This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 560: Pentecost Reversing Babel with Sean Finnegan

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

00:08
Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today.

00:24
Pentecost, as described in acts chapter two was a strange event we read about unusual miraculous signs such as the sound of a great wind and tongues of fire. Still, the most interesting moment is when the apostles of our Lord.

00:41
Began speaking in foreign languages that they didn't know such a divine utterance is called speaking in tongues, and everyone, it seems, has an opinion about.

00:52
But have you ever asked yourself the question why?

00:56
God is launching the church to go into Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the Earth. Christ pours out the spirit to enable them to be his witnesses. OK.

01:07
But why have them speak in foreign languages?

01:10
Now this can't just be a nifty trick to grab people's attention, though it certainly did that.

01:17
Join me as we consider the Old Testament background to Pentecost, which I believe goes all the way back to Babel when God originally confused the languages here, now is Episode 560 Pentecost, reversing Babel.

01:40
Pentecost is a major holiday in Christianity. We celebrate it every year. It happened 50 days after the crucifixion of Christ. In fact, the word pentecoste is the word 50th in Greek.

01:55
50 days after Christ was crucified and raised from the dead, we have the events of Pentecost.

02:02
And it's a.

02:03
Day when there was a mass conversion to Christianity.

02:07
It was the initiation of an evangelistic burst that continued throughout the early years of the church and spread successively further into the world outside of Israel, which is pretty exciting.

02:23
Now, typically for Pentecost, we talk about the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. We talk about the prophecy of Joel. You remember the prophecy of Joel.

02:31
God's spirit will be poured upon all flesh, and the old men would dream dreams and the the young men would have visions and and so forth. And the daughters and the sons and all that we talked about the sermon that Peter gave. The evangelistic sermon that Peter gave that was so effective at converting people.

02:49
And we talked about the expansion of the church, but today I'm looking to take a different angle and focus more on the subject from a geographic perspective.

03:01
And tie Pentecost in with Babel. So let's begin chapter 2, verse one.

03:09
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.

03:25
Divided tongues as a fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.

03:32
All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them ability.

03:40
Verse 5 now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. Probably a better translation. There would be nation. The Jews are one people, so to say that Jews are from different peoples doesn't really make sense, but they're from different places where there are different languages and customs and so forth.

04:00
But they're all one people. So anyhow, first five again now. They were devout Jews from every nation under heaven, living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native.

04:14
Language of each.

04:16
Amazed and astonished, they asked.

04:20
Are not all those who are speaking galileans.

04:25
And how is it that we hear each of us in our own native language?

04:31
Verse 9 Parthians Meads, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia.

04:40
Phrygia and Pamphylia Egypt and parts of Libya.

04:44
Belonging to Sireni and visitors from Rome, both Jews and Proselytes Cretans, and Arabs in our own languages, we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power.

04:58
All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another.

05:01
What does this mean?

05:02
We'll just pause it right there. Alright. There's tons of stuff to talk about here. We have this violent wind, we have fire. I'm gonna come back to that. The spirit is poured out. They speak in these foreign languages. Pentecost is not a miracle of hearing is a miracle of speaking.

05:19
It's not that they were all speaking Galilean Aramaic with like a country accent, because Galileo's kind of in the country and everyone's like hearing it in their language. No, they were actually speaking these other people's languages and that's a shock to everyone they're like.

05:34
As you know, my local language now in the in the world at this time, the main language that people spoke due to one particularly ambitious Macedonian general was Greek.

05:46
So everyone had Greek as a second language. At least everybody that traveled or that had a shop and had to sell to people, you would have Greek as a second language, but your first language would be whatever area you lived in. Everybody would have their own native language.

06:03
The miracle this day is that they spoke these different languages that were not known outside of those areas.

06:11
So let's take a look at the geography mentioned in verse nine. You see that it says Parthians, Meads, Elamites residents of Mesopotamia.

06:23
What was it?

06:24
First, yeah, parthians. And then here you have the Meads. There's Mesopotamia. Many of you remember.

06:31
For high school global history, you probably heard about Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia is super important for ancient ancient ancient history because that's where we have like some of the oldest ruins that are on the planet. There are these rivers that make Mesopotamia really good for living, at least.

06:51
Back in those days where it was very lush, these are the first ones mentioned in Elam as well. But that's kind of off map as to the right a little bit.

06:58
To the.

06:58
East, I asked myself the question why these places. You know, why did? Why did Luke, who wrote book?

07:04
Of facts.

07:05
Why did he mention these places? I was trying to think. OK, well, maybe.

07:10
He's talking about the Roman Empire. Well, none of these places that I just marked are in the Roman Empire.

07:16
They're literally all to the east of the Roman Empire, so it's not like you're just trying to list off random places in the Roman Empire to give a feel of, like, hey, people came from everywhere. That's not really what's going on here. It's also not the same as just the known world. Believe it or not, in the 1st century, the Romans knew about India.

07:37
And they knew about China.

07:39
And they also knew about Gall had already been conquered, which is modern day France and Germany. Britannia had already been conquered, which is modern day England. Those are not mentioned in the book of Acts and some other places too that we could, we could say, well, why doesn't he mention that or like the.

07:59
We know Luke knows about Ethiopia because in acts Chapter 8, an Ethiopian becomes a Christian on his way back to Ethiopia. And yet Ethiopia is not mentioned here either.

08:10
Look at how.

08:11
Expansive. This list is so I just kind of mentioned these here, but then he says Judea. And then Cappadocia is way up here.

08:19
In what we would call modern day Turkey, the Armenians have a different perspective on that one. And then we have Phrygia and Pontus and Pamphylia. And then this region over here is called Asia. But it's really what we would call Western Turkey today.

