Satan and the City
A Campaign to Move Outside the Camp
By Paul W. Syltie
Preface
Like many farm-raised boys I was very comfortable among the trees, pastures, fields, and flowers, the deer, pheasants, and meadow larks of the Northern Plains. The warm, fragrant summer days and blinding winter blizzards were a welcome part of life that I took for granted. Strong family ties with other farmers in the area created a network of security and love which helped us all weather the strongest storms of nature … and of life itself. There were aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, cousins and grandparents, and friendly neighbors who were ready to step in and fill the gap whenever sickness or tragedy struck.
Those days of my youth during the 1950s and 1960s created a solid foundation for appreciating and respecting the creation that profoundly revealed an amazingly beautiful order of things. While farm work was hard — feeding and milking cows, mowing hay fields, baling and stacking hay, plowing and disking fields, picking rocks, and repairing fences — it was most rewarding, built upon the framework of the family farm enterprise. The soil was our builder and sustainer, the resource upon which we thrived. The entire family took this reality for granted, for it was what comprised our livelihood. It was enough … and it was good.
However, life on the farm was not an easy existence. Prices were low for grain and milk, and costs were ever-increasing for machinery, fuel, fertilizers, chemicals, and taxes. My older brother decided to leave the farm for the big city of St. Paul and take a job with 3M. My older sister attended nursing school in Minneapolis, then Concordia College in Moorhead. That left me on the farm with dad and mom, plus a younger brother. Dad appreciated my desire to remain on the farm and follow in his footsteps, but knew that economic hardships he had been facing were unlikely to improve any time soon, so advised that I achieve some education as a fallback option in case, should I return to the farm, things did not work as planned.
I took my father’s advice and achieved a Bachelor’s Degree in soil science from the University of Minnesota, served in the U.S. Army for two years, and went even a step further, achieving a Master’s Degree in soil fertility from the University of Illinois. My academic accomplishments had been high, so it seemed only logical to add another degree behind my name before returning to farm for a lifetime. The stage was now set for a permanent return to the land of my nativity, a rest from the hubbub and insanity of the world’s cultures.
While attending the University of Minnesota in St. Paul I was thrust into the cauldron of the big city environment. Though the agricultural campus was rather isolated from St. Paul and populated by other farm kids, we were still thrust into the maelstrom of big city life all around. Minneapolis was only a stone’s throw away, and St. Paul and its suburbs were little different. Cars, trucks, and buses plied the noisy streets, noisily belching their disgusting fumes while students and worried pedestrians hurried along the sidewalks. At night the city lights blazing into the sky obscured all but the brightest stars. There seemed to be no peace amongst the worried people: a vacant restlessness pervaded most everyone. I could not put my finger on the source of this enervation. Was it my imagination that these citizens of the city had somehow morphed into a collective mentality that thrust them into an immoral mindset ? I noticed that the morality of some friends whom I knew well who also attended there had relaxed once they had migrated into the city.
The same collapse of individuality and rise in collective impersonal behavior puzzled me whenever I entered the confines of a city. I saw it in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, during graduate work there. I saw it in the various cities where I worked after leaving the failed farming venture with my father after returning to home farm. My work as research director for agricultural firms, first in Dallas, Texas, and then in eastern Texas, took me to cities all over the globe: London, Paris, Frankfurt, Cairo, Johannesburg, Melbourne, Beijing, Santiago, Caracas, Damascus, Bangkok, Taipei, and Seoul to name a few. They all exuded the same character, the same vibration. It was as if the same spirit inhabited them all. I did not like it
The spirit that repelled me in the city drove me to the countryside. There I felt an aura of peace once again, in the fields and byways of the various lands where I traveled as an agricultural advisor. We usually entered the city for the night’s stay, and from a lonely hotel room I would crave to again travel the next day into the countryside. The trees, meadows, and creatures that inhabited them called to me, and I found peace and refuge amongst them.
Thus continued my search for an understanding of those deep-seated feelings regarding population centers. The unease I had about them had always driven me to return to the farm for the summer during college years, and to locate our family in a rural area wherever we lived. My wife and I had six children, and we felt compelled to raise them within a farm-like environment, in part because we both were farm kids, but more so because we wanted our children to grow up free of the unpleasant influences that both of us knew rested painfully within the confines of all cities.
So here I am in my 78th year of life, with my wife of 56 years, living on a farmstead in eastern South Dakota, in as peaceful and pleasant a place as one can imagine, outside the city, a long ways from any large city, and some distance from the nearest town of any size. We are living our beliefs.
Then, less than two months ago, at an annual fellowship of believers, I listened to a recording of a message entitled “Outside the Camp.” I was dumbstruck by the message as it related how Scripture pointedly refers to the need for Christians to live “outside the camp” in today’s world, just as God’s people were instructed to do in ancient times. The camp — at least one definition of a camp — is the city. This revelation of God’s view on cities and camps resonated suddenly within my heart and mind, for it signaled an answer to the aversion I have felt within my spirit for as long as I can remember. It suddenly struck me as an assurance that my aversion to the city was not merely a personal preference based upon childhood dreams carried into adulthood, but rather has been a spiritually-guided force to insure that my family and I would always live within a rural environment in our largely urbanized world.
This recent experience while being among God’s people has been the catalyst for this incredibly important topic, for the present-day mantra continues to be for people to move to the city … be captured by its insidious character, and meld with its mentality. As a result of the wonderful revelations that the spirt of God has poured out regarding cities and camps, I now feel ready to share with you a dissertation on what the city really represents, and why we all should shun its environment. Recall how Lot chose the city of Sodom in which to live, while Abram chose the pasturelands and hills outside of the city. Lot was, by the angels’ quick intervention, saved from fire and brimstone in a nick of time — and was saved by leaving the city, not by remaining there to perish along with the other sin-laden Sodomites. That is only the beginning.
Please join me in this most provocative exploration of the city and the camp, and what they represent. I think you will find this most illuminating and sobering during this time of history when most people live in highly urbanized centers. If you live in one, perhaps this study will entice you to take the Eternal’s admonishment towards Babylon as recorded in Revelation 18:4-5.
“Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues, for her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.”
All cities are a part of Babylon. Let us carefully listen to God’s voice and heed His warnings.
Where are you meant to live?
I. A Brief History of Cities
How are you meant to Live?
Those two questions seem simple enough, but their ramifications are extremely far-reaching.
The answers to these questions determine a great deal about your life, including:
• Your lifespan
• The quality of life while you live
• Your physical well-being
• Your mental well-being
• Your spiritual well-being
Those issues essentially sum up most everything about our lives. We all wish to live rich and abundant lives, filled with joy, fulfillment of our dreams, prosperity, peace, and friendships. Those qualities happen to be the fruit of the spirit of God that lives within those who possess His spirit: love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23). It is the desire of our Creator that we possess those qualities in our character, and those that do possess them reap the joy and fulfillment in life that naturally proceed from them.
Does it follow, then, that someone who possesses and lives by this fruit of the spirit will gravitate towards living within the ideal environment meant for him? Would joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control be congruent with living within a particular setting, a specially created place surrounded by other aspects of the creation?
The Eden of Adam
To answer that question we must first look closely at the perfect environment which our Creator prepared for the people made in His image, and also at the character of that first human inhabitant of that place: the Garden of Eden. We read in Genesis 2:7-8,
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being [nephesh]. (1) The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed.”
This man was made in the express image [tselem] of Elohim (Genesis 1:27), and was truly a son of Elohim as stated in the lineage of Adam (Luke 3:38). As such, knowing that the Creator possesses perfect righteous character, and Adam was made in that express image, then Adam would also possess such flawless character. He would contain the love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness that the Creator God also inherently had, for “God is love” (I John 4:8).
So we find this first man, having perfect spiritual character, placed within a most beautiful setting, one that was designed to fulfill his every need, physically, mentally and spiritually. In that garden setting we find the following (Genesis 2:9, 19):
• Trees that were beautiful to look upon
• Trees that were good for food
• Trees to give life (the “Tree of Life”)
• Trees to bring death (the “Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”)
• Beasts, animals, and living creatures of every sort
• Birds and fish of every sort
Here we have a brief but cogent summary of the environment that Elohim created for Adam in which to live a life filled to the brim with love, joy, and kindness. The setting was gorgeous beyond imagination, having trees, some bearing fruit year-round that was excellent for abundant, healthful living, especially the Tree of Life, which ostensibly, if partaken of regularly, would impart eternal life in the flesh (Genesis 3:22). There were also various other plants that produced food.
“And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food’” (Genesis 1:29).
Adam’s function within this beautiful, productive garden was to tend (abad, “serve”) and keep (shamar, “guard, protect, attend to, hedge about”) the environs, exerting his energies upon maintaining the productivity and beauty of the garden. His work was filled with joy and fulfillment. His service was to His Maker, who was also in the garden, not far off (Genesis 3:8). Adam also was the head of the beautiful wife Eve, that Elohim extracted from him — Eve, who was fabricated from a part of his own body (Genesis 2:21-22). The two of them must have had an exquisite, fulfilling relationship while working to tend and keep the garden, that is, until Satan, the serpent, stepped in to tempt and deceive them.
We know that Eden also had a very benevolent climate, which greatly aided the idyllic lifestyle they enjoyed. A water canopy extended above the atmosphere (Genesis 1:6-7) to expedite energy transfer from equator to pole, and moderate temperatures world-wide. Thus, all of the earth presumably was not only habitable but moderate in temperature, with only marginally cooler temperatures towards the poles. Because of this water canopy above the earth, sunlight energy was filtered to yield light that did not possess dangerous skin-burning frequencies or glare.
The atmosphere was higher in oxygen content and the air pressure than today, meaning that bodies would be highly oxygenated to grant high levels of energy and freedom from disease. For instance, cancer cells cannot live in body tissues that are highly oxygenated. Moreover, the earth’s land mass was one gigantic continent, called “Pangea” by modern geologists, for the earth had not yet been divided (Genesis 10:25). Likely as not this dividing of the earth into continents occurred in part during the great tectonic upheavals accompanying the Great Flood. Also, gravity was less than it is today, and with this increase we have a shortened stature of man, animals, and plants, and together with less oxygen and air pressure, diseases are more prevalent than before the Flood.
Beauty and Productivity
We are given just a brief glimpse of the Garden of Eden in Genesis, but what a marvelous place it was! THIS IS THE TYPE OF ENVIRONMENT IN WHICH PEOPLE, MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE, ARE MEANT TO DWELL. The Creator of all designed this to be so, and by all means He knows what is best for us!
Unfortunately, with Adam and Eve’s sin our forbearers were removed from the Garden and had to face the prospect of death. Not only that, but their conception rate and pain in childbirth were greatly increased, the soil was cursed, and they and their offspring were forced to work hard to produce food on land that would grow weeds (thorns and thistles) which would compete with their food crops, so unlike in the Garden where food crops were available all year from perennial trees and plants, without significant work and sweat. Moreover, at the Flood the water canopy precipitated, and with that came lower air and oxygen pressure, increased gravity, and more dangerous solar radiation.
It was not long after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden that cities were built. The relatively idyllic, pastoral life that Adam, Eve, and their children experienced outside the Garden involved what we might call “agriculture.” People had to work with the soil, tilling it enough to make furrows for planting seeds, and then cutting down or uprooting weeds (“thorns and thistles”). Harvesting of grains was required rather than eating from established perennials that produced crops year-round with little tending needed. Adam and his descendants were forced into a farm economy that has continued to this very day.
It was not long after Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden that life began to take a major turn for the worse. We know of the tragic murder of Abel by Cain, (Genesis 4:5-12), and as a result of this the soils were cursed.
“When you till [abad] the ground, it shall no longer yield its strength [koach, “vigor”] to you …” (Genesis 4:12).
Moreover, we find that Cain built a city and named it after his son Enoch (Genesis 4:17). Cain, as we know, was the “fugitive and vagabond” whom the Eternal cursed (Genesis 4:11, 14). He built a city. Let us take a closer look at this word city.
city = iyr, “city, town, village, quarter of a city.” The word is used with various nuances.
A village with walls (Deuteronomy 3:5), If no walls are present, the Hebrew word chatser is used.
A village in a permanent place, even though the dwellings are tents (I Samuel 15:5)
A permanent dwelling center having residences of stone and clay (Genesis 4:17)
The residents of a city (I Samuel 4:13)
A part of a city, in particular the part surrounded by a wall (II Samuel 5:7)
Later, shortly after the Flood, we read of Nimrod, the arch-enemy of God, building eight cities in the land of Shinar, and in Assyria. So, we see evil people — Cain shortly after the expulsion from the Garden, and Nimrod shortly after the Flood — being builders of cities. Is this any coincidence? Hardly! Let us explore the history of the city and what it represents, but first of all let us take a hard look at the problems that living in a city will cause.
Effects of the City on People
An article in Discover magazine addressed the issue of how a city affects a person’s health and well-being. The article methodically examined the several aspects of city living that revealed it is dangerous for one’s health from several aspects. This is not a trivial matter, since more than half (55%) of the world’s population currently lives in urban areas. (3) This percentage is expected to reach 68% by 2050. (4) As pointed out by the World Health Organization (WHO) it is so critical that urban development trends in a way that promotes health, since the health and well-being of citizens is perhaps the most important asset for a city. Yet, at the same time the Food and Agriculture Organization ( FAO) admits that cities are a failure for this huge mass of the world’s population.
“… most of the 4.2 billion people living in cities suffer inadequate housing and transport, poor sanitation and waste management, and air quality that fails WHO guidelines. Other forms of pollution, such as noise, water and soil contamination, so-called urban heat islands, and a lack of space for walking, cycling, and active living further combine to make cities epicenters of a noncommunicable disease epidemic ….” (5)
Let us examine each of these problems inherent within cities.
