google it from the Harvard Business Review in in 2015, English is now the global language of business. In fact, if you go to another country, which I've had the fortunate uh ability to go to other countries uh a few times, um, all of them speak English. It's very rare, at least particularly in the service industry or anywhere that you go, that there isn't someone that speaks English. And they speak it very well from that standpoint. But what we've found is that English has been the fastest spreading language in human history. It's really spoken usefully, according to this article, by some 1.75 billion people. That's one in every four humans that that are on this earth. Now, you talk about the native speakers and and those things, but it's also the main language of the internet as well. And look, when we talk about this and when we talk about English as the global language, it puts us back to the before Babel. And it puts us back there before God made diverse tongues. Because look, when people spoke different languages, it was difficult to communicate, it was difficult to get on the same page of stuff, it was difficult to build a tower in defiance of God. But yet now that English is becoming the main language or is the main language of the globe, what do we see? We see man begin to to think evil things, to think evil thoughts in defiance of God, right? And that's what we're looking at to uh at here, and this is important, it's it's really is important because as as all these things kind of go back, and I believe that the scripture is very telling here when terms of you know what the the end of it is looking at the same at the as the beginning, but we have to understand that that full complete governance as it by by the government, by a world government, by even your local government or your regional government, whether it's the US or the UK or Germany or wherever you're at, understanding that that complete reliance on government is not the answer. We have got to rely on God ourselves, but that the world is shifting that way. If you look a lot of the protests in the US and you listen to a lot of the interviews with the protesters, they want to tax the rich. They don't believe that anyone should make money from their labor anymore, but that it should all be given out to everyone else. They want the government to dispatch that, to take all of that and to do that. And ultimately, that's exactly what Nimrod did here. That's what he did. And they want the government to provide all things for them. So we're quickly heading to that, and there's a facility that is coming that is really going to be coming here, and that is artificial intelligence. Um, if again, if you get a chance, please listen to the 18-minute speech that he did at the World Economic Forum. But I would also challenge you, there's another 20-minute speech there or interview that he did in terms of the Wall Street Journal in front of some of the most powerful CEOs on the globe. So it's a fascinating understanding. We'll talk a little bit about it next week as we kind of talk about into the artificial intelligence pieces. Um, but there's a lot of things that are that are gonna that could potentially happen here. And that those are things such as you know, the it being the image of the beast, that it's being a new religion, the impact on. And leading to ultimately a universal basic income and an economic reset. But those are all things that we will hit on next week because all of these things have to happen at some point. So um, but I want you to understand though that the the baseline here is again that we are living in a post-Christian society. We absolutely are. I truly believe that. But then also that they want you to completely rely on government for everything. And that's the way that we're going. Okay. So as we continue talking about this, as we continue going into it next week, we're going to talk about artificial intelligence because there's so much happening along with that, and with uh quantum computing as well. So um, at the end of the day, look, make sure that you were you're fostering your relationship with Christ. Make sure you were studying to show yourself approved. But until next time, just remember the simple truth the Father loves you, Jesus loves you, and the Holy Spirit loves you. God bless.