I’m still trying to loose myself of all my city ways. Today, the weather was so nice I got it in my head to jog down to the Wal-Mart and pick up a few groceries (I’m still in the process of trying to find a good used Toyota or Honda in the $1,200 range).

When I told Charlotte my plans over the phone just before I left, she simply said, “Good luck with that.” She had offered to let me use her Durango but I turned it down.

The Wal-Mart is three miles from us and there are no shoulders on our very narrow road. There are also no sidewalks or pedestrian crosswalks when you hit the main drag, Brindlee Mountain Parkway, that the Wal-Mart sits on.

I actually had to walk through a bank’s lawn down a hill to get into the Wal-Mart parking lot.

Of course, once inside, I zoned out like I was shopping at my neighborhood grocery back in Manhattan. When I saw pomegranates were on special for $.98 apiece, I put two in my cart. Then I saw cantaloupes were $1.96, so I picked up one. Two cans of Progresso’s Italian Wedding Soup for $3 was impossible to pass up! In Manhattan, it’s almost $3 for one can!

I knew I was out of soy milk and plain yogurt for my morning smoothies, so those were two musts. Then I saw a tasty-looking $1.88 Mexican frozen dinner entrée from a brand I’d never heard of before—“El Charrito by Don Miguel, Authentic Foods Since 1908”—so that had to go in too.

I was crossing back through the bank lawn when it really hit me what torture I had ahead of me. I even stopped at the CVS for a soda knowing I’d be getting thirsty at some point.

Then, only a block from where I had just jaywalked against the light on the Parkway, a woman in a little Hyundai stopped and opened her door, yelling out, “Need a ride?”

Well, I hadn’t accepted a ride from a stranger since high school living in this little tiny farm town, Loudonville, Ohio, pop., 3,200. I remember my bike had gotten a flat way out in the hills and some farmer offered to toss it in the back of his pick-up truck for me, transporting me to the nearest gas station so I could call my mom to come and get me.

The most amazing part about today’s ride offer was finding out that the woman who gave me the lift was originally from the same Duluth/Superior metropolitan area on Lake Superior that all my dad’s family is from!

I asked her if she was Norwegian and she told me she was, indeed, half-Norwegian, half-Swedish. I then told her I was half-Norwegian. She responded, “You never come across any Norwegians around here!”

For laughs, I even yelled out the Norwegian expression “Uff da!” as a final goodbye when I cinched up my grocery bags after getting out of her car and headed for my trailer only yards away from where she pulled in.

*****

Starting with the first city built by Cain in Genesis, God runs a thread all through Scripture showing that cities are actually built as the embodiment and expression of man’s rebellion against God.

“The city represents man’s attempts to get away from the curse brought about by his own sin,” says my pastor, Richard Jordan. “It’s a monument to man’s attempt to raise a monument to his own self-sufficiency; his own desire to do it his way.

“Hence it’s the spirit of rebellion that permeates the city in Scripture. You find different cities expressing different aspects of that rebellion. Babylon encompasses all of what the city represents, and in the tribulation period it’s 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.”

Nimrod was a grandson of Ham and the building of Babel followed the curse placed upon Noah’s son, Ham, and his descendants. Babel actually follows as an attempt to escape that curse.

Jordan says, “When man is faced with a curse that comes about because of his own sin, man’s answer is to say, ‘I’ll take care of it myself; I’ll handle my own problem. I’ll get out of it my own way.’ And then he puts everything he has to work to keep that curse from having its effect, but it’s all futile.”

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, we won’t do things God’s way; leave us alone. Let us make us a name lest we be scattered abroad. Let’s build us a city in rebellion to what God tells us to do!”

Jordan explains, “As ruler, Nimrod works to bring untamed man under a yoke of bondage, and the spirit of Nimrod and his kingdom is the spirit of conquering might and power. He uses his force and craft and skill to go out and hunt and gather and bring others into bondage. You notice the verse says he was ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord’? The idea is the Lord had His eye on him and Nimrod knew it and went ahead in bold defiance. He wasn’t working before the Lord as an act of faith. He was saying, ‘I’ll show you what I can do.’ Nimrod was showing off his own prowess, and the beginning of his kingdom was Babel.

“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, building more cities. All those cities weren’t constructed by one man. The issue is not people; it’s not a man here. That’s the reason only cities are mentioned here. It’s the culmination of Nimrod’s activities.

“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.

“That 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,” explains Jordan. “Who owns heaven? That’s His dwelling. And they wanted to reach up and get what belongs to God away from Him. The whole issue here is the deification of the creature. Making ‘me first.’

“The city codifies and gives collective force to humans. It monumentalizes the issue and brings that ‘I’ Complex—that independent spirit of rebellion—into a mass.”

From the Bible, we know 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 next time was after the Flood when it was just Noah and his family.

Jordan explains, “The problem isn’t that man hasn’t known God or can’t know God; it’s that both times they willfully went 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.

Specifically, Paul writes, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
[22] Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
[23] And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
[24] 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, who is blessed for ever.”

Jordan explains, “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 knows. So they’re going to do it their way. The result is verse 24.

“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 completely necessary to throw God out and Babylon doesn’t do that. They just worship their own will more. They just don’t give Him top billing.”

From 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,” says Jordan. “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.

“And 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.

“You know what the world today thinks Christianity is? When they think of Christianity, they think of Sunday and a building at 11 a.m., especially on Christmas and Easter. Somebody says, ‘Well, it’s not Sunday, it’s the Lord’s Day,’ and that’s right. But in the Bible, ‘the Lord’s day’ is the day of the Lord when He comes back in wrath and vengeance.

“Did you know, by the way, Sunday is ‘the day of the sun god’? It’s the ‘day of Ra, the lord of the sun.’ That’s exactly what the day Sunday means. That’s how the (satanic) system permeates 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. We take the Word of God, and we believe what God says, and we set our affections on things above and walk by faith in God’s Word.

“But the forces that are opposing themselves are the same and in the final culmination. . . You see, the reason that last seven years of that 70^th week of Daniel . . . the reason all the conflicts of the ages crystallize themselves in that one period of time in the Tribulation. . . Did you know there’s more about that in Old Testament prophecy than anything else, even then about eternity future? That’s because that’s when the personification of the satanic program and God Himself finally put the issue to rest.

“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. Rev. 20:9 calls it the ‘beloved city.’ Rev. 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.”