1. Air pollution. Belching smoke stacks of industrial plants, chemical plant emissions, automobile and truck exhaust fumes, home heating emissions, and other unseen sources account for over 6.5 million deaths annually around the world. As a result of these sources, oxides of nitrogen, sulfur, and carbon, plus volatile organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and fine dust are concentrated in the atmosphere of cities and have been proven to be associated with a wide range of illnesses: cancer (breast cancer, lymphoma, lung cancer, etc.), (6) cardiovascular disease (atherosclerosis, strokes, hypertension, and pre-birth child development, (7,8) respiratory disease (emphysema, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic bronchitis, and respiratory infections), and neurological diseases (autism, low IQ, dementia, etc.). (9,10) Besides these attacks of air pollution on the body, it has been discovered that fine particulate matter in air pollutants is closely associated with anxiety and depression. (11,12)
2. Noise pollution. Noise is also an inevitable consequence of cities, especially from the traffic of motor vehicles, but also from trains, subways, airplanes, and industry. Studies have proven that city noises lead to hearing loss for many city dwellers. (13) Noise also leads to the annoyance of people in certain noisier parts of cities, (14) and chronic low-level noise exposure causes mental stress associated with cardiovascular complications. According to the WHO, this stress is directly related to annoyance, cognitive impairment, and sleep disturbance from increased stress hormone levels, blood pressure, and heart rate. (15) Traffic noise in particular is associated with mental health symptoms and psychological disorders, which increase tendencies towards what are termed “maladaptive coping mechanisms like alcohol and tobacco use. In fact, research shows that city noise leads directly to inflammation, tinnitus, oxidative stress, and vascular dysfunction in the body. (16,17,18) Cardiovascular diseases are especially exacerbated by traffic noises, diseases such as high blood pressure, heart attacks, and strokes. (19,20)
3. Lack of a green, natural setting. We tend to think of the green from chlorophyll in plants as being only a necessity due to its presence in plants for photosynthesis. This reaction converts sunlight energy, together with carbon dioxide, water, and minerals into the carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and other cellular components which make life possible on earth. However, the effects of chlorophyll go far beyond that life-essential reaction. The green color of surrounding vegetation is a built-in essentially for mankind’s very existence! Yahweh Elohim placed Adam into a florid garden, and for good reasons: for his health and enjoyment.
“The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made every tree to grow that is pleasant [chamad, ‘to delight in’] to the sight and good for food” (Genesis 2:8-9).
We also can be certain that the setting of the Garden was free of unnatural noises — cars and airplanes did not exist — but was replete with the sounds of songbirds, animals, insects, and the rustling leaves in the breeze that uplift man’s heart and mind. The requirement for such joyful uplift through a green, natural surrounding was built into the very psyche of man’s being, who was made in the Eternal’s image. This gives us insight into the nature of God’s environment in the heavenly spirit realm, where He is surrounded by the greens, reds, golds, yellows, blues, and violets of His perfect creation there. We read that the colors of the rainbow were (are) around His throne (Revelation 4:3; Ezekiel 1:28), colors, hues, and arrangements that likely as not would remind us of the vivacious glory of a lily or iris, a peach blossom, or a bird of paradise flower.
The lack of green spaces in cities leads to a number of well-documented problems. One study found that urbanites living near a park or garden lived healthier, longer lives. Using a vegetative index scale of barren areas (rocks and sand) being close to zero, and areas lush with vegetation being close to one, it was discovered that clear health benefits were achieved by living near green spaces, and the benefits were “dose-dependent”; spending more time in such areas led to better health. Just experiencing a park near a busy, noisy road will give fewer benefits than living in a quiet and secluded area. The author concluded, “The more immersive and the more separated [the green space] is from all the distractions of the city environment, the more the benefit.” (24)
Green spaces are known to encourage more active lifestyles and socialization and also help relieve cognitive draining which creates negative moods. The trees and vegetation also cool the atmosphere in the typical urban setting, since buildings and streets elevate the temperature of the city by up to 7o F compared to outlying areas. Such heating is detrimental to health as it amplifies pre-existing health problems, and exacerbates respiratory strokes and cardiovascular problems. (25)
People who live in cities bereft of vegetation recover slower from mental fatigue, and are more likely to express aggressive and violent behavior than do those who live in well-vegetated settings. Those who live near green spaces in cities build and maintain stronger social ties, which are associated with longer life and better well-being. (26,27,28,29,30,31,32) The relationship between living in cities bereft of greenery and park settings, and psychiatric disorders, has been studied in depth. These studies show that mood and anxiety disorders are significantly higher in urban than in rural areas. (33) One study revealed a 77% greater risk of developing psychoses in urbanized areas. Depression also was significantly higher in these areas lacking trees and greenery. (34) Moreover, one study revealed that the brains of people living in cities operate differently from those in rural area. Brain scanning studies showed that two regions of the brain, involved in the regulation of emotion and anxiety, became overactive in city dwellers when they are stressed, likely accounting for the increased cases of mental health problems in urban areas. The amygdala of city dwellers was overactive during stressful situations. The amygdala is the danger sensor of the brain, and linked to anxiety and depression. (35) In addition, this study showed that the cingulate cortex was hyperactive in people who were born in cities, and this region of the brain is important for controlling emotion and dealing with environmental adversity. In a sense, being city-born makes it more difficult to cope with city life!
It has been discovered that mental fatigue — a response to our focusing on one idea or task while excluding other thoughts, including focusing on portable electronic devices — is relieved to a considerable degree by walking through green spaces. Many people stare at their cell phones in trains or buses, and in the office, on the street, or even in a park. Thus, the stress-relieving value of greenery is negated when a person remains glued to a mobile device while walking through a wooded park. (36,37) This reveals a paradox of city life, where so many try to escape the impersonal character of the polluted, noisy city by communicating with friends on a cell phone — which furthers mental fatigue — and fail to relieve that stress even if green areas are available.
4. City lights. Another problem with cities is their lights. Studies have shown that exposure to artificial outdoor light (or LAN, “light at night”) leads to obesity, psychiatric disorder, and even cancer and coronary heart disease. One recent investigation in China uncovered the fact that the prevalence of diabetes was 28% higher among people exposed to the greatest levels of LAN compared to those receiving the least exposure. The researchers pointed out the global implications of these results, since 80% of the world’s population and 99% of Americans and Europeans live under light-polluted skies. (38)
These documented effects of cities on the physical and mental aspects of living are strong evidence of the failure of these concentrations of people to afford health and vitality to people made in God’s image. The spiritual effects of city living are more subtle, but nonetheless real, as we will see later in this study. It is Satan who is really the architect and motivator of what occurs in these urban populations. Thus, it is not surprising that the hustle and bustle of life’s speeded-up pace in cities is opposed to the patience of God’s fruit. The hurried pace of factory and office workers traveling to and from their jobs, the frantic flurry of buses, trucks, and cabs, and the mass psychosis, as it were, of people being carried along with the herd makes it difficult, if not impossible, to find peace and quiet, the silent personal niche for prayer and meditation
“Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth!” (Psalm 46:10).
To envelope oneself amongst the trees, flowers, birds, insects, and animals, breathing the unpolluted air and gazing at the azure sky above, a fragrant breeze and glistening sun caressing one’s soul, is hardly possible amongst multi-storied skyscrapers of city centers, much less the industrial and residential sectors of cities. The joy, love, kindness, gentleness, peace, patience, and humility of the Creator (Galatians 5:22-23) find few opportunities for expression; rather, with the encouragement of stress, depression, anger, and conflict amidst the pollution, noise, and crowded anonymity there is every motivation to join the crowd in its hedonistic pursuits. People are indeed like sheep, and only the strongest of spirit-led people can confront the atrocities of the city and reject them. The temptation to do evil is amplified on all sides, for people of all persuasions are present all around, and, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).
The City as Cancer
Perhaps a view of the city as a cancerous growth in the body can serve as an apt approach to how a city functions. Cancer is a growth of normal body cells that have taken on an abnormal metabolic change, so they grow uncontrollably and invade neighboring tissues, forming a tumor in many cases. In some cases, as in leukemia, tumors do not form, but for cancer of the brain, liver, lungs, breast, and other organs these rapidly multiplying cells often form a mass that expands into adjacent tissues. Cancer cells can break off and migrate to other parts of the body and begin growing there as well; these are called metastases. (40)
The causes of cancer have been investigated for many years, and while opinions differ concerning the cause of most cancers, the cause can usually be traced to a long-term nutrient deficiency, which compromised the body’s immune system. A chemical, ultra-violet light, hormonal, or radiological trigger is implicated to initiate the first cell’s transformation. Many drugs also compromise immunity, so people who use drugs are more prone to cancer. This nutrient deficiency and compromised metabolism is coupled with a mutation in the cell’s metabolic machinery, such that the mitochondria are affected to change to anaerobic metabolism. This corresponds with the research of Dr. Otto Warburg, two-time Nobel Prize winner, who made plain that cancer cells cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment. He stated,
“The prime cause of cancer is the replacement of the respiration of oxygen in normal body cells by a fermentation of sugar. All normal body cells meet their energy needs by respiration of oxygen, whereas cancer cells meet their energy needs in great part by fermentation.” (41)
Since the mitochondria are the energy generators of cells, bringing together the energy-rich carbohydrates and the oxygen necessary to metabolize them, a loss of this ability to metabolize aerobically is the modus operandi of cancer cells.
Cancer cells are formed in various parts of the body continuously, but these oddball cells are rapidly identified by phagocytes, which consume them. However, when the body’s defenses are weakened, these abnormal cells can escape being destroyed, and thus can multiply unimpeded and form a colony of multiple millions of uncontrolled cells. (42)
As mentioned before, cancer cells metabolize anaerobically through fermentation, and produce lactic acid as a result. A high-oxygen environment kills them. The blood supply to the tumor also tends to be meager, thus keeping oxygen levels low to encourage further anaerobic activity and tumor growth
Cancer cells possess octopus-like tentacles called filopodia that examine their surroundings and facilitate their spread. These tubular filopodia, only 100 to 1,000 nanometers in diameter, have been observed to extend from cancer cells directly into T-immune cells and draw their mitochondria into themselves. T-cells are one type of white blood cell. (43)
To survive and multiply, cancer cells must do the following: (44)
(1) Obtain enough blood supply to furnish energy or carbohydrates and other nutrients, but not enough to saturate the tumor environment with oxygen, which would kill it
(2) Extend their tentacles (filopodia) into the surrounding normal body cells and T-cells
A city operates very much like a cancer cell. If one compares a microscopic photo of a cancer cell with an aerial photo of a city — especially a night photo — they look very similar. A cancer cell has its tentacles that reach out to explore the surrounding cellular environment and extract nutrients and mitochondria, which enable the cell to rapidly divide. In like manner, a city expands in all directions with its highways and railways; one might add airline routes, which do not appear in such night photos. Also to be added to this environment of the city are telecommunication towers and conduits, and power lines, as well as oil and gas pipelines that are hidden underground. So we see the comparison.Highly extractive process of taking energy-rich compounds from the blood.
A city truly is a cancer upon the landscape, and an ugly one. What cancer is not ugly? How does one get rid of the cancer? That topic will be dealt with later on in the paper.
A History of Cities
We can trace a history of the world’s cities in many nations, for it is mankind’s nature to build cities wherever he lives, and there are abundant records concerning their populations and character. The table on the next page lists some of the larger cities across many nations since the time of Abraham as recorded by secular historians. (45) I am choosing the period after Abraham’s birth, since this begins the period of Nimrod’s rulership at Babylon, when several cities that he built are recorded in Genesis 10:10-12. This building occurred early on during Abraham’s life; he was born in about 1996 B.C.
All cultures, ancient and modern, had their cities: Cambodia, Burma, Vietnam, Mongolia, Korea, Brazil, Chile, South Africa, India, Pakistan, and the list goes on. People congregate in cities, contrary to the natural inclination of those who are striving to live according to the Eternal’s design. Why is this? The Scriptures supply us with some definitive answers.
The First Cities
A. Before the Flood
The first city recorded in all of mankind’s history was built in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden.
“Then Cain went out from the presence of the Lord and dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Enoch. And he built a city, and called the name of the city after the name of his son — Enoch” (Genesis 4:16-17).
The exact location of this place is not known, but it was likely in the proximity of modern Israel, though its location is not really important, since the site was obliterated during the Flood. It is interesting that the building of this city was the second act of Cain mentioned after he journeyed from the presence of his parent. The first act mentioned is sexual intercourse with his wife to produce the child Enoch. That act certainly brought him some security in that he now had a person to carry on his lineage after death. This second act provided him a more or less stable place on earth to placate his troubled mind after the Eternal declared that he should be a “… fugitive and vagabond …” on the earth (Genesis 4:12). Seeking to escape the world because of his murder of Abel, we might say the city was a direct consequence of this murder, a respite for his refusal to accept God’s protection.
As Jacques Ellul makes clear, Cain substitutes a city for God’s Eden, his own goal for that of God’s goal of abundant life for mankind, his own security rather than the security found within the bosom of almighty God. This conclusion is supported by the very meaning of the world Enoch, in Hebrew (chanakh) meaning “initiation, dedication, inauguration”:
“Cain dedicates a new world: ‘Enoch,’ as opposed to Reshith in Genesis 1:1. Inauguration as opposed to creation. Initiation as opposed to the garden paradise. The city as opposed to Eden. It is certainly not unawares that Cain gave this name to his creation. Now he also is going to make the world over again …. For in Cain’s eyes it is not a beginning again, but a beginning. God’s creation is seen as nothing. God did nothing, and in no case did He finish anything. Now a start is made, and it is no longer God beginning, but man.” (47)
Moreover, the land of Cain’s dwelling — Nod — gives away the meaning of his lifestyle. The word Nod in Hebrew (nowd) means “vagrancy,” which comes from a root word meaning “to nod, or waver, figuratively to wander, flee, or disappear.” Such a place name is referring as much to Cain’s character and lifestyle as it is to his residence, for his life was anything but stable once he renounced the Creator’s laws and attacked his brother.
