Some Go to Great Lengths to Avoid God, March 3

Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad. Genesis 11:4. Some of the descendants of Noah soon began to apostatize.... They journeyed a distance ... and selected a large plain wherein to dwell. There they built a city, and then conceived the idea of erecting a large tower to reach unto the clouds, that they might dwell together in the city and tower, and be no more scattered. They reasoned that they would secure themselves in case of another flood, for they would build their tower to a much greater height than the waters prevailed in the time of the Flood, and all the world would honor them.... Before the work of building was accomplished, people dwelt in the tower. Rooms gorgeously furnished and decorated were devoted to their idols....—The Signs of the Times, March 20, 1879. But among the people of Babel there were living some God-fearing persons who had been deceived by the pretensions of the ungodly and drawn into their schemes. These would not join this confederacy to thwart the purposes of God. They refused to be deceived by the wonderful representations and the grand outlook. For the sake of these faithful ones, the Lord delayed His judgments and gave the people time to reveal their true character.... This confederacy was born of rebellion against God. The dwellers on the plain of Shinar established their kingdom for self-exaltation, and not for the glory of God.... Determined individuals, inspired by the first great rebel, would have been urged on by him and would have permitted nothing to interfere with their plans or to stop them in their evil course. In the place of the divine precepts they would have substituted laws framed in accordance with the desires of their selfish hearts, in order that they might carry out their purposes. But God never leaves the world without witnesses for Him. Those who loved and feared Him at the time of the first great apostasy after the Flood humbled themselves and cried unto Him. “O God,” they pleaded, “interpose Thyself between Thy cause and the plans and methods of men.”“And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.” ... God bears long with the perversity of human beings, giving them ample opportunity for repentance, but He marks all their devices to resist the authority of His just and holy law. As an evidence of His displeasure over the building of this tower, He confounded the language of the builders, so that none could understand the words of fellow workers.—Manuscript 94, 1903 (Manuscript Releases 8:42, 43).