Unity in Diversity: Pentecost as the Fulfillment of Babel

CONTENTSI. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1II. Babel……………………………………………………………………………………2III. Pentecost……………………………………………………………………………….5IV. Pentecost as a Fulfillment of Babel………………………………………………………8V. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………9VI. BibliographyGen 11:9 states that at Babel man was separated and divided into different tribes, peoples and nations; all of whom spoke different languages. And, as it turned out, this was both a blessing and a curse. It was a blessing because: Man was now obedient to God's will; the many facets of human talent and ability were set free to flourish; and, mankind could not band together for evil purposes. And even God recognized this potential for evil, when He said, "Nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." He also knew that the key to preventing this was to inhibit their common language and so, "…the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth." But, the dispersion and confusion of languages was also a curse: Men were disunified, disenfranchised, and marked by suspicion, estrangement, and hatred for, and of, anyone different than themselves.

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It was indeed at Babel that "…the earth was divided." Two thousand years later an event occurs, which also involves a multiplicity of languages-it is called the Pentecost. At the same time similar and yet different, people were awash in wonderment and confused by the ability of relatively uneducated, ordinary men to make the Gospel of Jesus Christ simultaneously intelligible to the ingathered Jew and Gentile of the Diaspora. In his book, Pentecost and Missions, Dr. Harry Boer says, "At Babel the nations came into being, the nations in their religious alienation from God, in all their earthly power and achievement, and in all their ultimate and spiritual powerlessness. At Pentecost they began to be resolved into the "people of God as the message of the gospel was addressed to Jewish [and Gentile] representatives of the nations of the...