So the civilization of mankind shortly after the re-creation of the earth begins with a city, and so has been mankind’s experience to this very day. Cain, in the process of building the city, used hewn stones, which from God’s point of view were impure, unfit to use in an alter (Exodus 20:25). His aim was to bend creation to his own will, to his own destiny, and through this rebellion the city was born.
In a real sense the rise of the city meant the death of the countryside, as I have already discussed in regard to the city being like a cancer, absorbing the energy and resources of the land around it. The life in Eden was anything but an urbanized garden, but through Abel with his pastoral flock that continued in the Edenic paradigm, Cain left that life and pursued his own vision of how life ought to be, the inauguration of a beginning, not the Creator’s, but his own.
Flavius Josephus gives a rather brutal assessment of Cain’s exploits after he murdered his brother. Rather than amend his ways, he increased his wickedness.
“He augmented his household substance with much wealth, by rapine and violence; he excited his acquaintance to procure pleasures and spoils by robbery, and became a great leader of men into wicked courses. He also introduced a change in that way of simplicity wherein man lived before; and was the author of measures and weights. And whereas they lived innocently and generously while they knew nothing of such arts, he changed the world into cunning craftiness. He first of all set boundaries about lands; he build a city, and fortified it with walls, and he compelled his family to come together to it; and called that city Enoch, after the name of his eldest son Enoch.” (48)
One might even look upon the city as possessing a spiritual power, not as a spirit entity itself but exuding a character that will direct and change a person’s spiritual life while living within its confines. The consequences of city life seem to find no solid righteous footing, no bedrock of stable sanity. Notice the various nuances for the Hebrew word for city iyr that has already been discussed to some extent.
(1) In its verb form, “to burn,” in a moral sense: i.e., “to become angry, to tremble.”
(2) In the feminine substantive meaning,
(a) “city”
(b) “guard,” or “sentinel,” with respect to the security of a city
(c) “passion,” of either fear or anger
(3) In the masculine substantive meaning, “guard,” or “angel.” Like physical guards give security to a city, so do angels, but which type: Godly or evil? In Hebrew angelology, the angels are usually condemning angels (Daniel 4:10, 14), or angels in revolt (Enoch 1:6), never guardian angels. (49)
So we see that from a spiritual standpoint the city is evil. It is an entity not designed for mankind to live in. These cities presumedly encompassed all of the earth, for we read in Genesis 6:11-12,
“The earth also was corrupt [shacbath, “to decay, ruin”] before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.”
Such violence and ruination would not be expected within a civilization based on pastoral rural living. Such disorder would much more likely be generated within cities, as is the case in today’s world.
B. After the Food
The next time in Biblical history we hear of cities is with Nimrod. A grandson of Ham and son of Cush, he is renowned for building cities after the Flood.
“Cush begat Nimrod; he began to be a mighty one on the earth. He was a mighty hunter before [paniym, ’face’] of the Lord; therefore it is said, ‘Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord’” (Genesis 10:8-9). Hunter = tsayid, “to lie alongside, to catch an animal or man.”
This forceful personality is for some reason listed separately from the five sons of Cush mentioned in Genesis 10:7. The reason for this separate listing may be because Nimrod’s mother was a female Nephilim, a descendant of the outrageous marriages between the disobedient sons of Elohim, who left their heavenly habitation against the Father’s will, and human women. These spirt-human hybrids were gigantic in stature and evil in character, taking on the traits of their rebellious fathers, of which Goliath was one … a huge person with a filthy, cursing tongue (I Samuel 17:4-10, 43-44). (50)
Then too, Ham was the son of Noah who is renowned for having had sex with his own mother (saw his father’s nakedness, which is defined as sexual relations in Leviticus 18:6-18), the result of which was the birth of Canaan, a man who was relegated to be a “servant of servants” to his brethren (Genesis 9:22-26). The less-then-stellar character of Ham was passed on to Nimrod as well.
Nimrod inspired the people of Babylon to shun obedience to God and instead serve themselves. As Josephus stated,
“He persuaded them not to ascribe it to God, as if it was though his means they were happy, but to believe that it was their own courage which procured their happiness. He also gradually changed the government into tyranny — seeing no other way of turning men from the fear of God, but to bring them into a constant dependence upon his power …. Now the multitude were very ready to follow the determination of Nimrod, and to esteem it a piece of cowardice to submit to God; and they built a tower ….” (51)
Nimrod built nine cities: Babel, Erech, Accad, Calneh, Nineveh, Rehoboth, Ir, Calah, and Resen, in Shinar and Assyria (Genesis 10:10-12). As for Cain, the rebel against the Almighty, so with Nimrod, the adversary of the Creator: they both were noted for cities. Cities typified their character, the spirit of rebellion against the Most High. Rather than be spread over the land, the residents of Nimrod’s time were urbanites, and they were tied to the will of men, not of God. Moreover, the city is found to be a center for war, a desire for might, which is to revolt against God. As Ellul put it,
“What world could better demonstrate the parallel between urban civilization and warring civilization than our own, a world where the city and war have become two of the poles around which the entire economic, social, and political life of our time move.” (52)
So the land of Shinar became a center for war, the opposite of peace. This cradle of civilization thus had cities that translated into eternity, wideness, and force, symbols of time, space, and energy, which defines all of life. Resen means “bridle” or “bit,” and when placed in a horse’s mouth its power for war can be directed by the rider or charioteer. Today we see the bit to be the drivers of planes, submarines, warships, tanks, and trucks, or the controllers of remote electronic devices to direct missiles, bombs, and even airplanes and other weaponry.
Babel, the center of Nimrod’s kingdom, means “confusion,” coming from the Hebrew root babal, “to mix.” How appropriate is this definition of the premier city, for we see the 70 nations of Genesis 10 gathered together under Nimrod’s banner, who exalts himself as king, as it were, of all nations, building a great tower as an icon to unite all peoples and discourage their migration to the lands across the earth God had appointed. With one language, the people were on their way to “mixing” the genetics of the 70 nations through intermarriage … an outcome the Eternal would not have. So by confusing their languages “… the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth” (Genesis 11:8). Then the various families of mankind set up residence, as God intended. They were directed to abandon the city, but despite that movement away from Babylon history shows that the people of all nations have followed the lure of urban development, to live separately from God and exclude Him from their lives.
In a real sense Babylon the Great, the city, is the synthesis of all of civilization. She is the head of, and standard for, all other cities across the earth, the hub of civilization in its business, industry, shipping, entertainment, and education. Having traveled to over 65 countries around the world, and experienced a plethora of cities, I can attest to the fact that they are all so similar: Venice, New York, Bangkok, Dallas, Melbourne, Santiago, Johannesburg — the list goes on. They are all the same city, one Babel as it were, a city from the beginning mortally wounded, for “… they left off building the city” (Genesis 11:8).
There is some specialization amongst cities, of course; they all have a personality. Nineveh was called the bloody city, “full of lies, full of violence, no end to her plunder” (Nahum 3:1). Whereas Babylon was the city that synthesized civilization, Nineveh synthesized war. In a sense, the city is a place of physical and spiritual war, and the men who live within the gates of the city are sacrificed to the spirit of that city. They work in industries that manufacture airplanes, tanks, missiles, bullets, and mortars, but in ancient cities spears, swords, knives, chainmail, and other body armor, chariots and harnesses, whips and bows and arrows. Yet, in the end the city of Nineveh, like all industrial cities tied to Babylon and the military-industrial complex, will be thrown down.
“And He will stretch out His hand against the north, destroy Assyria, and make Nineveh a desolation as dry as the wilderness” (Zephaniah 2:13).
Think of the charred and broken cities in World War II: Hamburg, Berlin, Dusseldorf, London, and Coventry. This horrible scenario will be repeated over much of the world in the coming years. “Alas, alas, the great city, in which all who had ships on the sea became rich by her wealth! For in one hour she is made desolate” (Revelation 18:19). The cities of the world will fall, “… in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall” (Isaiah 30:25). Towers: tall buildings, radio and television transmission towers, cell phone towers, and on the list goes of the monuments of today’s civilization, crashing to earth under the assault of earthquakes all across the globe.
Israel and Cities
Ancient Israel had an early exposure to cities in the land of Egypt: they built them for the Egyptians.
“Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities; Pithom and Ramses” (Exodus 1:11).
Previous to their experiences in Egypt, the Israelites were nomads. When in contact with cities it was as foreigners visiting the city. The city was very unfavorable to them!
Abram (later his name was changed to Abraham) was a sojourner in a strange land, for he heeded Yahweh’s command to leave Ur of the Chaldees and go to the place appointed to receive an inheritance. “He went out, not knowing where he was going” (Hebrews 11:8). There in the land of promise he dwelled in tents, through the lives of his son Isaac and his grandson Jacob (Hebrews 11:9; Genesis 11:31-32; 12:1-5).
When Abram and Lot separated due to a dispute among their herdsmen, Lot chose to dwell in the well-watered plain of Jordan, a land of lush grass perfect for grazing. “Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent even as far as Sodom” (Genesis 13:12). The people of Sodom, where Lot settled “… were exceedingly wicked and sinful against the Lord” (Genesis 13:3) … showing the evil was concentrated in cities even in ancient Canaan. We know well the story of Lot having to leave Sodom before God poured down fire and brimstone over the area (Genesis 19:15-29); such was the fate of his city that renounced the Eternal’s laws.
Then it was in the city Shechem that Dinah, Jacob’s daughter, was snatched up by Shechem, the son of Hamor, who violated her. This led to the slaughter of the males of the city by Simeon and Levi, and the plundering of the livestock.
Everywhere that Jacob went he was separate from the city. A wanderer and sojourner, he did not share the city’s spirit, nor build permanent dwellings; he would pile stones for an alter (Genesis 31:46), but did not hew stones for residences. He did not build edifices to serve as a defense to affirm his power, but rather piled stones upon which to sit to confirm a covenant with Laban, his father-in-law. They shared a meal on a pile of stones, not at a table in a banquet hall!
We must remember that in these early days of the lives of the patriarchs, whenever the people of Israel had to stay in a city it was in a city they had not built (Deuteronomy 6:10-11). This surely does not mean they were incapable of building one, but until that time they did not; the Eternal brought them to cities or villages already constructed. They were to learn in Egypt the art of building — of placing hewn stone upon hewn stone — but that was later.
When the Israelites were told to build the cities of Pithom and Ramses they were hardly in favor of such a task. They were forced to under slavery. It was in slavery that Israel and the city were bound together … a fact seldom appreciated but a reality nonetheless. They learned to build cities by force in the land of Mitzrayim, the land of sorrow and suffering.
The building of cities by Israel is put into excellent context by Ellul, as follows.
“When Israel built their own cities, it was always for them the sign of a curse, and the proclamation of slavery renewed. And the prophesies of those long-haired prophets who were a constant reminder of the innocence of the nomadic life as opposed to urban life …. Israel was initiated in this art by a king [Pharaoh] other than God …. And the power of this king forced the chosen people into ways not meant for a people of God.” (55)
When Israel was forced to build granary cities of Egypt, such as Pithom, or “the house of Thom — the Egyptian sun god — they were in fact participating (unwillingly) in building a city for Satan, a dwelling place directly opposed to almighty God. Thus we see economic power being incorporated into the city, so in a sense we see the Pharaoh organizing his cities into a political system. Politics can be defined as religion applied to economics. The wheat as a commodity becomes a slave of the whims of the ruler (Pharaoh), centered around the city even as it is in today’s world.
We see in Jericho a result that the Eternal planned for the entrance of Israel into Canaan. A heavily fortified and walled city of the heathen Canaanites, the Israelite army walked around the city with seven priests blowing trumpets, along with the ark, for six days. On the seventh day they circuited the city seven times, then blew the trumpets and the people shouted, at which the walls of Jericho collapsed (Joshua 6:12-20). The evil city was left defenseless, its walls utterly flattened, allowing the Israelite men to rush into its midst and annihilate every man, woman, child, and animal — every living thing — except for Rahab and her family. Then the city was burned: there was nothing left; only the gold, silver, and bronze and iron vessels were saved and placed in the treasury of the Lord’s house (Joshua 6:21-25).
Then Joshua charged Israel to never rebuild Jericho: “Cursed be the man before the Lord who rises up and builds this city Jericho; he shall lay its foundation with his firstborn, and with his youngest he shall set up its gates” (Joshua 6:26).
Some 400 years later Hiel of Bethel did exactly that: he rebuilt Jericho, but at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and his youngest son Segub, just as Yahweh had prophesied (I Kings 16:34). His choice to rebuild a cursed city came at a great cost, for it directly compromised God’s will. Amazingly this Hiel was willing to sacrifice his two sons in the process of this task … so strong was the pull to construct a fortress and center of commerce near the fords of the Jordan River that he accepted the curse. Thus, the city itself seduced him into such a vile act, its spirit stripping this man of the sense to preserve his own offspring, for he knew the consequences of his acts. Such is the incredible lure of the city. (56)
Let us now move on to the exploits of David and Solomon. David was a shepherd king, as it were, not an urban king. He did wisely choose his capital and fortresses, but the champion of building was his son Solomon. Let us not forget, as well, that by this time the cry of the Israelites to have for themselves a king like the pagan nations around them had reached a fever pitch. Notice what the elders of Israel told Samuel at Ramah.
“Look, you are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways. Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations” (I Samuel 8:5).
This suggestion greatly displeased Samuel, so God answered Samuel:
“Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt, even to this day — with which they have forsaken Me and served other gods — so they are doing to you also” (I Samuel 8:7-8).
Then Samuel went on to describe how the king that was selected would draft men to be soldiers and to farm his land, to take women to be cooks and bakers, to procure the best of the land for fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants, and tax the produce of the people and give their wealth to his servants. When this happened Samuel told them that they would cry out because of these burdens, but God would not hear them. How little has changed today since the days of Samuel.
