The Bible says on one day God multiplied human languages. He did it at a place called Babel, the headquarters of human pride. A tower being built there was a symbol of united self-centered humanity. God said that with such driving united pride, the human race was such that there was nothing they couldn't achieve. He stopped it with confusion of languages. What God did in Babel scattered humanity over the face of the earth. Each tribe took away a basic law of conscience and in each culture there was a common urge to worship but of that original language no trace survived. We founded cultures and empires rose and fell.
Babel is coming back! A tide is flowing over the world carrying a common culture. It's fostered by international business deals. A global way of life is being communicated in just 2 languages - Spanish and English. They are not the first languages of the majority of earth's population but we understand them. Notice Asia - in the next 15 years 885 million Mandarin-speaking people will gain access to English. August 1999's National Geographic called English "the lingua franca (common tongue) of science, commerce, diplomacy and pop culture."
This "reeducation" is being forced on no one. Two enticements drive it. Entertainment and Knowledge. The first comes wrapped in the Hollywood movie the second, inside a computer screen, is called the world wide net.
Babel is coming back! One style of human government will be the international standard. I hesitate to name it because the way it will be operated is not as it is conservatively understood today. It is going to take on a new and very controlled form. That system of government is "Democracy". Its new style is currently being tested in the first world nations. It works like this: use the electronic media through both news and entertainment to subtly educate the people how to vote and then give them the opportunity to vote the way you taught them. After the election they will be resigned to 2 powerful ideas: a. Everyone else wants the government to go the way its going and b. There's no better model available that modern people will accept.
I hear a protest: "Writer what you've just suggested is impossible for the world as a whole!" Yes, as things are what's occurring can only take place in the first world where people are daily bombarded with the electronic media. Add to this: "education via entertainment" that the video store has produced. Yet something has happened that could change this within 10 years. The DVD disc has arrived. It's a science wonder. A cheap, largely plastic disc, only 12 cms wide, but it can contain a full-length feature movie. The day that economic forces cheapen the $1000 hand held DVD players so as to become as international as the gameboy now is- the most powerful "recreational education medium" will be in the hands of the poor. The First World "democracy by manipulation" experiment will go global. Babel will be reversible.
English and Spanish will become the universal language of entertainment and, via Internet, English will be the language of knowledge sharing. Even as you read this the side effects of instant news, fast foods, western moral norms, movie-blessed violence and materialism are eating into the heart of far-flung cultures from Tibet to New Guinea. Two population trends are making this job easier: a. The rapid growth in the size of the human race and b. the journey of people towards living in the cities. The next 100 years will see cities of 70 to 90 million people. Consider that New York is only at 20 million today. Influence the thoughts of the city dwellers and you can rule the world!
"Surely God's going to do something to continue what He did at Babel? Isn't He going to thwart this worldwide increase in knowledge?" No, He won't. He told a Jewish statesman in the Babylonian Empire that "in the time of the end many will go here & there to increase knowledge." He told Daniel that Babel was set to return. World knowledge would greatly multiply. If invention grows at the current rate - the sum of all world knowledge will double every 30 days in the year 2018. At present its doubling every 5 years!
"Won't God use all this knowledge to heighten the world's moral standards and let His people be a force for good that will keep things on the right track?" Another haunting revelation to Daniel who asked God how long before all these things (all these End Times visions) are fulfilled was: "When the power of the holy people has been finally broken, all these things will be completed." Humanity is headed towards moral breakdown.
So what are we to do? Since no one knows how much longer God will allow the status quo - and it could be 100s of years more - I take you to the closing verses of the book of Daniel. I challenge your heart & mine to embrace personal holiness. God says of the end times "Many will be purified, made spotless and refined, but the wicked will continue to be wicked". Join me in seeking to understand the globalization taking us back to Babel. Understand it - and fear none of it, choose holy lives.
In his book "How the Irish saved Civilization", Thomas Cahill comes to a challenging final sentence. He states that it's not "Romans" (empire and government builders) that the world needs to survive - its saints.
Arise - do "saint stuff"!