Biblically Speaking: God is Not the Author of Confusion

6 minutes read

(1 Corinthians 14:33) For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.

But would you believe that in order to execute God’s will for people to populate, fill, and subdue the earth, God ‘confused’ the only one language of people living on earth in those times? This is how the story goes.

(Genesis 11:1-8 ) And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, 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 upon the face of the whole earth. And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men built. And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

God’s command to the family of Noah to repopulate or replenish the earth is ecologically sound. People must not only inhabit a particular place and let the other places of the earth be dominated by beasts and wild animals. Humankind, and not beast, must subdue the earth.

(Ezekiel 14:13,15) Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it: If I cause noisome beasts to pass through the land, and they spoil it, so that it be desolate, that no man may pass through because of the beasts…

Because of their apparent resistance on God’s will, God confused their language. That event that happened in the Tower of Babel saw the birth of different nations and languages in the human family.The rest is history.

Historically, there are four groups of ancient languages.

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Quick Facts:

Linguists divide the Semitic languages into four groups. The North Peripheral group is represented by the Assyro-Babylonian language, or Akkadian. The oldest attested Semitic language, with the oldest Semitic literature, Akkadian was spoken in Mesopotamia between about 3000 bc and 600-400 bc and used as a literary language until the 1st century ad.

The North Central group includes the ancient and modern Hebrew language; ancient tongues such as Ugaritic and Phoenician; and the Aramaic language, including Syriac, or Christian Aramaic.

The South Central group consists of literary or Standard Arabic and the modern spoken Arabic dialects (see Arabic Language). Maltese, an offshoot of Arabic, is spoken on the island of Malta and, because of its location, has been heavily influenced by Italian.

The South Peripheral group consists of the South Arabic dialects, now spoken in parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula (and in ancient times by peoples such as the Minaeans and Sabaeans); and the languages of Ethiopia. The latter include Ge’ez, or classical Ethiopic, now surviving only as a literary and liturgical language; Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia; and regional Ethiopian languages such as Tigré, Tigrinya, and Gurage.
Encarta 2007

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Because of the confusion that happened, they were forced to scatter to all the habitable face of the earth. A group that does not understand the language or the speech of another group, was forced to depart and separate themselves as a group.

Another question arises: If humankind came from only one family, why the difference in color, physical features, etc.

The Bible tells us the root-cause and not necessarily the results. The results can be obtained in reality. Apparent reality can be traced back to the root-cause.

Mathematically, the more than six billion people that now populate the entire earth came from a much smaller stock in the early 19^th century, about six hundred million, and further, from eight souls that survived the great flood.

(1 Peter 3:20) Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Is there, by any chance, that a family may grow up to a huge global population of different colors, breeds, cultures, and physical features? The answer is, reality; but how?

The color of the skin is influenced by the environment. In places where there is abundance of scorching sunlight, people’s skin can turn darker.

(Songs of Solomon 1:6) Look not upon me, because I am black, because the sun hath looked upon me: my mother’s children were angry with me; they made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.

It may take a thousand years for the complete blackening of the skin of a particular race. No wonder there are now in reality black people because the human family have existed on earth for many thousands of years.

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Quick Facts:

Jablonski and Chaplin proposed an explanation for the observed variation of untanned human skin with annual UV exposure. By Jablonski and Chaplin’s explanation, there are two competing forces affecting human skin tone:

1. the melanin that produces the darker tones of human skin serves as a light filter to protect against too much UV light getting under the human skin where too much UV causes sunburn and disrupts the synthesis of precursors necessary to make human DNA; versus

2. humans need at least a minimum threshold of UV light to get deep under human skin to produce vitamin D, which is essential for building and maintaining the bones of the human skeleton.

Jablonski and Chaplin note that when human indigenous peoples have migrated, they have carried with them a sufficient gene pool so that within a thousand years, the skin of their descendants living today has turned dark or turned light to adapt to fit the formula given above–with the notable exception of dark-skinned peoples moving north, such as to populate the seacoast of Greenland, to live where they have a year-round supply of food rich in vitamin D, such as fish, so that there was no necessity for their skin to lighten to let enough UV under their skin to synthesize the vitamin D that humans need for healthy bones.

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Quick Facts:

The belief of the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-Day Adventists that the human family is only about six thousand years old is wrong. It is belied by physical evidences obtained recently by archaeologist.

The Bible shows that we are nearing the end of a full 6,000 years of human history.Awake!, October 8, 1968, p. 13-14 of the Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Mayan culture is believed to have existed in the American continent some thirty-five thousand years ago.

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Quick Facts:

Ancient Mayan Civilization

Perhaps as early as 35,000 years ago, nomadic people came from Asia to the Americas across the frozen Bering Strait. In the course of many millennia, their descendants settled in and adapted to different environments, creating many cultures in North America, Central America, and South America. The Mayan culture emerged in the lowland area of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands to the south, in what is now southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, western Honduras, and Belize. Many aspects of this culture persist in the area despite nearly half a millennium of European domination. All evidence, whether from archaeology, history, ethnography, or linguistic studies, points to a cultural continuity in this region. The descendants of the first settlers in the area have lived there for at least three millennia. http://www.country-studies.com/belize/ancient-mayan-civilization.html

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The question about different skin colors can biblically and scientifically be explained; But what about the different physical feature? All this on our next article.

Sincerely in Christ,

Brother Eli Soriano