Solomon was the builder.
“And this is the reason for the labor force which King Solomon raised: to build the house of the Lord, his own house, the Millo, the wall of Jerusalem, Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer …. And Solomon built Gezer, Lower Beth Horon, Baalath, and Tadmor in the wilderness in the land of Judah, all the storage cities that Solomon had, cities for his chariots and cities for his cavalry, and whatever Solomon desired to build in Jerusalem, in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion” (I Kings 9:15, 17-19).
It is most interesting to note that right at the time of the construction of Millo — which was overseen by Jeroboam — Abijah the prophet met him outside Jerusalem and grabbed ahold of a new cloak he was wearing, tore it into twelve pieces, and had Jeroboam collect ten pieces, which represented ten tribes that were to be given to him. The reason?
“… because they have [‘he has,’ according to some texts, referring to Solomon] forsaken Me, and worshipped Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, Chemosh the god of the Moabites, and Milcom the god of the people of Ammon, and have not walked in My ways to do what is right in My eyes and keep My statutes and My judgments, as did his father David” (I Kings 11:33-34.
This event took place right at the time that the Temple was being built. Solomon succumbed to the lust for power and riches and began building cities, falling into apostacy well before the end of his reign and even before he had met the Queen of Sheba. Thus, the relation between cities and foreign gods is closely tied. This tie is further linked by the very names of the cities he built, which names are of false gods. So Jeremiah could shout, “Your gods have become as numerous as your cities, O Judah! “ (Jeremiah 11:13).
Solomon worshipped false gods and build cities to honor them. How strange and divided were the affections of this most wise man, who built the Temple for Yahweh and also the house of Baal! While he did not totally abandon the true God, we read in I Kings 11:1-8 that Solomon did evil in the sight of Yahweh, and did not fully follow Him as did David his father. He went after Ashteroth, Milcom, and other pagan deities while trying to please his 700 wives and 300 concubines, who turned away his heart from the true God. As Ellul so eloquently points out,
“The precise point when Solomon abandons Yahweh and stops making use of his miraculous wisdom is that point where he decides on a politics of power materialized in cities.”
Solomon’s son Rehoboam was also a builder of cities. A whole list of these cities is given in II Chronicles 11:6-10: Etam, Tekoa, Beth Zur, Sochoh, Adullum, Gath, Mareshah, Ziph, Adoraim, Lachish, Azekah, Zorah, Aijalon, and Hebron, all in the territory of Judah and Benjamin. These were all fortified with shields and spears, food, oil, and wine, and manned by soldiers. The priests and Levites joined them, having been rejected by Jeroboam in the northern ten tribes. He had many sons, and distributed them to the various fortified cities, provided ample provisions for them, and gave them wives. Then, when he was strong, “… he forsook the law of the Lord, and all Israel with him” (II Chronicles 12:1).
Rehoboam lost ten tribes, and he replaced them with 20 fortified cities. He broke away from God and built cities to compensate for the break. As in today’s military, families and sons are separated from one another while manning military posts in armed cities. The priests and Levites sought refuge with Rehoboam, strengthened the state, and made his throne sure. This appears to be the first use of the church for the greatness of the state, and the city plays the same role for the elect people of Israel as for any other nation. Once Rehoboam built strong cities and became powerful, he rejected Yahweh.
Like Rehoboam placed his foundations in the cities — material things — so the city sinks its foundation in earthly considerations. So we see an opposition between Yahweh and the city; the city opposes the spiritual nature of the creation.
As if to impress into Rehoboam’s heart the futility of relying on temporal things, Shishak, king of Egypt, attacked Judah and took all of these fortified cities, and Jerusalem as well (I Kings 14:25-26; II Chronicles 12:1-9). Rehoboam must have recognized at that point that he was not meant to play the games that the world’s kings do, but rather he was meant to play according to the rules of the Creator, the God of peace, joy, and abundant living.
Following Rehoboam was his son Abijah, and then his son Asa took the throne. After Asa came Jehoshaphat. Both Asa and Jehoshaphat were called righteous (II Chronicles 14:2; 17:3), and they built cities. “And he [Asa] built fortified cities in Judah, for the land had rest …” (II Chronicles 14:6). Does this mean that cities can be righteous in their inherent design? Note that Asa built cities during a time of rest, but he also built a large army. He was termed righteous because he removed the altars of the foreign gods, the high places, the sacred pillars, and the wooden images (II Chronicles 14:2-5; 15:8).
Yet, in spite of all the good he did even he changed little by little, and relied on the king of Syria. He became angry when he was castigated by the prophet Hanani, whom he cast into prison (II Chronicles 16:7-10). Asa died of a disease in his feet, not having sought Yahweh’s healing but that of physicians. The essential evil nature of the city cannot be reversed by a righteous king who builds them, for even that king can revert to evil, and the essential character of the city remains.
Other nations besides Israel have been populated by cities — the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks, and certainly the Romans. While there has always been a significant rural population in all of these nations, the centers of power were urban. So have continued the rise of the unholy cities throughout history, even to the present time, where about 81% of the population lives within urban areas in the United States. That number is little different in Western countries, and even in Africa the move towards urbanization has been profound. (58)
The Homestead Act
It is obvious that the efforts of governments and industry in most nations, whether by design or by default, has been to move the rural population into cities. This effort has been perhaps most pronounced in the United States. Through a series of events in the early years of the nation, unoccupied lands in many states were opened up for settling, allowing farmers to acquire land at virtually no cost and to build their own kingdom for their family, program unparalleled in the annals of modern humanity. Let us briefly examine this program called the Homestead Act.
In the 1840s, various organizations such as the Free Soil Party, Horace Greeley, editor of The New York Tribune, and labor unions were urging the enactment of homestead legislation. A bill was presented before Congress in 1846 to grant land to the landless, and after considerable wrangling over several years the first Homestead Act bill was passed by Congress. However, that bill was vetoed by Democratic President James Buchanan as Southerners claimed this would result in anti-slavery people settling in their territories. Republicans, under the banner of Abraham Lincoln, promised a new homestead bill, along with the secession of the Southern States, allowed the passage of a new Homestead Act that took effect on January 1, 1863. (59)
Under this amazing act, 160 acres of unappropriated public land was made available to anyone who paid a small filing fee, and who agreed to work and improve the land. A residence had to be built and certain improvements made, and after five years the person could file for title to the land and it would be his, paid in full! This opportunity for free land stilled the hearts of countless Europeans, British, and Scandinavian settlers who saw an opportunity to escape the hopelessness of landless serfdom and slavery in their native lands.60
My own great-grandfather from Surnadal, Norway, was among them. In 1879, forsaking his homeland and relatives with his wife and six children, he left a landless existence as a farmhand and boarded a small ship for America, ending up on a homestead in southwestern Minnesota. “America fever” pulled away about 25% of the Surnadal population to the shores of the United States, driven by the lure of free land and a new start in life that nowhere else on earth could offer.
This scenario and those like them were played out countless times in the Old World, such that by 1974, when the last homestead was claimed under the Homestead Act, about 270,000,000 acres of land had been settled in 30 states in which homestead land was available. This included land from Ohio down to Arkansas, and south to Mississippi and Alabama, including even Florida. All but Texas in the lands to the west had land which was homesteaded. A major result of this vast migration of primarily European, English, and Scandinavian people was a fairly rapid settling of the forbidding lands of the Midwest, Upper Midwest, Great Plains, Rocky Mountain region, and far West of the country.62
Covered wagons and horses were the primary modes of transportation until railroads began reaching their tentacles throughout the budding small towns, such that in most areas a farmer could pull a grain wagon with oxen, mules, or horses no more than seven to ten miles to a grain elevator. Thus developed the infrastructure to begin marketing the wealth and fertility of the rich prairie soils in the form of wheat, corn, oats, barley, and other crops to Chicago, Minneapolis, Omaha, Kansas City, and St. Louis for destinations local or distant. Barges on the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers carried their rich stores of grain, cotton, and other goods to New Orleans, and on to markets in Europe and England.
Consequently, as it turned out, the settling of West through the Homestead Act, while it provided a wonderful means of luring settlers to fertile new lands of the Louisiana Purchase and other prime areas, ultimately granted a means for the grain marketers of the East in Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and elsewhere to enrich themselves at the expense of the farmer. In the early days of this country, even as today, the farmer was at the mercy of the market price for commodities set up by boards of trade and bankers whose concern for the welfare of the farm producer was highly limited. As has been true throughout history, selfish gain has been the motivator of men with their self-centered exploits, centered within the city.
It would not have had to be that way. Instead of farmers having to sweat and fight their way through times of drought, hailstorms, windstorms, and early or late frost — not to mention low prices, the high cost of machinery, fertilizers and chemical inputs, and taxes, together creating the well-known “cost-price squeeze” — and depend upon grain marketers at the Chicago Board of Trade and the Minneapolis and Kansas City grain exchanges for fair prices, the farmer could have been gifted with a community-sufficient economy. Things used to be much more that way.
As a young boy growing up on a dairy farm in the Corn Belt of southwestern Minnesota, most farmers milked cows, raised some poultry, grew alfalfa, wheat, corn, oats, flax, rye, and soybeans, and sold enough milk and excess grain to support an adequate family life. Children were an asset, and families were oftentimes big as the labor was welcome, necessary for building the farm : putting up hay, cultivating corn, fixing fences, milking cows, and plowing fields. Relatives and neighbors often operated adjoining or nearby farms, and sometimes helped one another or even traded the use of machinery. It was a community effort. It was an austere but prosperous life, with plenty of spare time once the crops were planted and the cows were milked, time for fishing, time for playing horseshoes, time for 4-H Club and dropping in on neighbors, sometimes even unannounced. The community was in many ways self-reliant, and the farm base secure. Morality was strong: adultery and fornication were scorned, families attended church services regularly. While ethnic and religious friction was sometimes experienced among adjoining communities of immigrants, there was usually mutual respect for others in spite of differences.
The Big Change
Then came the wars: World War I and World War II, followed by the Korean War. These violent actions greatly speeded up the industrial advancement of many nations, especially those in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and Japan, leading to a gigantic leap forward in the mechanization of farming. Alongside the rise of mechanization came electrification of rural towns and communities. The REA (Rural Electrification Act) brought electrical power to farms, enabling them to modernize their homes with motorized water pumps and indoor plumbing, electric lights, and their farms with milking machines, and electric motors to replace windmills.
Petroleum began to replace more and more human and animal power. Especially noteworthy was the great expansion in tractors to replace horses and mules that greatly accelerated around the time of World War II. Tractor numbers steadily rose from about 250,000 in 1920, to about 1 million in 1936, and then to about 2.2 million in 1944. In that year the number of tractors surpassed the number of horses and mules on farms, a number that had been steadily and rapidly declining exactly since tractors began increasing in about 1920. (64)
In 1960 the USDA stopped counting horses and mules on farms, but the number of tractors continued to grow at a steep rate. By 1960 there were about 4.7 million tractors on U.S. farms. After that the tractor numbers leveled off because the power of tractors was increasing; fewer, higher horsepower engines could perform more work. (65)
During these years of increasing numbers and horsepower of tractors, the average farm size was increasing dramatically while the number of farms was dropping at an equally dramatic rate. In 1930 there were about 6,295,000 farms with an average of about 157 acres in the U.S. By 2017 the average farm size had risen to around 441 acres, and the number of farms had dropped to around 2,042,220. However, 58% of the farmland belonged to 85,000 farms that exceeded 2,000 acres. Farm workers had dropped to 3.4 million. (66)
What was happening over the course of this century, from the early 1900s to today? We see the near-total reliance of agriculture on petroleum and electric energy, and nearly total movement away from the regenerative energy of the sun as their power source. The pioneer homesteaders relied on oxen, horses, and mules to till the earth; they ate grass and grains, produced locally using free sunlight energy. Electrical and petroleum energy, while making life easier and more convenient for farmers, also made them dependent upon the distribution and price of these sources. To pay for them and other inputs — tractors and machinery, mechanized dairy barns, feed mills, storage bins, and so on — the farmer has been incessantly squeezed financially.
With bigger machines, and with herbicides replacing the labor necessary for cultivating out weeds, one farmer could handle more acres as chemicals and high-horsepower machines replaced labor. Smaller farmers could not survive the whims of low commodity prices and were forced to uproot their families. Where would they go? Usually to the city, separated from the land, the sun, and the fresh air that once nourished their lives, lives that cried out for large families and strong communities.
The Great Migration — Satan’s Curse
From the great blessing of a land unspoiled and fertile given to the descendants of Abraham, carving out freedom amongst family homesteads with self-sufficient communities, to the few caretakers of the land in their behemoths plying the huge fields — so has been the fare for residents of the countryside.
And the people flee to the city, for there is no other place for them to go to survive. In 2007, for the first time in modern history more than 50% of mankind lived in cities. (68)
City dwellers today in various countries comprise an amazingly high proportion of the population; note the table below.
People move to cities from rural areas most often for economic reasons. Work opportunities present themselves once their stake in farming or rural occupations have dried up. Some rural people are lured to cities by the glitter of city lights and the bustle of activity that accompanies concentrations of people, though many people are repulsed by the loss of privacy and serenity the city has to offer. Others claim that living intermingled within a large population gives them security, to be living with many others close by in a dependent environment, oblivious to the peril of the potential of the cessation of services due to electrical or fuel interruptions, and willing to forego the peace and proximity to the creation of the countryside.
So Satan has moved populations from Eden to the city, from the solitude of the garden paradise intended for mankind to the rancor of city lights, noises, and pollution. Most are oblivious to what the spirit of the city does to their inner being, gradually forcing their individuality into a mold of preservation for the self, anonymity, and isolation amongst crowds of hundreds and thousands.