08:37
And then they talk about Arabia. So there's the the Arabs down there and then he he mentioned Egypt, Libya sirene not to leave out Rome. And then the Cretans, there's.

08:48
Right.

08:50
The Cretans and the Arabs, you know, at the.

08:52
End there. So wow.

08:55
This is just incredible to you. How many places people are coming from on the day of Pentecost? And if you look through all of Scripture, you'll find one other chapter in the Bible that gives a list that is.

09:08
Even more comprehensive and more detailed than this and that is Genesis chapter 10.

09:15
So I'd like us to go there, take a look at Genesis Chapter 10 and see if we can't make this connection. Have you ever had the experience of reading through the Bible? You say to yourself, alright, January 1st, New Year's resolution. I'm going to read through the whole Bible chapter. One awesome, no problems.

09:35
Chapter 2, Chapter 3. Exciting. You know you've got the fall of humanity. You know, a lot of a lot of action. Chapter 4. The first murder. You know who doesn't like a good murder mystery. And then you get to chapter 5 and you're like, it's like you run into a brick wall and you're, like, list of names.

09:53
What? How do I get around this? You know, so Chapter 5 of Genesis is a little challenging cuz it's a genealogy. It's just a list of names and you get around that. Or maybe you skip it. Chapter 6, we got a lot of action again, the flood, all kinds of weird stuff happening there. Get through all the whole the flood narratives, chapter 7-8 and nine, and then suddenly.

10:14
We get to Genesis chapter 10 and boom, another wall of names and you're just like I can't make sense of this. So we're gonna make sense of it. Genesis chapter 10.

10:25
Verse one.

10:27
This is what?

10:28
Scholars tend to call the table of Nations Genesis chapter 10. It may be the most skipped over chapter in your Bible. I'm not here to judge. OK, but I get it. Chapter 10, verse one. These are the descendants of Noah's sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, children.

10:47
Were born to them after the flood.

10:50
So, OK, we're gonna get Noah's kids. Noah had three kids, and then those kids had kids. And then those kids had kids and so forth. And over time.

11:00
They built cities, they developed cultures, and those cities would exert influence on the surrounding region, the countryside, but also smaller cities would come under the influence of the bigger city nearby.

11:19
Often these city states they were named for specific individuals.

11:25
And these are the people who became the place names in Genesis chapter 10. Take a look. Verse 2, the descendants of Jazz Fest. Gomer Magog, madai. Javan, Tubal, Meshech and tiras. The descendants of Gomer Ashkenaz Rafat.

11:43
And togarmah.

11:45
Too many Togarmah's running around these days, verse 4, the descendants of Javen Alicia Tarshish Kittim and rode anime. From these, the Coastland people spread.

11:57
These are the descendants of Jeff and their lands with their own language, by their families, in their nations, to you, probably most of these are foreign names, but I wonder if you recognize a couple. Maybe you recognize a couple so javen if you've ever heard of that, that's just the Hebrew word for Greece.

12:16
That's that's referring to Greece. Ashkenaz is roughly the area of modern day Armenia.

12:23
Yeah.

12:24
And then Jewish people from that region later get called Ashkenazi Jews. But that's kind of a separate subject for this conversation. Kitum is probably the island of Cyprus, which is a Big Island over here. And then Tarshish probably refers to Spain because Jonah went to Tarshish. If you remember the book of Jonah.

12:45
So these are.

12:46
These are people. Yes, they're descendants of Noah's kids, sure. But there are also places that's typical.

12:52
People that names of places come from famous people that founded them. Not always, but a lot of times look at verse 6, the descendants of Ham Cush Egypt puts and Canaan, the descendants of Cush Seba, Havilah, Sabta, Rama and Sapka, the descendants of Rama.

13:14
Ciba and dedan. OK, here we get Egypt. You ever heard?

13:18
Of that.

13:20
The guys name wasn't really Egypt, it was mitzrayim, but it refers to the place that everyone calls Egypt and that guy presumably migrated down there, had a big family. That family grew overtime and eventually cities and then boundaries and everything kind of develops slowly.

13:41
What else is mentioned there?

13:43
Arcade or Kush is mentioned, Kush is just South of Egypt. That's a biblical place. If you've ever heard of it and then what else do we have there?

13:53
Yeah, I don't really recognize most of these other ones. Ohh Kanan, Kanan is super important. Kanan just is what they call the land that became Israel. That's Canaan.

14:06
So these are people who took over these places in Genesis Chapter 10 and you notice that it also says and the end of verse five with their own language by their families and their nations. So we have languages already in Genesis Chapter 10 and we have nations. All right, let's look at just a couple.

14:25
More.

14:27
Verse eight, it says Kush became the father of Nimrod. He was the first on Earth to become a mighty warrior.

14:34
He was a mighty hunter before Yahweh, therefore it is said, like Nimrod, a mighty hunter before Yahweh, first celebrity right celebrity hunter. As it turns out, verse 10, the beginning of his Kingdom, was Babel. Huh. Interesting.

14:51
Eric. Acad and Kalna in the land of Shinar. And from that land he went into Assyria and built Ninevah, both Air, kala and resin, between Nineveh and Calah. That is the great city.

15:04
So Babel is in the land of Shinar, which is in the region of kind of Mesopotamia, a little east of that you can maybe see it on this map here. To some degree. Babel later becomes Babylon. Babel is super important for so many different parts of the Bible to understand today is in Iraq.

15:24
CAD is another place mentioned, so Acad is an important Empire Kingdom and scholars who do work on the ancient Near East. A lot of times they will learn Acadian because there.

