“Let us build a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name. And they used brick for stone” –Genesis 11:3,4. Here is self-exaltation reaching the heights of denominated religious wickedness. Behold the crafted shrine composed of conformed components: man-made bricks.
Nimrod’s tower became the first religious structure in a fixed location. This was a staggering paradigm shift. Substitutions to worship in Spirit and Truth abound, and Nimrod institutionalized his.
Worship in Spirit is quenched by external ritual. Worship in Truth is supplanted by man-devised tradition and decrees. This is the legacy of Nimrod’s tower that perpetuates up to today.
Prior to this Babylonian invention, man was his own priest. He had direct access to God through God’s own appointed way: altars of earth and stone. “You shall make an altar of earth for Me in every place where I cause My name to be remembered. If you make an altar of stone for Me, you shall not build it of cut stones, for if you wield your tool on it, you will profane it. And you shall not go up by steps to My altar” –Exodus 20:24-26. The altar of God is not left to human invention and craft. And what a provision!
Stones and earth are readily available in any locale as divinely provided means to worship. Both are creations of God and sufficient to convey true devotion independent of man’s ideas and ingenuity. But now all was forever changed. With the crafting of Nimrod’s tower, permanence was established; movement has ceased. No more is man free to worship as his own priest. His shrine demands that participants come to its locale and be in subjection to ceremonies determined by the priest-craft of others.
Nimrod’s building will require maintenance, maintenance requires a custodian, and both require money. As such, devotees must be solicited and terms of engagement established in order to fund the enterprise; the custodian must eat and the shrine must perpetuate.
The building of shrines eliminates recourse to earth and stones; they are inaccessible and out of sight, covered beneath the tower’s foundation. Neither are they welcome inside. Bring them within and they will immediately be cast out by the custodian and his cronies. What is of God has no place within Nimrod’s structures of burned bricks. Hence mashed and molded, formed and furnaced, multiplied bricks emerge identically proportioned: hardened uniform components incapable of change.
Stones are made by God, each with its unique properties. Bricks are made by man, none with distinctive design. The Lord Jesus builds His church with “living stones” –1 Peter 2:5. The Nimrods of this world fabricate their shrines with identical building blocks of their own schemes. That building plan does not accommodate irregularities and originality. In their crafted traditions, conformity is accounted as communion and uniformity as unity. Thus commences Babylonian priest-craft rule.
Bricks are forced to conform to Nimrod’s mold by subjection through threat, intimidation, and punishment. Those not complying are cast aside as worthless rubble in his greater enterprise; no tolerance for deviants is allowed. And the spirit of Babylon survived Babel’s dispersion on the plains of Shinar.
The legacy of a shrine with its attendant tyrant custodian and man-made traditions is instinctively embedded in the pulse of every culture. Its spirit breathes in every ritual, in every denominated shrine throughout Christendom. Answer this simple question. Where in the NT can you show your typical Sunday morning church service? Where? Just quote one verse. Show to the world that what Christendom does each Sunday morning has even one passage to support what is done in those grand pageants.
Can’t find it can you? If not even one verse in the whole New Testament supports this monstrosity we call “church,” then from whence did it arise? It came from Babylon. Nimrod institutionalized it at his tower and it spread worldwide from there. Priest-craft prevailed. The custodian king reigned.
“Worship” was localized at the Shrine. Individual priests were no longer tolerated. All conformed to his scheme. Punishment was meted out for any who did not comply. Money was collected for maintenance of the building and its custodian.
Stones of God’s creation were cast aside for man-made bricks of his own design. Uniformity replaced unity. And rebellion colored it all. It is no small matter when brick is substituted for stone.