Interestingly, there is currently a trend towards people moving out of cities into rural areas. The emigrants are seeking more space in which to live, lower living costs, and security, especially after the so-called Covid-19 pandemic. Many people have been able to work from home through the Internet, and as a result can live outside the city rather than commuting regularly. This reveals that there remains an inner longing in their hearts of so many people for space and privacy, to flee the crushing restraints of the city, and embrace the serenity of the unfettered fields, flocks, sun, gardens, and butterflies that a rural home can afford.
II. The Camp
We now need to take a deeper dive into the Scriptures that deal with where mankind is meant to live. We have already touched upon the intrinsic spirit of the city — a creation of the devil as revealed by Cain building a city soon after the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, and Nimrod building cities soon after the Flood.
There is another parallel message in God’s word to what we have already discussed. You may have never thought of this message before, but it is a powerful one that blends perfectly with the discussions about the city already made. This message has to do with the camp.
A camp as a noun is defined by Webster as “a place where tents, huts, barracks, or other more or less temporary structures have been put up for soldiers in training or in bivouac.” Camp can also mean, “a tent, cabin, etc., or a group of these, used for temporary lodging, as by hunters or fisherman.” (70) Here we are getting close to the definition of camp as used in Scripture. The word occurs 144 times in the King James Version, and occurs extensively in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Joshua, and less commonly in Deuteronomy, Judges, I Samuel, II Kings, and the prophets, rarely in other books. New Testament usage of the word in Hebrews 13:11 and 13 hearkens back to Torah references; only the use of camp in Revelation 20:9 is not tied to Old Testament sources, though the word here means the dwelling place of the saints as in Old Testaments passages.
The word camp as used in Scripture is defined as follows.
Camp = machaneh, “camp, encampment, host;” from chanah, “to incline; specifically to pitch a tent, or to encamp (related to the declining rays of the sun when one would normally decline for rest).” The word is used to describe the whole people of Israel and where they set up their tents, as in Exodus 19:16, Deuteronomy 23:14, Numbers 19:35, and many other places.
We identify a camp as a place of safety, rest, warmth, fellowship, and enjoyment, where we can eat, sleep, and enjoy the company of friends and family. The place is maintained in cleanliness, the women cook meals there and feed the gathering, and in many settings it is a place of peace and beauty. To be in the camp is to feel comfortable and accepted, to even owe a degree of obligation to others in the camp, especially to those who have organized the gathering.
Yet, to be in the camp, comes with a price. A person might need to give up some freedoms and personal rights to remain there. Certain moral principles may need to be compromised to remain a part of the camp: “To get along, you go along.” The leaders know that to be put out of the camp is a horrible thought for most people, so they might feel tempted to extract something from them. Some campers might even feel obligated to pay for staying there, and pay whatever that cost might be, just to safeguard themselves from the unthinkable eventuality of being removed. Many leaders understand this and find their lifestyles supplemented by other campers. These leaders know they can extract something from others inside the camp, for to be part of the camp requires one to give up some personal rights.
To be put out of the camp is a great embarrassment, and a danger to the camper. He becomes ostracized from social circles when he is forced to leave his home for some reason — justified or unjustified — that the leaders decide. Thus, few ever challenge the spirit of the camp, and choose to make whatever compromises are necessary to maintain their position within the camp which is giving them security, safety, food, and rest from the world outside.
Now, put in place of the camp your own home, or church organization, or social club, or a company where you might work. The analogy becomes clear. The camp can represent many entities.
A History of Camps — Pre-Flood
The history of camps is very much a history of the city. Eden was the first camp, a beautiful, voluptuous place (Genesis 2:8-17) which we have already discussed, but not as a city per se. Yet, it was a perfect, Godly setting that epitomized the ideal environment for mankind to live. What else would we expect from our creator God to provide for this creation of man, made in His own image?
This camp was perfect, the only perfect and proper camp that has ever existed on earth. It was peaceful, beautiful beyond compare, with food crops available on-demand without cost at any time. Therein lay perfect comfort, security, and contentment. The eternal Father in heaven was its Maker, and it lacked nothing for mankind’s fulfillment and joyous living.
The first occupant — Adam — found contentment among the fruit trees, flowers, birds, insects, lions and lambs, and bubbling waters, and when he became lonely the Father provided for him a wife, a gorgeous counterpart to not only enhance his joy, but insure the reproduction of humankind in the image of Elohim to populate the earth with more future sons of God.
But Adam and Eve were not alone in the perfect camp. There came a beautiful and handsome being that Scriptures calls a serpent [nachash], actually Satan, who deceived Eve, and then she convinced Adam to take of the forbidden fruit, of defining laws in their own human pattern. We know the story well in Genesis 3:1-24.
Adam and Eve “trashed the camp.” With sin came death, and expulsion from the Garden camp to face the harsh outside world wherein thorns and thistles would compete with their food crops, and they would have to labor hard for food to sustain themselves. The only perfect camp in the history of mankind was lost. Now people would build their own camps; we call them towns and cities. Even as cherubim were placed at the camp entrance to prevent mankind from reentering that place of beauty, productivity, and eternity, so has been the plight of man ever since. Eden was lost. The camp of Satan was now his domain. (73)
With the exit from the perfect camp, mankind had need of his own design for a camp: the city. So we see Adam’s son Cain building the first recorded city after the expulsion (Genesis 4:16-17). Cain named the city Enoch, after his son. Within this camp the people could be controlled. They were provided for by Cain, Enoch, and their appointed administrators, and so were not likely to leave. Likely the city was walled, and the people were employed and kept safe by law enforcement, and had recreation of various sorts, an education system, taxation to support city services, and other accoutrements like in a modern city They may have even had an army on call, for it was necessary to give the appearance of invincibility within the city’s walls to keep the residents confident of their safety.
There is no record of other camps besides Enoch before the Flood, but it is most certain that the whole habitable earth was replete with them. There was corruption and violence throughout the earth by Noah’s time: “… the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). As we have seen in our earlier discussions, the city, of Satan’s design, is by nature a place where violence and evil proliferate. It is their nature because of the evil one who designed them. Notice how Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, by taking Him to the top of a high mountain so He could view all the kingdoms of the world. It is very likely that the centers of power of these kingdoms were in the cities which Jesus could view, and which Satan could give, since he owned them. As he stated,
“All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish” (Luke 4:5-7).
A History of Camps — Post-Flood
As the time of the Flood approached, the Eternal told Noah to build an ark, a massive barge-like structure 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide, and 30 cubits high, in which Noah and his family of eight souls plus creatures of every kind were to be safely housed and fed during the year-long catastrophe (Genesis 6:14-22). He was in essence told to leave the camp of the uncertain, insecure society of a corrupted mankind and venture into the ark, where Elohim would preserve him, his family, and the kinds necessary to seed the earth once the old chaotic order of man was destroyed.
Noah and his family exited the ark into a renewed and virgin world. They had left the camp of the old world where they had been rejected by friends — surely they were the laughingstock of those around them, building an ark far from any water — and where all of society had degenerated not only to evil and violence, but to a loss of independence, to taxation, and to a perilous existence for anyone striving to serve the Creator. The pre-Flood leaders provided protection, sustenance, and safety for the people, who perhaps had become habituated to being serfs and slaves, keeping their mouths shut and doing what they were told to do. Camps had become prisons, the leaders put forward as saviors and gods, for as Jesus said in Matthew 24:37-39:
“But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away ….”
The old camps when the Flood arrived were inundated with water, mud, and debris. Noah had left that camp, and entered a new world free and open, wherein he and his family lived outside the camp.
Living outside the camp in a world wherein Satan and his minions are still alive and active, however, is not easy. This life requires much from a person in every way: courage, faith, dedication to the cause of life, and a dependence on God, not on man.
There are challenges in a sometimes difficult and hostile environment, with many trials to be endured, and Noah and his wife soon discovered this fact. Ham violated Noah’s wife, and from this travesty came Canaan, who was cursed as a result (see Genesis 9:21-26). Other trials surely were experienced by the family as they set about farming and ranching in the Ararat and Mesopotamia regions, but they were living outside the camp.
However, Nimrod, the son of Cush, possibly a hybrid with a Nephilim mother (75) (for there was an irruption of sons of Elohim after the Flood just as there had been before, as stated in Genesis 6:4), who has been discussed earlier, decided to build cities as had been done before the Flood. His evil nature could not be contained, and building camps was a logical consequence of his selfish, dictatorial nature: “Like Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord” (Genesis 8:9).
before = paniym, “in defiance of”; see Genesis 6:11, where the earth was corrupt before [paniym] God.
Nimrod wanted to take the place of almighty God and have people bow down to him, so he repeated the sins of Cain, and built not just one city, but nine of them as recorded in Genesis 10:10-12. These camps fit his personality well, for they kept people within the walls of these centers of humanity, secure from foreign armies and predators They were captive to his system, dependent upon his autocratic rulership for survival.
The tower, which he presumably supervised the building of, served as a symbol for all of the 70 families of earth to remain united under his authority — not God’s. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4).
It took the Eternal’s supernatural intervention of confusing the various families’ languages to coerce the nations to disperse to their destined localities, to leave the camp of Nimrod (Genesis 11:4-9). God was not to be found within Babel. That was Satan’s dwelling place.
Then came Abraham, the father of the faithful (Galatians 3:9), the one whom the Father selected out of all people on earth to begin the plan of redemption for mankind. Abram left Ur of the Chaldees at God’s command, not knowing where he was going, but he obeyed this calling to leave the camp of the Chaldees for a place outside the camp (Hebrews 11:9; Genesis 12:1-5). He dwelled in tents …
“… with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise; for he waited for the city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Hebrews 11:9-10.
Notice carefully that Abraham dwelled in tents — or tabernacles, as it is translated in the KJV, which is the Greek skene, “a tent, booth, or tabernacle,” not in a city from the Greek polis, “a town, often with walls, of greater or lesser size.” The city he waited for was the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, one with 12 foundations [themelois, “the substructure of a building, something put down”] as revealed in Revelation 21. Abraham knew that the cities of mankind were bent upon evil, so he avoided them and camped in tents, temporary dwellings, even as the ancient Israelites were told to live in booths during the Feast of Tabernacles.
“And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days …. You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths” (Leviticus 23: 40, 42).
booths = cukkah, “a hut or lair”; from suke , “a hut as entwined boughs, a lair,” which is from cakak, “to entwine as a screen, to fence in, cover over, protect.”
The inference of the Feast of Tabernacles booth to the abode of the Garden of Eden, outside the camp, is unmistakable! Beautiful green and fruitful trees, an outdoors type of existence under the sun in fresh, fragrant air in the midst of loving brethren, by all means resembles the perfect environment God designed and intended for His creation, made in His image. It prefigures the very heavenly throne where the Ancient of Days now resides, a sea of emerald glass beneath a rainbow, bolts of energy flashing all around with 24 elders, living creatures, multitudes of holy angels, and surely the decoration of gorgeous plants, animals, running waters, and light and lovely fragrances and balmy temperatures (Revelation 4:2-7, 21; 22:1-2; Ezekiel 1: 25-28; 10:1-4; Daniel 7:9-10).
This is the only city that Abraham could tolerate, for his heavenly Father dwelled there. That is the city he yearned for. NO OTHER CITY — OR CAMP — COULD SATISFY THAT SPIRIT THE ETERNAL HAD PLACED WITHIN HIM. IT WAS HIS HOME, HIS LOFTY HOME, AND NOTHING ELSE COULD SATISFY HIM. Therefore he lived in tents, in temporary tabernacles on an earth consigned to Satan the Devil (Luke 4:5-6; II Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2), not willing to partake of dwellings the world had to offer.
He, like Paul, foresaw the building of God, not made with hands but in the heavens; his earthly tabernacle [skenos, “a hut or temporary residence, as the human body”] would be dissolved, in which he groaned in trials and suffering (II Corinthians 5:1-4; II Peter 1:13), just as we do today.
God had to put Abraham out of the camp, out of Ur in Mesopotamia. In the process he actually left three camps: (1) his own country, (2) his kindred, and (3) his father’s house (Genesis 12:1). It is likely that he was coerced to leave, at least in part, because according to the Book of Jasher his father was a servant of Nimrod, and Abram had destroyed idols in his father’s house and also was revealed to be a future king in a dream Nimrod’s wise men had. (77) In short, Abraham could not stay in the city of his own household. It offered him no safety and security because he was not a part of it. He needed to trust in God’s creation, not man’s, and Almighty God could not be found inside the camp, but outside of it.
God Is Outside the Camp
Our heavenly Father is outside the camp, and calling all of His people to leave the camp. Inside the camp you are provided your every physical need by the system established there. You are a slave. You are within the “system,” likely not even aware that you are enslaved.
Let us now consider the nation of Israel in Egypt. We know the story well, of how during the great famine during Jacob’s time Joseph’s 11 brothers visited Egypt to buy grain. Through an amazing series of events Joseph arranged for his father Jacob’s entire entourage of 70 people to travel from Canaan to Goshen and replant the budding nation. Life went well while Joseph was living: the people prospered and multiplied greatly, filling the land (Exodus 1:7).
Then a new king arose in Egypt — likely an Assyrian ruler — one who did not know Joseph. He and his servants were afraid of the newfound might of the Israelites, so set taskmasters over them to help build supply cities, Pithom and Raamses, as we have already discussed. When they continued to increase the bondage was increased even further. The Pharaoh eventually commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill all newborn male children (Exodus 1:8-22). That command was later extended to require anyone who found a young Israelite boy to cast him into the Nile River.