15:38
There's a lot of artifacts and writing that has survived in Acadian very ancient language. Novah is mentioned here, so that's a guys name that eventually became the city. Nineveh became the capital of the Assyrian Empire.

15:53
All right, that's enough for Genesis 10. Let's get to the point. The point is that this map right here, I'm showing you of Genesis 10 is the same as the map I showed you of Luke in in acts chapter.

16:05
New.

16:06
It's the same map. It's well, once color and one's black and white. Yeah, alright. And the place names there. There are 70 nations mentioned in Genesis 10. And whereas in Acts 2 there's only 16. OK, so we're not mentioning all the 70 nations that the ancient people knew about from that region of the world. So that's another difference. But the last difference is that.

16:27
In the book of Acts, the geography is updated. They use modern well by their terms. Modern names for the different places. So what is the theological point of Genesis chapter 10?

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Why would God have included a list of nations if you read all of Genesis chapter 10? Guess what? You're not.

16:48
Going to find.

16:50
Israel.

16:52
It's not mentioned in Genesis chapter 10. All of these nations are pre Israel. Abraham has not even been called by God yet in Genesis chapter 10 you gotta wait for chapter 12 for that. So in Genesis Chapter 10 and nine and eight and seven all the way to the beginning, the 1st 11 chapters of Genesis are global.

17:12
God's perspective is.

17:14
The world.

17:16
That's a global perspective. God cares about these other nations, and he has an interest in all of them.

17:25
And on the day of Pentecost.

17:29
It's a public announcement. The outpouring of the spirit is something that God wants.

17:35
To tell to the nations.

17:38
There are people in Jerusalem from all of these places present to witness this miracle. As Christ pours out the spirit and they return home, eventually most of them are going to.

17:48
Return home.

17:50
And what do they?

17:50
Say to their family, to their friends, to their neighbors.

17:55
You know they're gonna be asked, like, how was your trip? Pretty much all I've been asked since I got back from my trip last week, which which I think is fine. You know, it's normal, right? And they're gonna say, yeah, it was weird. They spoke our little local dialects.

18:12
And I know for sure they didn't know it.

18:15
So it was a weird miracle.

18:16
And they were talking about this guy Jesus.

18:20
Of Nazareth. And they're saying that he's the Messiah.

18:24
So I I think there's a kind of like a preparing of the way that starts happening with Pentecost where God is sort of distributing these Jewish people back to their home places with this early version of the gospel message that would start to get people interested for the later missionary.

18:44
Events mentioned in the New Testament.

18:47
That brings me to my next point. The next section after the table of Nations in Genesis 10. We're not gonna read the whole.

18:53
Thing I know.

18:53
You're really riveted by those ancient names, but let's go to Chapter 11 is Chapter 11, is a flashback that happens somewhere along chapter 10 because chapter 10 is not organized chronologically.

19:07
That's organized by family grouping, but at some point between Noah and when we had all these nations with these different languages, we had the Tower of Babel incident.

19:19
So anyhow, Genesis Chapter 11, verse one says now the whole Earth had one language and the same words and as they migrated from the east they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another. Come, let us make bricks and fire them thoroughly, and they had brick for stone.

19:39
And vitamin for mortar.

19:42
Then they said, come let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves. Otherwise we may be scattered abroad. The whole face of the earth, the face of the whole Earth. So ancient people believed in sacred spaces.

20:00
In a way that does not really make sense to us as Americans. So if there was a a really, really impressive tree, there's probably gonna be an idol under it, and there's probably gonna be a place of worship.

20:14
At that, at that spot in ancient times at least.

20:17
We see the same thing with other high places. You notice that in the Book of Kings it's always talking about the high places. Why do they go to the high places? Because they're closer to heaven and people have a a religious sense. You know, even modern day hikers get this when they get to the top. They have a religion, even if they don't.

20:33
Believe in God.

20:34
They have a kind of spiritual experience.

20:36
And they have a different perspective and they're like ohh, maybe this is what the world looks like from on high, right? There is something about heights and sacred space. And so a lot of mountains become sacred spaces. In my travels, we did visit some some.

20:53
Bizarre rock outcroppings upon which the monks have built their monasteries and they had to use weird pulleys or ropes and ladders to just get there in the first place.

21:07
So Shinar is a plane. It's between like Euphrates and Tigris rivers there. If you wanna have a high place in a plane, how do you do it?

21:17
You've got to build it yourself.

21:19
To create a sacred space, you've got to build a massive tower in primitive times. There's no cement, yet the Roman Empire invented concrete and cement, that sort of thing. So that's way thousands of years before the Romans, right. And we have no steel.

21:36
How you gonna build something they had?

21:38
To use bricks.

21:39
And the way you do it and we know this from surviving types of structures like this, is that eat you, you put a layer of bricks down, then the next layer you build it in just a little bit and then in just a little bit so that it doesn't all if you just go straight vertically it will tip over after so many feet. And so we call that a ziggurat.

22:00
You heard of a ziggurat before? Not a cigarette. That's different. Ziggurat.

22:07
Sorry, so several ziggurats have survived. Obviously not the one from the Tower of Babel. That's very, very ancient. But after that, guess what? The same idea occurred to other people, and they also built these types of things. So this is the ziggurat of ur in the same region of the world.

22:25
The Shinar and Babel not too far away is a city called err you are. This is Ziggurat dedicated to the moon God Nana.

22:35
And so if the children are disobedient, you say none's gonna get you.

22:42
That's a joke that only works in English. So, and these ancient people didn't speak English, but we can still have fun with it. But this is the Nana Ziggurat, and it was constructed in the 21st century.

22:54
Before Christ.

