PREVIOUSLY, we talked about Noah who was instructed by God, my God, the God of Moses and Israel, who sent His only and beloved Son Jesus Christ, to us and who willingly became man through the Blessed Virgin Mary, suffered and died on the cross to redeem us from the consequences of sin so that we may have eternal life with Them in paradise, to build an ark. The ark was to save Noah and his family and two of each animal from the flood that would destroy all of mankind and everything on earth. God was displeased with mankind which had been corrupted by sin and the devil.
The only humans that were saved after the great flood were Noah and his family. The descendants of Noah increased in number. There was a lot of in breeding, cousins marrying cousins. Because of this, the average height of Noah’s descendants was four feet, and they were not that smart. However, even though they were short, they had large heads and were full of pride. As they increased in number, they began to spread eastward and found a fertile area called Shinar. They all spoke a single language called Noahbyte which was a fusion of Chinese and French.
They decided to build a city with a tower that “reached to the heavens”. The people of Babel said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Being simple-minded, the Noahbytes thought that heaven was not far above the earth. If only they could build a tower to the sky, they could climb up and be like gods themselves. So, mankind had once again lost sight of God and become arrogant and self-sufficient. They thought that if they could reach heaven by building a skyscraper that would reach the clouds they could become gods once they set foot in heaven.
They also thought that everyone of them could live in the building, like a condominium. Each family would have its own condo. After all, it would be the world’s tallest building. But elevators had not yet been invented. According to the architect, it would take a four foot Noahbyte three whole months to walk up the stairs to the penthouse suite. Everyone wanted the ground floor condos and no one wanted any condo higher than the 10th floor. The penthouse suites were being given away for free and there were no takers.
How high was the Tower of Babel? Let’s compare it to the tallest building in the world in 1929 which was the Chrysler building in America at 319M. The Taipei 101 was the tallest for six years since 2004 at 508M. Now the record is held by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai at 828M since 2009, replacing the Shanghai Tower at 632M. The tallest building in the world is now being constructed in Changsa, China for completion next year 2014 at 838M. So, given the low tech construction technology of the Noahbytes, probably the Tower of Babel was 150M high. That’s a lot of mud and rocks.
God saw this as pure arrogance. He put an end to the people’s delusions of being powerful and important like gods. “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So, God made the people speak many different languages so they could not work together on building the tower. The architect told the engineer to calculate the stress load for the third floor in Spanish. The engineer replied “I don’t understand you” in Mandarin. The foreman told the carpenter to finish the stairs immediately in Japanese. The carpenter replied, “What the f… are you saying” in Tagalog.
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