So Israel struggled within the camp of Egypt, enslaved and with nowhere to turn. Then Yahweh called Moses and Aaron to guide the people out of that evil camp, and performed the task through ten mighty miracles: changing the Nile River to blood, sending frogs over the land, then lice, followed by flies, death of livestock, boils on man and beast, hail, locusts, three days of darkness, and death of the firstborn (Exodus 7; 8; 9; 10; 12:29-30). The Israelites left enslavement in Egypt with a high hand, crossed the wilderness of Sinai to the Red Sea, and were led through the water on dry land, the water being a wall on the right hand and on the left. Then the waters returned after Israel had crossed and crushed the pursuing Egyptian army (Exodus 13:17-22; 14:1-31).
Things did not go so well for Israel as they journeyed east from the Red Sea crossing. After a journey of only 25 days, to the Wilderness of Sin, they complained that they had no meat and bread as they had in Egypt. They wanted to return to the camp they had just left, faithless toward the God who had parted the Red Sea and destroyed the pursuing army (Exodus 16:1-3). Further on they camped at Rephidim where there was no water. Once again they cried out against Moses for having brought them out of Egypt to bring them to a place where they would die of thirst (Exodus 17:1-3). The people could not comprehend the necessity of leaving the camp of Egypt behind forever, and live by faith outside that evil place.
As the Israelites continued to journey, after their stay at Sinai, the mixed multitude complained vehemently that they had no meat, as they had in Egypt, desiring again to return to that evil empire. God then gave them quail for 30 days, and were told to eat it “… until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you …” (Numbers 11:4-20).
These and other examples show how greatly Israel craved the comfort of the camp. When forced to survive in the wilderness, outside the camp, they wanted to return to it.
The episode of Israel at Mt. Sinai is especially instructive at this juncture. God had led them through the wilderness for about seven weeks, to the time of the Feast of Weeks, and the nation was camped before the mountain. At this time the people were given a momentous covenant.
“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5-6).
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses and instructed the people to leave the camp and “… come near the mountain” (Exodus 19:13).
“And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain” (Exodus 19:17).
TO MEET GOD, THE PEOPLE WERE BROUGHT OUTSIDE THE CAMP! Clearly then, God was not in the camp. Moses then exited the camp of Israel, along with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders and met with the God of Israel on the Mountain, probably part way up, for Moses was then commanded to come further up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments (Exodus 24:9-18). There he was with Yahweh 40 days and 40 nights. These momentous events occurred outside the camp of Israel.
Yahweh then hurriedly admonished Moses to leave the Mountain and return to the camp, for the people had made a golden calf and were making merry. He descended the mountain, saw their horrible evil, and threw down and shattered the tables of stone with the inscribed commandments. Notice carefully that Moses was still outside the camp when he saw the revelry and broke the tablets of stone. He “came near the camp” (Exodus 32:19), and he “stood in the entrance of the camp” (Exodus 32:26), but in no case was he “in the camp.” In fact, when the sons of Levi gathered themselves to him at the camp entrance they were instructed to enter the camp to kill about 3,000 of the people who had been partying (Exodus 32:27-28). The Levites had to be outside the camp when they were given this instruction in order for them to enter the camp and kill the offending people.
The message: within the camp is sin and corruption, while outside the camp is the presence of God. Moses emphasized this reality when after the golden calf incident he pitched his own tent outside the camp.
“Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp” (Exodus 33:7).
It was there that Yahweh dwelled, far outside the camp, for He would not go into the midst of the camp, among a people he called stiff-necked: “You are a stiff-necked people. I could come up into your midst and consume you” (Exodus 33:5).
How do we look upon the fact that the Tabernacle in the Wilderness was in the middle of the camp of Israel, where three tribes pitched their tents on the north, three tribes pitched on the south, and likewise for the east and west sides of the Tabernacle (Numbers 2:2-32)? Yahweh would not dwell amongst the stiff-necked and rebellious Israelites in these camps, but notice how the Levites’ tents were situated all around the Tabernacle, serving as a buffer, as it were, between the twelve camps of the Israelites and Tabernacle (see the quote from Numbers 1 below). The Levites were on Yahweh’s side, as they proved before the Tabernacle was even erected: they gathered around Moses once he had come down from the mountain and shattered the tablets of the commandments to the ground.
“Now when Moses saw that the people were unrestrained … then Moses stood in the entrance of the camp, and said, ‘Whoever is on the Lord’s side — come to me!’ And all the sons of Levi gathered themselves together to him” (Exodus 32:25-26).
“The children of Israel shall pitch their tents, everyone by his own camp, everyone by his own standard, according to their armies; but the Levites shall camp around the tabernacle of the Testimony, that there be no wrath on the congregation of the children of Israel; and the Levites shall keep charge of the tabernacle of the Testimony” (Numbers 1:52-53).
There are other things that were done outside the camp. Here are a few:
(1) Animals for sin offerings were carried outside the camp to a clean place, where the ashes were also poured out; the carcasses were burned with wood (Exodus 29:14; Leviticus 4:12, 21; 6:11; 8:17; 9:11; 16:27; Hebrews 13:11).
(2) People who were stoned because of cursing parents, cursing God, working on the Sabbath, or due to some other horrible sin were killed outside the camp, wiping away the evil person and cleaning the camp of his or her presence (Leviticus 24:14; Numbers 15:35-36).
(3) Diseased or unclean people were brought outside the damp to a place where they might be healed (Numbers 5:2-4; Leviticus 13:46; Deuteronomy 23:10).
(4) Priests who performed various duties would go outside the camp, and be clean by evening (Numbers 19:7-10).
(5) People who had touched a dead body, or gone into the tent of someone who died, or killed someone in the purge of a city, would go out of the camp and be clean in seven days (Numbers 19:11-12; 31:19).
(6) The red heifer, and goat whose ashes were used to consecrate the temple, were slaughtered and burned in a clean place outside the camp (Leviticus 16:27; Numbers 19:2-9).
(7) Outside the Temple in Jerusalem there was a clean place though the east gate. This was the location of the Mount of Olives (the Garden of Gethsemane) where Jesus often went to communicate with the Father, and where He was arrested before the crucifixion (Matthew 27:30-57). It is the place of the Olivet Prophecy (Matthew 24 and 25), the place where He ascended after the resurrection (Acts 1:9-12), and the place where He will return (Zechariah 14:4). Abraham may have offered Isaac there (Genesis 22:2; the Mount of Olives is one of the hills of Mount Moriah).
The Mount of Olives and Eden
There were two alters in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, and also in the temple in Jerusalem at the time of Christ: the brazen altar for burnt offerings, from which the priests could eat certain parts of the animals offered, and also the altar of incense within the Holy of Holies. Then there was a third altar that has been referenced above, outside the camp, for sin offerings from which the priests did not partake. As indicated above, the red heifer was also burned there. This altar was on the Mount of Olives, and was called the Miphkad altar that the Mishnah refers to as a pit. Outside the camp meant, according to ancient writings, 2000 cubits (about 3,000 feet) going east from the seat of the Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stone in the Temple (Numbers 35:5). (83)
What better place than the Mount of Olives could the Romans have chosen for the crucifixion of Jesus, One who was accused of blasphemy along the very road that He would travel from Galilee through Bethany and Bethphage on the way over the Mount of Olives to the Kidron Valley, and up to the Temple. The place was elevated and provided excellent visibility for the citizens of Jerusalem to view the crucifixion. (84)
From this vantage point to the east of the Temple in an elevated position, the centurion, who declared that “this truly was the Son of God” (Matthew 27:54; Mark 15:39), was able to view the Temple and witness the rending of the curtain from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51; Mark 15:38). The tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, in which Jesus was lain on a shelf, was most likely hewn out of a pre-existing cave in the limestone in the close proximity of the Mount of Olive,s as we read in John 19:41. Jesus therefore suffered and died near the very place of the red heifer sacrifice. It is also interesting to note that Yahweh’s glory was seen by Ezekiel in this very location, not once but twice (Ezekiel 11:22-23; 43:1-5).
We are tempted to equate the very place where the Garden of Eden was situated to the Mount of Olives. The symbolism and parallelisms between the two are wonderfully compelling.
The ashes from the sacrifices were poured out at the clean place outside the camp in the vicinity of the Mount of Olives. The remnants of the animal sacrifices were burned there. The red heifer, whose ashes were used to cleanse and make atonement for the sanctuary, the tent of meeting, the altar, the priests, and the people was burned there. Those ashes also cleansed defiled and unclean people (Numbers 19:9, 17; Hebrews 9:13).
Are not these ashes symbolic of the very sacrifice of Jesus Christ, whose lifeblood was poured out from the sins of all mankind in a clean place, outside the camp? Are not all of these animal sacrifices symbolic of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ Himself? Hebrews makes this clear.
“But Christ came as high Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. Not with the blood of bulls and goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who though the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? …. And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission. Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God [the Father] for us …” (Hebrews 9:11-14, 22-24).
Let us explore this issue of our needing to come outside the camp even further in Hebrews, for the implications of these words are profound indeed!
“We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle [the Levites] have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. Therefore let us go forth to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (Hebrews 13:10-14).
The implications of these words are profound. God’s people are told to leave the camp where we have been living and come outside the camp, which is the very concept we are given by our Savior throughout Scripture
• Come out of the world and do not be conformed to it; be that new creature we have been predestined to be (Romans 12:2; II Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 1:4-6).
• Do not be friends with the world’s system for to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God (James 4:4).
• We are to live in the world but not be of the world (John 17:14-16).
We are to partake of Christ’s sufferings — be crucified with Him (Galatians 2:20) — at a place outside the camp, where He was crucified … at our own Golgotha, as it were. We follow in His footsteps (I John 2:4), and that pathway is a difficult pathway that few find, “… for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
That pathway leads us out of the camp, away from the spirit of the city where Satan dwells, to the Garden of Gethsemane, to Golgotha where we are crucified daily as we follow in God’s pathway of suffering.
“… we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:17-18).
III. Babylon and Other Great Cities
We have seen that God Almighty does not reside in the camp, which we have equated with the city in most respects. Let us now take a closer look at Babylon and see how its evil is manifested to all of its inhabitants.
The city takes on a curse of and by itself, apart from the people who live within it, as an entity much like a corporation. A corporation is a legal construct that is defined as “a legal entity that exists independently of the person or persons who have been granted the charter creating it, and that is invested with many of the rights given to individuals; a corporation may enter into contract, buy and sell property, and so forth.” (86) In fact, towns and cities are usually incorporated, just as are many businesses, state governments, and even nations such as the United States and the entities that comprise its functions such as the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Postal Service. Most churches are incorporated, meaning the entity is invested with many of the same powers as an individual.
As advantageous as this corporate organization may be for business transactions, it is a trap that imprisons those caught in its corporate web. The corporation has no soul, no feelings, and no conscience or regret for harm committed during its tenure. Yet, it pretends to control the activities of church organizations that subscribe to the Internal Revenue Service’s 501(c)3 code. Under this code a church must do the following. (87)
1. Have a recognized creed and IRS approved worship
2. Have a definite and distinct ecclesiastical
(hierarchical) government
3. Have “ordained” ministers
4. Have ministers in state accredited colleges
5. Be neutral on political issues
6. Be engaged in activities furthering exclusively public purposes
7. Open its services to the public
8. Have the pastor answer to the IRS as to the daily activities of the church
9. Let the IRS be privy to all financial transactions including source, donors, and expenditures
10. Have books and records available to the IRS at all times
11. Use only IRS approved methods of fundraising
12. Advocate and promote racial integration
13. Not engage in political activities opposing pornography
14. Not support legislation saying that children belong to parents, not the state
15. Not support any legislation that opposes lotteries or gambling activities
16. Not advocate support of the U.S. or state constitutions as the supreme law of the land
17. Not actively participate in opposing the public school system
18. Not publicly declare that the church is to obey God rather than the government
The point of mentioning these corporate restrictions on religious organizations is that a similar spirit of control pervades incorporated villages and cities. The city extracts its toll on its captive dwellers, such as the following.
Zoning ordinances: what type of businesses and dwellings one may build in any particular place
Traffic laws: signs and zones, speed limits, caution signs, one-way traffic, traffic lanes, traffic lights, no-parking zones, parking meters
Parking lots and their restrictions
Snow removal ordinances
Lawn mowing ordinances
Licensing for businesses and individuals
Taxes on businesses and food, and on most other items for living
Police departments to enforce laws
Fire and rescue departments to extinguish fires and rescue injured or endangered people
Building inspectors to enforce building codes
The list goes on ….
The resident of the city must consider all of his or her actions all of the day, whether or not they conform to the codes that have been enacted by the city fathers. Break the codes, and fines will be levied. Refuse to pay the fines, and eventually you will find magistrates knocking on your door and taking you to a jail cell.
So, the inhabitants of the city give up their individual rights to a collective body of sorts. Though individuals hold the title to their home or business, they are taxed — the government claims ownership — and personal liberties are sacrificed for the collective whole.
Thus, God usually speaks not to the inhabitants of cities, but rather to the city itself … or should we say to its collective conscience. In this process he speaks only condemning words. The city is cursed and condemned to death because of what she represents; her inhabitants are pulled down with her. And no wonder, because the spirit of the city is a perverted spirit that pretends to be an angel of light: Lucifer. Notice what the Eternal says concerning the king of Tyre, a rich merchandising city on the eastern Mediterranean coast:
“Son of man, take up a lamentation for the king of Tyre, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “You were the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God …. By the abundance of your trading you became filled with violence within, and you sinned; therefore I cast you as a profane thing out of the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O covering cherub, from the midst of the fiery stones”’” (Ezekiel 28:12-13, 16).