22:56
So as many centuries as we are to Christ, you have to go before that before you get to when this building was built. And it's still here.

23:08
That's crazy. That's crazy. Well, I had some help over the over the centuries. So over time the bricks crumble and they they get weathered. So in the 6th century, before Christ, 600 years before Christ, Babylonian King named Nabonidus, who you may know as the father of Belshazzar. Belshazzar is the.

23:29
Babylonian that saw the writing on the wall and Daniel Chapter 5. So his dad renovated the Ziggurat of Ur.

23:38
Isn't that great? And then overtime it crumbled again and then another man of rose in the 1980s called Saddam Hussein.

23:50
And he reconstructed the facade of the ziggurat again, so as it looks today, it's.

23:57
Actually a really.

23:58
Good shape, but the inner part and the top part which is not reconstructed goes all the way back to all these centuries before.

24:07
Sadly, in 1991, bombs fell nearby and shook the whole thing. Four big craters nearby from the war and there's 400 bullet holes in it from fighting, and it's still there. I mean, you gotta you gotta give this building credit. So you have these different stairs that go up and then you get to the top. It's actually.

24:27
Windy up there.

24:28
You can just look at this on YouTube.

24:31
There's people that go here in the middle of Iraq just to climb this and, you know, take.

24:36
Like.

24:37
You know how Youtubers are. And so they and you, you see their hair is blowing around. They're like, oh, so windy up here. This building structure would then have another layer. This is actually weathered down. There's another layer would be on top of that.

24:51
And then on top of that would be a temple. And so that temple would then be the highest point in the city, and the Ziggurat would be in the middle of the city. And then the city would be surrounded by walls. And so from the ziggurat in the center of the city, you.

25:04
Could see out everywhere.

25:07
To the horizon all around you and everyone, anywhere near your city would say that is the abode of the gods, that that is where the priests are able to interact with the gods. Because look at how magnificent. Look how how? Look at how much of A high.

25:24
Place it.

25:25
Is that's just kind of how ancient people thought about things.

25:28
This particular one is 210 feet long, 148 feet wide, and they estimate originally 98 feet tall, which is about 8-9 and 8789 story.

25:43
It's so look, if you're 4000 years ago and you've got a skyscraper of eight stories, you're the, you know what I mean? Like, you're the tallest building around and everyone's very impressed.

25:56
In Genesis 11/3.

25:59
It said they made it of mud bricks that were burnt and they had bit them in. Those are exactly what this structure is also made out of.

26:08
Exactly what the structure is made of mud bricks that they burn and then they use this bitumen, which is kind of like a naturally occurring pitch, like a tar like substance, that they could use for mortar in between.

26:20
So I think it's very helpful. This is not the Tower of Babel. I want to be clear about that, but the Tower of Babel was a predecessor of this, and it was probably even maybe taller than this. I don't know. And what did God think with this incredible technological innovation of humankind?

26:39
Genesis Chapter 11, verse 5, Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower.

26:46
Which mortals had built, and Yahweh said, look, they are one people and they have all one language and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they proposed to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there so that they will not.

27:06
Understand one another. Speech. Did you catch that?

27:09
God said us. Do you see that? What was that verse 6 verse seven. Come, let us.

27:17
Well, hold on a second. I thought there's only one God in heaven above. Who's he talking to? Talking to somebody? Alright. Anyhow, whoever God's talking to is also going down to help with the confusion project so that they will not understand one another. Verse eight. So the Lord or Yahweh scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth.

27:37
And they left off building the city. Therefore it was called baby.

27:40
People, because Yahweh confused the language of all the earth, and from there Yahweh scattered them abroad over the face of all the Earth. This explains why we have the table of nations in Chapter 10, which just came before this, and why they're scattered all over the earth and they all have different languages. Genesis 11 is explaining chapter 10. They are kind of like mutually reinforcing.

28:01
Each other.

28:03
This is the origin of different languages overtime, of course. Then you'd have more languages developing and regional dialects and so forth. But it's really interesting if you if you ask linguists about language families, they'll tell you there are these, like really primitive language families out of which came all these other languages.

28:24
Different linguists will have different lists. This is just from Wikipedia talking about the the biggest family language names and the number of.

28:31
Languages for each of.

28:33
These family groups, the first one being the Atlantic Congo languages. So Congo very, very strong representation in the Language Department, 1453.

28:43
Languages are part of this family. Then they have the Austronesian languages, 12123 Sino Tibetan languages 453, and.

28:53
In Indo European languages, which is where all romance languages come from, including the one I'm speaking to you in, only 448 of those languages. But yeah, we got 3 billion people speaking them. So we're doing all right and then you've got these Afro Asiatic languages and New Guinea and and so on and so forth and.

29:14
The list goes on and on and on and on. But you know, the linguists, they trace back languages. They're like, OK, French.

29:21
And English, they seemed like they probably go back and then OK, where did Latin come from? Came from some some other language before it. And they just kind of trace everything back. And they're like, you know, there were these original language families that don't seem to be related to each other.

29:38
As if.

29:39
They just popped into existence. These different language families and then developed into these different languages we know today really interesting corroborating observation there of the Tower of Babel incident. So anyhow, God saw that their cooperation was not good.

29:55
You know, if you're reading in Genesis 11 for the first time, you might say to yourself.

30:00
Well, they're all one language that's good. They can understand each other. They're cooperating, at least killing any anybody else. They're building a tower. That's cool. Engineering technology. Good, good, good. But then you get that part where it says to make a name for themselves, lest they be scattered. Maybe there's there's something that.

30:20
God knows that we don't, as far as like what happens when humans cooperate together, and that probably would have still been fresh in his mind from the flu.

30:29
Because during the time of the flood, everyone spoke the same language, they all cooperated and what kind of a world did we make people? What kind of a a paradise did we have with the same language and an unrestrained unlimited technological innovation?

30:45
This is how it's described, Genesis 65. The Lord saw that the wickedness of humans was great in the Earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.

30:57
Wow. Wow. Wow.

31:00
This is so relevant today. We want to develop technology, we want to have AI, we want to have all this, you know, medical technology, OK, it also needs an ethical core. You need to have some sort of way of understanding. Like, how do we use it for our good and not to harm ourselves? Look at the way the world was right.

31:21
Before the flood, verse 11 of Genesis 6 says now the Earth was corrupt in God's sight and the earth was.

31:26
Filled with peace.

31:30
That's not what it says. It says it was filled with violence.

31:34
And God saw that the Earth was corrupt for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the Earth, suffered brother Noah.

31:40
Noah was blameless in his day. He walked righteously with God, right? So it's not like you had to only choose evil. We still had a choice. It's just everyone did choose evil, and then we influenced each other in that as well. And so God sees what's happening with the Tower of Babel and he's like.

31:58
Do we want to do this again? Let's just slow it down a little bit, languages.

32:05
And everybody spreads out.

32:08
But there's even more going on here. Look at Deuteronomy, chapter 32. This may just blow your mind. Deuteronomy 32, verse seven. Is the song that Moses gave to the children of Israel. And it's reflecting back on the Tower of Babel centuries and centuries and centuries later. OK.

32:29
And so this is where it says.

32:31
Remember the days of old?

32:33
Consider the years long past. So this is like 1500 years before Christ or whatever. Whenever Moses was, and then he's referring to days long past from him. So he's referring way, way back.

32:45
Says he asked your father. He will inform and his father was that old. It's incredible. Ask your father. He will inform you, your elders. And they will tell you when the most high apportioned the nations. When he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the Sons of God, Yahweh's own portion.

33:06
As his people Jacob his allotted share.

33:10
When did God divide the nations? It was at the Tower of Babel. That's where he divided the the nations. How did he determine how many languages like original family groups of languages?

33:20
It was according to the number of the Sons of God. Now, if you wanna speculate and say, well, Genesis chapter 10 has seventy nations listed. So maybe there's seventy sons of God. I don't know. Maybe that's the way to look at.

33:33
It maybe not.

33:34
But however many of these sons of God there are, that's how many nation groups God split them into.

33:40
At that time. And then he says to his own people that they are his portion.

33:46
So God's.

33:49
Death the nation of himself.

33:53
God no longer is working with global humanity after Genesis Chapter 11. He's now going to find a single couple, Abram and Sarai. He's going to call them right out of that same place, right out of Shinar, right out of ur of the Chaldees right showed you the Ziggurat. He's going to call him right out of that place, and he's going to say to them.

34:15
Stick with me and I will give you the land.

34:19
You know, and be faithful to me. And that's what Abraham and Sarah, which is what their names became changed to. That's what they do. They they are completely faithful to Yahweh. First human beings like that. Well, I mean, maybe you could say no and Enoch. But like, really, really incredible, incredible faithfulness. And so then they have their children and their children have children and their their grandchild's name.

34:40
Is.

34:40
Israel and he has twelve sons, and they become the 12 tribes of Israel and God says to them after he takes them out of Egypt, he he brings them to himself and he gives them these laws. And he says you are my portion. God says you. You're the people I'm working with and he's assigned these sons of God to work with the other nations.

35:01
Around the world.

35:03
They're going to do all that and he's going to do Israel.

35:06
Now there is more to say about this, but I just want to show you another verse that supports this and it's due to around before 19 which says and when you look up to the heavens and see the sun, the moon and the stars, and all the hosts of heaven do not be LED astray and bow down to them and serve them. Things that Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples, everywhere under heaven.

35:28
Isn't that weird? Is that how you thought that was gonna go? I would think it would say. And nobody should worship them because they're not real gods. And and it's stupid to worship the host of heaven. He doesn't say that he's like. No, that's for the nations. They all that's been assigned to them, you know, they're going to worship them that's allotted to them. But verse 20. But Yahweh has taken.

35:49
New and brought you out of the iron smelter out of Egypt to become a people of his very own possession as you are now. God is not working with the nations. That's why the Old Testament is so focused on Israel. It's not like he doesn't care about them at all.

36:03
You find little hints here and there where people from the nations like like rehab will join Israel, or Moses's father-in-law seems to have a relationship with the true God Jethro. And and there's other little examples here and there. But by and large, you're always just going to work with Israel and then through Abraham and his descendants that become Israel, he's going to bless.

36:24
The nations he's going to do something to change.

36:27
The world forever.

36:29
And what is that he's going to do?

36:32
Well.

36:34
Jesus.

36:35
You know, we're going to get there.

36:36
Eventually, Jesus Christ is the.

36:39
Ultimate Israelite, the ultimate descendant of Abraham and Sarah. If you go back enough generations, you get to them, and so God calls Abraham and Sarah out of Babylonia.

36:50
And then they eventually become a nation. And then you go through enough years and finally get to Jesus Christ, and God initiates his plan of salvation through Jesus Christ. And he decides that he is now going to take back the nations.

37:06
He's going to take back the nation.

37:09
The gods that Yahweh assigned to watch over these nations do not behave themselves well in the Psalm 82. It says God has taken his place in the divine counsel in the midst of the gods he holds judgment. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? You see that.

37:28
So there's God.

37:30
And he's talking to the gods.

37:33
He's talking to these gods and he's saying to them you guys stink.