Yahweh is throwing Satan down from the holy mountain of God, and ultimately destroying the cities he has created over the face of the earth. Thus, life in the city is dominated by a curse. This curse relates directly to the “urban problem” of the city fathers trying to deal with the pernicious and perennial problems every city faces. As Ellul so aptly describes:
“Dealing with the ‘urban problem’ are sociologists and lawmakers, urban specialist and politicians, architects and economists, humanists and revolutionaries, and they are all looking for a moral solution, a legal solution to the multitude of inhuman problems brought up by the city …. [The city] calls for more fresh blood. And new throngs of men take up residence under the rule of the curse. They work and they live the city’s unchanging inhuman life, now irretrievably their life …. Men innocent with all the world’s unconsciousness, who are under the effects of the curse, who feel it and suffer, but who go on, because ‘what good would it do to try anything else, it’s the same everywhere you go.’ … [Satan] continues his work, imperturbably getting just as much use out of the urbanist’s wide avenues, children’s parks, paid vacations, workers’ apartments, public transportation, and disposal systems as out of slums and tuberculosis.” (90)
A Christian would desire to find cures and solutions to these immense and persistent urban problems, but God through His word has shown us that nothing can be done. God has given no commands regarding the city, no laws to remediate a creation that is averse to His mind and spirit. In essence, this environment created through man by the devil’s inspiration has no remedy.
Babylon, Mother of All Cities
We can look upon Babylon as being the template of all cities this side of the Flood. Rome and other cities around the world have grown out of Babylon, as it were, even as the great image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream (Daniel 2:31-45) encapsulated all cities and nations that have existed through the timeline of history. Babylon, the head of gold, gave way over time to the chest and arms of silver (Medo-Persia), then to the belly and thighs of bronze (Greece), and finally the legs of iron and feet of iron mixed with clay (Rome). The image was a time-map of civilization’s development, one culture enfolding into the next, culminating in the collapse and utter destruction of this accumulated culture of mankind when Jesus Christ returns and strikes the image at its feet and destroys it at His return (Daniel 2:34-35; Revelation 18; 19:19-21). What is said about Babylon can be said about Rome, as well as Jerusalem and other cities.
What is most intriguing is that the power and soul of a nation is centered in a city. Just as Rome was the center of the Roman Empire, so is Paris the center of France, Berlin the center of Germany, Oslo the center of Norway, London the center of the United Kingdom, and Washington, D.C., the center of the United States. During World War II, as German forces descended on Moscow, every available resource was thrown into the titanic effort to repel Hitler’s army, for that city represented the entire nation; were it to fall, the Soviet Empire would be gone. All further resistance would become moot.
The capital city is a synthesis of the state’s power in most every nation.
Wars originate in these great cities. Washington, D.C., contains the Pentagon, government departments of defense and other military agencies, which contract out to various other cities the development and construction of ships, planes, missiles, tanks, armaments, and bombs to stoke the flames of war. Colleges at West Point, Annapolis, Colorado Springs, and elsewhere train leaders in military discipline and war games. Babylon is constantly waging war, but when the oppressor, the “golden city” of Babylon has ceased, “the whole earth is at rest and quiet; they break forth into singing” (Isaiah 14:4-7). The same can be said of Nineveh, Rome, and modern nations like the United States, Russia, and China.
The agent for war is the city. It is an urban phenomenon, and intrinsically tied to the power of money and merchandising. Recall that Lucifer’s first sin was merchandising (Ezekiel 28:16, 18). Babylon’s connection with money and merchandising is summed up in Revelation 18.
“The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing …. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived” (Revelation 18:15, 23).
The list of things that the sea-merchants traded is extensive in Revelation 18:12-13, including just about every item imaginable, including livestock and human beings, anything that could be boughten and then sold at a profit. This is the system that Satan devised as his initial sin, making it a most prominent, cardinal error that has prevailed over virtually every facet of human existence. Even the food that is grown from God’s good earth to sustain the priceless lives of people made in God’s image — which food was free for the taking in the Garden of Eden — is levied with a price, and this all is centered within the city in its banks through an interest-bearing, debt-financed economic system, and government treasuries which print worthless fiat money to grease the wheels of modern merchandising. Now these traditional forms of money — gold, silver, and paper token — have been replaced with digital currency to a large extent, making the accumulation of material wealth by individuals and corporations possible into the billions of dollars. Elon Musk’s personal wealth is now about $138 billion!
The City of London, a mile-square autonomous banking center in London which controls the banking industry throughout the world, is a separate city within the huge metropolis of London. This tiny piece of real estate, with its own set of laws, epitomizes the evil concentration of Satanic power in the city. Together with the Vatican in Rome and the District of Columbia in the United States, these three cities are the essential controlling agencies of the modern Babylonian world-wide system that Nebuchadnezzar viewed in his dream (Daniel 2:31-35). (97) Thus we see the financial, religious, military, and economic powers of the city knitted together in a vast world-wide system which centralizes power to a few personalities, and all cities of the world are attached to them.
When commerce (merchandising) develops in an area, a great city develops: witness Rome, Carthage, Constantinople, Alexandria, and London in times past, as well as New York, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Jakarta, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, and Bombay in more modern times. Cities are agents of political, economic and moral development, on the level of human endeavor, not God’s. The city claims her own strength is sufficient: “I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow” (Revelation 18:7).
In a real sense, the city withdraws within herself as a self-centered neurotic person, becoming spiritually closed-off from the world, shut in by her walls, and deceived into thinking that she is invincible. As Nebuchadnezzar stated in Daniel 4:30:
“Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honor of my majesty?”
Nebuchadnezzar had become one with the spirit of the city, and we know what happened to him as a result: he became like a beast and survived like an animal for seven years. One might say that Yahweh was taking just retribution against such a vain and prideful being by causing his insanity and animalistic conversion, but the king was merely animating the spirit that pervaded the city at the center of his kingdom. That spirit excluded the Creator God. Did the city’s influence pervert the king’s judgment, or did the king impress upon the city his very self-aggrandizement? The influence surely works both ways; one reinforces the other.
Cities have always been centers of idol worship, in particular Babylon. Thus they close themselves off from God, and when Yahweh intervenes, He declares, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen! And all the carved images of her gods he has broken to the ground” (Isaiah 21:9).
Of course, witchcraft and idol worship are practiced in places other than in cities, but the city represents the primary place where sorcery is practiced (Isaiah 47:9), the place of wizards and witches (Daniel 5:1-4, 23).
Impossible to Reform
We find throughout Scripture the fact that the city cannot be reformed. People of high standing have tried valiantly to make cities better, more human, more livable. Names have been given to certain ones like “the garden city,” “the show city,” “the rose city,” “ the city of brotherly love,” or “the gateway to the West.” Songs have been written to glorify their existence, to somehow add a mystical sense of greatness and goodness: “The bluest skies you’ll ever see are in Seattle, like a beautiful child, growing up free and wild” by Perry Como; “Galveston, oh Galveston, I still see your sea waves crashing“ by Glen Campbell; “I left my heart in San Francisco” by Tony Bennett, to name a few. The reality of cities, however, is quite different. Ellul states:
“Throughout the Scriptures we find the same judgment falling on all who live in cities. It is executed not only on the city herself, but also on all those who participate in her life. It is not man’s pride that makes the city, but the city as a symbol of pride drags along in her fall all those who have materially and spiritually united with her, who glory in her greatness and who put their confidence in her riches.” (98)
This reality I have sadly seen in my own extended family during my youth. Friends and family members who migrated from the rural farms of southwestern Minnesota into the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul,or to other sizable cities, usually for work opportunities after being economically squeezed out of farming by low prices and high costs, were quickly absorbed into the patterns of city living. The humble uniqueness of rural life, the personableness and sincerity, the patient friendliness, and the self-sacrifice and morality of these beloved community cornerstones rapidly changed to more prideful, impatient, self-absorbed, detached people, not less loved, but intrinsically changed, and not for the better. Especially noted was the moral degeneration of their children who were exposed to the large public schools, where classmates from broken and abusive families were all too common, and the moral temperature of the work environment and social structure was in decline. Walking down streets among faceless strangers had taken its toll, and living in suburbia with houses near enough to hear the neighbor’s telephone ringing had invaded privacy and space. Materialism reigned supreme, without remorse, as people judged one another by the size of their bank account, the model of their car, and the style of their clothing and hairdo.
It was so sad to see this transition happen. What was most disheartening of all was the distancing of relationships, the loss of close, heartfelt friendships. Distance was one factor making these connections less common, of course, but the distinct changes in the people and their personalities is what bothered me the most. They were not the warm, congenial people they used to be. The city had changed them, and it was not for the better.
As has been made clear through the discussion thus far, the very nature of the city is evil and cannot be reformed. The spirit that guides it is the Adversary himself; God does not inhabit its streets and by-ways. However, this does not mean that men do not attempt to build a better environment within the city walls. His good will drives him to build better homes, provide better paying and more fulfilling jobs, engineer smooth and wide streets, attempt to keep noise and light pollution at a minimum (for they cannot be totally removed), maintain a vigilant police force and fire department, insure schools are growing and accredited (by men’s standards), and medical and hospital services are not neglected.
Yet, the end result over time is always the same. Neighborhoods often slowly decline into crime and drug-infested urban jungles. City centers become dirty and unlivable, often served by a subway, train, or bus service that is harassed by muggers and rapists. Sometimes, as in parts of Detroit, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia, entire neighborhoods fall into disrepair, inhabited only by those least able to afford housing. Public housing projects spring up to house the most destitute of families, many surviving on public welfare. Virtually all cities are now experiencing a rapid influx of homeless people, those who are mentally compromised, addicted to drugs or alcohol, or otherwise unable to care for their needs. Tent cities along sidewalks and in parks are commonplace in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York, and other cities, both large and small. (99) The spirit of the city draws them there, where they hope that such a spirit will care for them. They have turned their will over to the spirit and struggle to survive among others of like hopelessness, unable to subject themselves to the joys of living amidst the natural surroundings of a countryside home.
Sodom and Nineveh
Two major cities in the world’s history are Sodom and Nineveh, icons of ancient civilizations that relate to war and dissipation, the ugliest of human conditions. Those who lived in these cities, and cities like them, could not help but rub shoulders with neighbors and associates who set examples of unrighteous living: sexual perversion, idol worship, pride, murder, and brutality. Who over the course of time, by constantly rubbing shoulders, would not succumb to, or at least partially submit to, the spirit of their comrades?
So was the nature of these evil cities. Yet, as sin filled as they were, God desires that no one be lost (I Timothy 2:4), and He provides a way of escape, for He wants people to separate themselves from the city. When Jerusalem would be surrounded by armies, Jesus warned His people to “… flee to the mountains, let those who are in the midst of her depart, and let not those who are in the country enter her” (Luke 21:21). Jesus told them to GET OUT OF THE CITY! It was no place to be when wars were about to erupt; the mountains and countryside are where the people should be during those times. Tradition states that during the siege of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D., the Christians in Jerusalem did just that, and escaped to Pella, a community just east of the Jordan River. (102)
Sodom, the city rife with immorality and violence, was condemned by Yahweh. “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grave …” (Genesis 18:20), He would destroy the city, since not even 10 righteous people could be found there. Only Lot was salvageable. In fact, he was not truly a part of the city’s inhabitants. The crowd cried:
“’Stand back! The fellow,’ they said, ‘came here as an alien, and already he acts the ruler!’” (Genesis 19:9; The Torah Translation).
How he could survive living among the utter depravity of that city and not become absorbed in its sins is miraculous! Only he and his two daughters were saved from the fire and brimstone, and to be saved he had to exit Sodom in haste (Genesis 19:12-17). What is also most remarkable about the residents of the city of Sodom is that the word had gotten out that the city was going to be destroyed — Lot had told his relatives about the coming annihilation of the city — but they did not take him seriously (Genesis 19:14). Now even his married daughters would be incinerated in the conflagration to come, but Lot could do nothing to bring them out along with his two virgin daughters; their husbands were thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the city.
Like Sodom, Nineveh was doomed to destruction. A city of war (Nahum 3:1-3), she was destined to be destroyed:
“So the light of Israel will be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame; it will burn and devour his thorns and his briars [military power] in one day, and it will consume the glory of his forest [army] and of his fruitful field, both soul and body; and they will be as when a sick man wastes away. Then the rest of the trees of his forest [soldiers in the army] will be so few in number that a child may write them” (Isaiah 10:17-19).
This is not to say that individuals within the city did not possess virtues, but the social group that the city represented was so strong that men were drawn into it, and could not extricate themselves from it. Individual virtues were absorbed within the sin of the city.
We can safely surmise that all cities more-or-less follow the template of Sodom and Nineveh.
Jerusalem
The city of Jerusalem is unique in the history of mankind. When Israel entered Canaan, the Jebusites occupied this piece of real estate as the fortress of Jebus. It held no special importance in early history, being a Canaanite settlement, until David conquered it (I Chronicles 11:4-7). Thereafter the city became known as Jerusalem [Yruwshalaim, “a dual, relating it to two main hills; from yarah, “to flow as water,” and shalam, “to be safe, to be friendly’]. It became Israel’s capital due to its ease of fortification, and also developed into the religious center of the nation.
David was not unfamiliar with the meaning of cities: heathen enclaves. Yet, he wanted to make this city special, an abode for the Ark of the Covenant. Until it was moved to the temple in Jerusalem it had been kept in private outside cities — which were blessed by its presence — or temporarily within cities, which were not blessed. David was reluctant to move the Ark into any city, much less Jerusalem.
Yahweh Himself, who presented Himself to Israel with the Ark, stated the same.
“Go and tell My servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Would you build a house for Me to dwell in? For I have not dwelt in a house since the time that I brought the children of Israel up from Egypt, even to this day, but have moved about in a tent and in a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about with all the children of Israel, have I ever spoken a word to anyone from the tribes of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying ‘Why have you not built Me a house of cedar?”‘“ (II Samuel 7:5-7).
The reluctance of David to move His presence into a city, much less a heathen city, was underscored by God’s refusal to allow him to build the Temple. Solomon was given that responsibility (II Samuel 7:11-13), but Yahweh accepted David’s wish to build the Temple in Jerusalem, though giving that task to his successor, Solomon.
Thus Jerusalem became a holy city because of the Temple and the ark within it, a copy of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness. It was a concession granted by God to fulfill David’s wish, a miracle, as it were, of God’s submission to an act of man when this man had been chosen of God and was subject to God’s love.