37:37
You're doing a bad job with these nations. How long will you judge unjustly verse two and show partiality to the wicked? Verse three give justice to the weak and the orphan maintain the right of the lowly and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy. Deliver them from the hand of the wicked. They have neither knowledge nor understanding. They walk around in darkness.

37:58
All the foundations of the Earth are shaken. I say. You are gods, children of the most high, also called Sons of God. Right, all of you. Nevertheless you shall die like mortals and fall like any Prince. Rise up. O God. Judge the earth for all the nations belong to you.

38:17
This is the psalmist crying out to God saying God, there's so much injustice everywhere. Rise up, judge the nations take them back.

38:26
Well, you don't just take them.

38:27
Back.

38:28
There's a process, we call it the plan of redemption. Yeah. It starts with Abraham and Sarai and it, you know, goes through all these different generations till you get to Jesus Christ. But once Jesus does his thing, salvation is now available not just to the Jews, but to all people.

38:46
Who will call upon the name of the Lord? Everyone who will respond to the message. And so let's return to.

38:52
Acts chapter 2.

38:54
When the day of Pentecost is finally here, we've got Jewish people from all these different nations, and they're all gathered in Jerusalem. And God does something incredible to get everyone's attention.

39:08
It's really, really spectacular and in acts chapter 2, verse one, it says when the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place and suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting, divided tongues as a fire appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each.

39:27
To.

39:27
Them.

39:28
All were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the spirit gave them ability. So much of this is the language of sacred space.

39:39
In sacred spaces you have wind because you're high.

39:43
I don't think they were high up in this house. OK, but they're they're getting this weird wind, this violent rushing wind.

39:53
And then the this fire and you know when God reveals himself to Elijah at Mount Horeb, there there's there's, you know, a violent rushing wind. And then there's a fire and, you know, these are manifestations of God's presence. These are what you would expect on the top of a ziggurat on the top of a mountain, you'd get some of this.

40:12
Right. And yet where are how is it all working? Is it by building a tower to?

40:16
The sky. No, no, no.

40:17
No. God is bringing something down. God is bringing something down to them, and there's this sense, this ominous sense of something spiritual happening, the presence of God is here. It's a little weird what's going on, you know, like I'm sure it was a little freaky in that moment. And what is it that God's doing?

40:39
He's in dwelling people.

40:42
Through his spirit.

40:44
That's what he's doing.

40:46
He's indwelling people through his spirit. That's what all the temples in the ancient world were.

40:50
For.

40:51
It was, it was to be a dwelling place for the gods. And yet here God comes to the people on Pentecost and says join my temple.

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I'm going to dwell inside of you.

41:02
Incredible. It's a reversal of Babel. It's a reversal of the separation into all these languages and and God saying I'm not dealing with you anymore.

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Go talk to your mother and then you know or not your mother. Go talk to the other guys and you know, and I'm just gonna work with this one people. And now God's saying no, I am taking. I'm I am. I want you back and not just the Jewish people. I want all people from every nation and language to be my own.

41:31
It's an incredible moment in human history where God is now taking the the benefits won by Jesus and applying them in this huge public way.

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You don't need to build a tower to reach heaven. Heaven has come down on Pentecost.

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Hallelujah.

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Look at verse 5 now. There were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem and at the sound.

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So that people.

41:57
Heard the sound. The crowd gathered and was bewildered because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each, and then we get this. This whole list of all these different places.

42:10
And then finally we get down to verse 12. All we're amazed and perplexed saying to one another. What does this mean? What does it mean?

42:20
What's going on?

42:22
Well, it's a temporary miraculous reversal of Babylon, where everybody understands for a moment.

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The mighty works of God, that God is among these people in a special way that you've never seen anything like before, and they're going to change the world.

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And that's what the.

42:44
Do.

42:45
Why did God give the spirit? According to the Book of Acts acts chapter One, verse 8, and you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea. And that's it, cause all we care about is the Jewish people.

43:02
That's not what it says.

43:04
It says Anne Samaria, the the sworn enemy of the Jewish people. You can't even say the word Samaria around a Jew in the 1st century and.

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Not have the guy.

43:12
Spit on the ground.

43:14
I hate the Samaritan.

43:16
That's the 1st place Phillip goes. You remember Phillip. He goes to Samaria. He says these people need Jesus. That's what they need. And he preaches Jesus to him. It's such it's so controversial that nobody can even process it. They're like, you know.

43:30
So if you did you, you did a nice job. But let's go get the apostles and see what they think. So they they sent for the apostles, the apostles come all the way to Samaria. And they're like, no, they're real Christians. Like we gotta take them. We gotta, we have to say, brother and sister to these Samaritans.

43:48
Oh my goodness. And to the ends of the earth is where we come in America Hallelujah. To the ends of the earth that God is taking the nations back. That's the book of acts. Philip goes to Samaria. He finishes with Samaria. Who does he see next?

44:05
An African on his way South of Egypt. Forget Egypt. They did. The Ethiopians didn't come to Pentecost. We're gonna get them the message another way.

44:15
Send Philip over there. He preaches to the Ethiopian treasurer and he brings it back with him. And then we start getting these missionary trips. Peter speaks to the Italians, to Cornelius, a saurian.

44:29
Translation, bad guy. He becomes a good guy. He flips, he becomes a he becomes a Christian in his household and then Paul and Barnabas, they start going on the mystery trip they go to, they go to Cypress, old, hit them, and then they go north into the area of Piscidia passivity and Antioch. And he goes throughout all the continent and eventually goes to Europe.

44:51
And it's just incredible. By the end of the 1st century, Christianity has.

44:54
Spread all over the Mediterranean world.

44:59
How did it happen that fast?

45:01
Preparation over centuries, God had spread these Jewish congregations or not. Congregations, synagogues all over. And they were kind of preparing the way. And there's a lot more that goes into it. But Pentecost is is sort of like the sounding of the so far where God says, let's go. Let's take the nations back. And from there blooms.

45:22
Out and out and out until this is literally just the 1st century map.

45:28
We're 20 centuries later. If I showed you the map today, it would have billions of people on it.

45:36
One out of every three on the planet would say they believe in Jesus today.

45:41
And he's still doing it. He's still taking the nations back, but he's not taking them back politically. Jesus does not say go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to have the same politics as you. No, he goes.

45:55
Make disciples of me of Jesus not of you know, whatever it is we're doing right. Make disciples of Jesus of all these nations. And so it's not taking over the governments of the nations. It's reaching into the nations and finding those who are hungry for God who are thirsty for the spirit of God.

46:15
So that they can drink of it and be satisfied and and that's what we're still doing. I mean, look at us as a congregation just locally. We've got people from so many different nations here and ethnicities. And we call each other brother and we call each other sister.

46:30
It's really powerful. God is still taking the nations back on Pentecost 3000, Jewish people became Christians. Many of them went home and shared the good news.

46:42
Then the missionaries went out and it was just like dominoes falling as they traveled and they preached.

46:49
And it's likely that even brother Thomas made it all the way to India.

46:53
In the 1st century.

46:55
That's just come on, this map is is so W focused it it. It really bothers me because we know Christians were in Persia. We know Christians went down to Arabia, and we know Christians went E like to the Far East. But whatever. I didn't make them out.

47:13
Let's just close in Revelation Chapter 5.

47:16
You are part of an international family of God.

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The miracle of Pentecost is still with us today. Look at look at, look at what's the what's the end goal? God, what's the end goal? They sang a new song. You are worthy to take the scroll and to break its seals. For you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransom for God's Saints from every tribe and language and people and nation.

47:41
And you have made them a king.

47:44
And priests serving our God, and they will reign on the earth. Ultimately God is going to get what he originally wanted, and then it it it turned into a disaster with the flood. And then he slowed it down at Babylon until he was able to work with the different family and legacy over time to develop.

48:03
And grow in their understanding and their faithfulness. You gave them the law, the Torah, so that they'd have just rules to live by. And then finally we get Christ. And then after Christ, it's like it's time to be not a Messiah.

48:16
We need scent ones. We need apostles. We need people that are going to go out and spread this message until finally on that last day when Jesus returns, it's not just Jews. It's not just Americans. It's people from every nation and language and people. Isn't that beautiful?

48:44
Well, that brings this sermon to an end. What did you think? Come on over to restitutio.org and leave your feedback there under Episode 560 Pentecost, reversing Babel. I'd be curious to hear what your thoughts and questions are.

49:00
On a previous episode, 557 bridging the Testaments with George Athos.

49:06
Peter wrote in as well as Troy, both commenting on Amos Chapter 8, and I'd like to respond to that a little bit. But first let me read out Peter's comment, he says. I also have wondered about the source and veracity of the claim of 400 plus years of silence. The Septuagint was written during this period.

49:26
Does that.

49:27
Count does Amos 811 to 14 prophesy of this period? Well, Peter, I'm not sure what Doctor Athos would say if he thinks the Septuagint would count or not count the Septuagint is absolutely a massive influence in the Greek church. And of course, Dr. Athos does come to us.

49:47
From the Greek church.

49:48
But holding that to the side for a moment in the Septuagint, we don't have new prophecy, right? So I don't think that is really what we're looking at in the sense of a profit. These are translators. These are scribes. These are presumably people that God is leading to do this work.

50:08
Really had a huge impact on the New Testament authors as well, but I don't think that really is what we're talking about here as far as prophecy goes, and I don't think we're necessarily talking about prophecy in the sense of new Scripture.

50:23
Either just any profit that comes along and speaks to the rulers of the people now, it could also be that this is a semantic issue where in the classic Old Testament sense the prophets prophesied to the king and there weren't kings anymore until the Hasmonean period.

50:43
But I think that's too restrictive anyhow, because we do find John the Baptist, who is clearly regarded as a prophet and later on later on a New Testament times. There are other mentioned prophets as well like Agabus and so forth. So let's go on to Troy's question, which dovetails nicely with Peter. As Troy says, I really like this interview.

51:03
I learned some things, but I would like to push back on the point that Mr. I think that Doctor Atheist Troy made about it being a myth that the intertestamental centuries were characterized by prophetic silence. I was surprised that Amos, 811 to 12 was not brought up where God says that the days are coming when he would send a famine.

51:09
There's.

51:25
Through the land of hearing, the words of Yahweh.

51:29
This surely implies that there would be no prophets declaring God's word during this time of famine. My question would be, when was this prophecy fulfilled? If not during the Intertestamental period, there were still prophets bringing the word of Yahweh during and after the Babylonian captivity. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Haggai.

51:49
Mcgarrah Malachi and then in the beginning of the New Testament, we see John come on the scene. So who are the prophets who spoke the word of Yahweh in between them?

51:59
Doctor Athos kind of implied that John was proof that God had not stopped speaking, but John can be seen as the first prophet after the prophesied famine of the word was over. Yes, there was a flurry of Jewish writings during this period, but can we say with any confidence that these writings?

52:18
Are true specimens of God speaking to his people. I tend to doubt it. Much of it sounds like man without the spirit trying to compensate for the lack of true revelation from God during that period. What are your thoughts on this?

52:33
Well, Troy, that is a lot to respond to. I I have a couple of thoughts. Initially, my thought is that Amos?

52:44
Is very early, probably prophesying from 760 to 750 BC.

52:51
Now Amos was from Judah, but he prophesied in the northern country of Israel.

52:57
And in Amos Chapter 8, when he mentions about the famine of Prophecies, this is something that could have been fulfilled at any point in history. This is something that could have been fulfilled between the time of Amos and Hosea. It could have been fulfilled after the people were taken out of the land. Let me just give you a timeline. So.

53:17
Miss prophesied in northern Israel during a time of relative prosperity. Decadence, moral decline.

53:24
Line from 760 to 750 BC then Hosea comes on the scene from 7:50 to 7:22 and he prophesized, if you recall about Israel as an unfaithful wife, and he prophesied right through to the taking away of the northern Israel.

53:44
To Assyria in seven 22721 BC.

53:49
There could be a time of prophetic famine anywhere in that period. I don't think Amos prophesied every day if he took a year off, that would be, that would qualify as a famine of prophecy. If Hosea took ten years off during his 30 year tenure, that would qualify.

54:08
But certainly at 722 BC and going forward, there is a very lengthy period of a famine of prophecy in northern Israel because northern Israel is overrun by people that the Assyrians transplanted into that.

54:23
Land. So that would certainly qualify as a fulfillment of that prophecy, reaching all the way forward 4 centuries to like the three hundreds or five centuries to the two hundreds. I think it's just beyond the scope of that prophecy.

54:39
Not that it would be impossible, but it just seems like a special pleading in that case, so I don't think Amos really has anything to do with this alleged period of.

54:48
Violence, as far as your other questions go about well, OK, if it's not a period of prophetic silence, then who were? Who were the?

54:55
Prophets.

54:56
I think that's a legitimate question, but I think also at the same time, we have to say that we don't know the prophets in most generations. We just know the ones that the Bible mentions. So I I think it is a little difficult to get at that.

55:09
I would say if you're really curious, I'd you'd have to get Doctor Aziz's book, bridging the Testaments and.

55:16
Look at it. There is kind of a discrepancy though between athos's approach and most of our approach in that he probably dates a lot of the Old Testament documents to a much later time than I certainly would. So his case depends to some degree on.

55:36
Dating Daniel, if you think Daniel is during the Hasmonean period like liberal scholars tend to, then you are going to see that as a clear exception to this idea of prophetic silence.

55:50
Which I have never been convinced by that case. A lot of times they date Bible books based on vocabulary, which I think Peter Gentry has totally disproved this idea because of course the Hebrew scribes are going to update the vocabulary every so many centuries so that people could read it. And it could be relevant. And the kids could.

56:09
Understand it.

56:11
So yes, there are redactors hands on all over the Old Testament because it needed to be edited as time went by so that people could understand what it said. And you see this sometimes quite explicitly where it says, well, this city was named this in old times, what we call it this today, somebody came along and said, well, we haven't called that.

56:31
That name in so long that nobody's going to know what this is talking about, so let's update it. And this is something that the scholars detect and they're like, oh, well, this is really in its final form dated to the Babylonian exile or something like that. Or there has been in period, which I I just.

56:48
I I'm not saying that's the case for Daniel. I think that's kind of a separate issue, but I I think that that's just a a methodology that proves too much and doesn't recognize.

57:02
The community effect on a text that is preserved over centuries, which has to be factor.

57:08
Fair.

57:08
Then.

57:09
Anyhow, Troy, you did ask about the apocryphal writings and the other sort of the graphical writings, the words you used was there was a flurry of Jewish writings during this period. Yes, indeed there was. Right, we have Tobit.

57:24
We have first, second, third, 4th Maccabees we have.

57:28
Esdras. We have bell and the dragon. We have a lot of literature from this period. All the Enoch literature.

57:37
And so forth. So so I always have thought about these kinds of books in the sense of the Jewish people being the qualified stewards of the Canon of the Old Testament. And Paul says something like this in Romans where he says they are the stewards of the oracles of God. And the Jews have done a good job.

57:57
That's sort of like the Christian general take on it. Not all Christians, but most Christians, certainly Protestant Christians, are just like, you know what, we just think the Jews have done a good job preserving scripture and deciding what should be scripture and what should not be.

58:11
Scripture and the Jewish people themselves have decided that the apocryphal literature and the pseudepigraphical literature is not on the same level as the tanach. As the Torah, the nevi'im, the ketuvim, the law of the prophets, and the writings. It's not what we would call Old Testament so.

58:32
That doesn't mean that there were no profits in the period. It just means that there are no profits on the level of inspired Scripture during that period.

58:43
So I don't know. I kind of agree with Athos that you know, imposing this 400 years of silence and saying, oh, we're never going to think about this intertestamental period. Of course he doesn't like the term inter testamental because he does late date a lot of the Old Testament books. And so he really does see the Old Testament spanning all the way to the time of the New Testament.

59:06
But whatever, it's a technicality. That's semantics. My point is, I think he's right that we need to care about this period of time, this 400 years before Christ's time, because without it you cannot understand the New Testament. I think assets made a very strong case that there are several books of the Bible and the Old Testament, Zechariah, he went back to.

59:26
A number of times that you cannot understand if you don't put it in its.

59:30
Persian context.

59:30
Next.

59:31
And so I think his points are still worth considering, and if you're really interested in it, take a look at his book and see what you think. Well, that's going to draw our time to an end for today. Thanks everybody for listening here to the end. If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitutio.org. We'll catch you next week.

59:51
And remember the truth.

59:53
Has nothing to fear.