This is not very different from Yahweh acquiescing to Moses’ pleadings for Israel when they had fabricated the golden calf at Mt. Sinai … for God said in His anger, “Now therefore, let me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation” (Exodus 32:10).
Moses then hastily pleaded with Yahweh to turn from His fierce anger and reconsider His desire to destroy the people, since His promises needed to be fulfilled for them (Exodus 32:11-13). “So the Lord relented from the harm which He said he would do to His people” (Exodus 32:14).
Thus, we see a city inherently evil, as are all cities on earth, that is consecrated even in this age to be holy, justified from among all other cities because she has the Eternal’s presence in her, at least for the time the Ark and Temple were present.
“I bring My righteousness near; it shall not be far off. My salvation shall not linger, and I will place salvation in Zion, for Israel My glory” (Isaiah 46:13).
Though Jerusalem is a holy city she still carries every bit the mark of man, her architect. Such is especially true throughout the centuries following the collapse and deportation of Israel up to the present time, for even in John’s time Jerusalem was called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8), not very becoming names to the place that God called His own. We will get into the issue later of Jerusalem’s future transformation into a truly righteous city of God, once Satan is bound and righteousness prevails among men.
Jerusalem is a holy city, but she carries man’s mark and acts like them, and is condemned like them. It is a bloody city (Micah 3:10; Ezekiel 16), a city filled with pride (Jeremiah 13:9), a city noted for idolatry: “Your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan; your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite” (Ezekiel 16:3).
And again:
“Samaria did not commit half of your sins; but you have multiplied your abominations more than they, and have justified your sisters by all the abominations which you have done. You who judged your sisters, bear your own shame also, because the sins which you committed were more abominable than theirs; they are more righteous than you. Yes, be disgraced also, and bear your own shame, because you justified your sisters” (Ezekiel 16:51-52).
The horrible future awaiting Jerusalem for all of her harlotry is dramatically spelled out in Ezekiel 16 and elsewhere. The holy city’s sin, because she is holy, is so much more serious than that of other cities, and she is like them in all respects. Ultimately God abandons the city, and she is destroyed along with the Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C. (104) She is stripped of her clothing, abandoned by the God who had clothed her, and returns to a state of nudity that is the city’s natural state. His face is set against her, “… for adversity and not good …. It shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire” (Jeremiah 21:10).
So, what can we say of Jerusalem, though it be a city like any other in terms of its intrinsic evil? The answer lies in the Eternal’s design for his unique place on earth, in terms of is history and of its prophetic significance. For some reason God has chosen this one place for very special purposes, which we have discussed before.
(1) Perhaps the location of the Garden of Eden
(2) Where Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac
(3) The place of the crucifixion
(4) Where the tomb of Christ’s burial was located
(5) The place of Jesus’ return as King of Kings
Is there a spiritual “portal” of sorts here? Some evidence indicated that before the drifting apart of the continent, during the great tectonic upheavals at the time of the Flood, or during Peleg’s time when “… the earth was divided …” (Genesis 10:25; I Chronicles 1:19), Jerusalem was at the exact center of the Pangea landmass. (105) Even after the continents drifted apart would not this city also be at the center of earth’s land masses, as it were, if the continents and islands were reassembled?
Thus, God would not desert this special city with its worldwide historical and prophetic importance. He has adopted this city in spite of its corruption. He makes it His own.
And, in the end of the age, this city which is called Sodom and Egypt will become the city of God! The term “city of God” is first used in Psalms, in several places.
“There is a river whose streams shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High” (Psalm 46:4).
“Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, in His holy mountain. Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, in Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King” (Psalm 48:1-2).
“As we have heard, so we have seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God: God will establish it forever” (Psalm 48:8).
“His foundation is in the holy mountains. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God! (Psalm 87:1-3).
David could not be speaking of the Temple at Jerusalem in the above verses, for it was not constructed until after his death. Thus, these verses must be prophetic, referring to the Jerusalem to come in the millennial realm, or to the heavenly city of God which we see pictured in some places. We see the city of God appear in several New Testament Scriptures.
“… for he [Abraham] waited for the city which has foundations, whose Builder and Maker is God” (Hebrews 11:10).
“But now they desire a better, that is a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them” (Hebrews 11:16).
“But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels” (Hebrews 12:22).
“He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name” (Revelation 3:12).
Here in Hebrews 11 and Revelation 3 we see the city of God whose Builder and Maker is God, not man. Thus, it is not infected with Satanic designs of idolatry, pride, merchandising, war making, and paganism as are the cities of men all through history. This is a new city, a New and heavenly Jerusalem, as identified in Hebrews 12:22, tying this future Jerusalem to the very throne of the Most High as described in Revelation 20, 21, and 22. The picture of this New Jerusalem, with its throne of the Father, 24 elders, seven spirits, living creatures, sea of glass, rainbow, lightning bolts, and the innumerable company of angels is described, as we have seen, in Ezekiel 1:22-28, Daniel 7:9-10, and Revelation 4:2-8 and 5:6-11. It is the time of the new heaven and new earth prophesied to overspread the earth, and heaven as well, in the coming age (Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; II Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1-2).
This is the nature of the Jerusalem not made with human hands, but by God Himself. He is its builder and Maker. He has prepared it for the patriarchs of old, like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Sarah, Gideon, and all of us and the rest of the saints who will be resurrected at the coming of Jesus Christ in power, with His entourage on white horses (Revelation 19:11-16).
“And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise, God having provided something better for us, that they should not be made perfect apart from us” (Hebrews 11:39-40).
God loves Jerusalem, not because it is a work of man — as are all other cities — but because it is the object of His election. This election is spelled out by Isaiah so clearly:
“For Zion’s sake I will not hold My peace, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her righteousness goes forth as brightness, and her salvation as a lamp that burns” (Isaiah 62:1).
This transformation of Jerusalem to such a city of righteousness and light will obviously never occur in this age, but will indeed unfold in the coming age, as shown in Revelation 21 and 22. What a marvelous transformation that will be!
Jesus and the City
How did our Savior view cities? We will see that He had no conciliatory or pardoning words for cities, but in fact he struggled against the power of the city and Satan in it, who tried to hinder His work. The first recorded contact He had with a city after His baptism was with Satan, who, during the temptation in the wilderness, took Him into the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple. At that place the devil said, “If you are the Son of God, throw Yourself down, for it is written, ‘He shall give His angels charge over you.’” Jesus answered him, “You shall not tempt the Lord your God” (Matthew 4:5-7).
This first contact with the city, where Satan spends much time and especially in holy places like Jerusalem, served as an instrument of temptation. Then we find Jesus upbraiding the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, where most of His mighty works had been done, for those people refused to repent (Matthew 11:20-24; Luke 10:11-15). His reference to the cities as independent of its inhabitants reveals that they are independent beings; a city has a collective consciousness that creates the spirit of that particular collection of people. Jesus recognized this truth very well.
The fact that Jesus used the word woe [quai, “exclamation of grief”] against these cities — just as He did against the scribes and doctors of the law who put their confidence in their knowledge of the law, the rich who put their confidence in material wealth, those who laugh who put their confidence in earthly happiness, and those who seek man’s praise and put their confidence in seeking men’s praise — was because the city (and its inhabitants) puts itself at the center of life rather than God.
Jesus had no earthly home, a place he could claim as His unique abiding place as most of us have:
“Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head” (Luke 9:58).
Even before His birth He traveled to Bethlehem for the census, where He was born (Luke 2:1-7). He lived a life of wandering, beginning shortly after His birth, when He was taken by Joseph and Mary to Egypt (Matthew 2:12-14), then back to the land of Israel to Nazareth after Herod’s death (Matthew 2:19-23). While we have few records of Jesus’ life in Nazareth, tradition tells us that he visited the British Isles with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea, who was a wealthy trader in minerals. We know that Jesus traveled to the Feasts in Jerusalem all through his life (Luke 2:41-42).
His life was one of walking. We find him moving through the countryside of Judea, Galilee, and other places continually as he met with thousands while healing, casting out demons, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. His ministry was not one of setting up a “ministry headquarters” as did the priests and Sanhedrin, or the Pharisees and Sadducees, whose centers of operation were in Jerusalem. As Ellul stated, Jesus did not seek the advantages His ministry would have experienced had He settled in Jerusalem:
“Jesus chose against the city; He preferred not to accept the glory and amplitude the city would have given Him, but rather to stay faithful to His calling of taking on Himself the totality of the human condition, and therefore of refusing what man uses to escape the condition God has decided should be His.” (10)
He would visit the city, only to leave soon. Not only did He not reside in the city, but He also left the city to die! One might even claim that He was forced to leave the city before His death since the demons of the city could not tolerate the Son of God in their midst. He, the servant of the Law, was expelled from the city, which could not then take possession of Him.
IV. The Nature of the City
A Part of the Crowd
One cannot avoid noting the fact that cities are, by definition, places where people are crowded together. That is what cities are: masses of people living in their crowded homes, businesses, and factories. Outside the city a person can at times be a part of a crowd, but in the city he is always a member.
The effects of being a member of a mass are pervasive, for an individual collides with his neighbor’s walls and presence.
• He will avoid eye contact with the many people he meets on the street.
• His acts are measured to conform with others around him.
• Without a “silent zone,” he has little room for isolation and meditation.
• In a real sense, even if no one is paying attention to him, he is subconsciously under the control of others around him.
I am reminded of a scene in the movie Crocodile Dundee, (109) starring Mike Dundee, who is accustomed to the friendly outback of Australia where everybody knows everyone in the community. He walks down a busy sidewalk in New York City, and greets and tips his hat to everyone he meets. It is hilarious, though sobering at the same time, to view the reactions of the people he meets, who react in horror and consternation to this friendliness.
People in the city see a requirement that everyone they meet must act impersonally, detached, and distant to everyone they meet. It is a requirement in the city, and woe and horrors to anyone who violates the strict rules of city etiquette! Such a violation labels the invader to their prescribed domain as a dangerous foreigner, sort of like the angels were who visited Lot’s home in Sodom. The residents of Sodom were upended by the angels’ presence and contemplated extreme action against them (Genesis 19:4-9).
The city dweller becomes a man of the crowd, and the crowd so often acts without thinking. For instance, when the crowd was mourning in front of Jairus’ house because of the death of his 12-year-old daughter, Christ ordered them to disperse; they were obeying a “sociological reflex,” not recognizing His power over death. While preaching to the multitudes who had gone to the Jordan River to seek John the Baptist, Jesus said:
“What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind? But what did you go out to see? A man clothed in soft garments? …. But what did you go out to see? A prophet?” (Matthew 11:7-9).
This crowd did not really understand who they were going to see. They acted as a crowd so often acts, without comprehension of their real purpose. Jesus here makes that truth plain.
For crowds Jesus nearly always had compassion (Matthew 9:36; 14:14; 15:32; Mark 6:34; 8:2). He saw these people as following their surrounding men and women who as a group were looking for something, something they oftentimes perhaps could not put their finger on. He saw them as sheep without a shepherd, such as when a great multitude came out from the surrounding towns and villages to hear Him teach (Mark 6:33-34). There was an invisible force driving them on to seek that crucial something that was a gaping hole in their psyche, that missing dimension that gave them meaning and purpose to life, as Solomon so aptly put it:
“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).
eternity = olam, “eternity, remotest time, perpetuity;” a place of eternal longing or sense of eternity in the human heart, showing that people made in God’s image have an inborn knowledge that there is something more to life than what we can see and experience in our everyday lives.
The world for those in this crowd was filled with heart ache, fear, and suffering, so they were willing to walk — even run — many miles to hear a message of hope for placating that “something” that their hollow lives were missing. They had heard glowing reports of the incredible wisdom of Jesus’ teachings, and of His miraculous healings and casting out of demons.
Very likely every family in the region had been positively impacted by His ministry. They craved to learn if perhaps here was finally the answer to their innermost yearnings. God has planted within his creations the ability to live “above time”: to remember yesterday, plan for tomorrow, and consider abstract principles, but He has not given Him divine knowledge which the human heat seeks above all else. These crowds of Judea were willing to scale high walls and swim oceans, as it were, to seek out what they thought might be the true source of this divine knowledge they were lacking.
Jesus rarely spoke to the crowd as a whole. He usually spoke to individuals in the crowd, or to a small group, thus dissociating Himself from the mindlessness of the mass. And notice that these crowds of people came to Jesus because they had nowhere else to go, and they came to Him outside the city!
They left the city to meet with him in the desert (Matthew 14:13). In the desert, outside the city, there is no possibility of placing hope in getting out by one’s own means, by the support of industry or cars or trickery or delusions. All the possibilities of civilization are gone; he is alone, without armor, an open prey for spirits, and in a position to be helped only by God Almighty! In the desert, outside the city wherein Satan himself dwells, it appears that spirit communiucations, both good and evil, are more common, as we see with the prophets, David, Elijah, and now Jesus. Even the woman of Revelation 12:6 received divine revelations in the wilderness.
Thus, the desert, or wilderness serves as a detachment from human powers and a time of spiritual combat. In Jesus’ episode of feeding the 5,000 (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:33-44; Luke 9:11-17), as Ellul puts it:
“… he brought men around to leaving its principle fortress, the city, to abandon the work of his power, to taste the death of human means (the crowd lacks even food), in order to lead man into the place of renunciation and combat …. Christ introduces a kind of break between man and his world, not only in the sense that man leaves it, but in the much stronger sense that man is denied the possibility of purely and simply retaking possession of his former garments. Never again can he enter the city with the same spirit, the same strength, the same submission, the same destiny.” (111)
These people have left the city, do not belong to it, and have in a real sense left the crowd as well because they have individually encountered Jesus Christ, who cares for each person lovingly and individually (I Peter 5:7; John 3:16; Romans 8:39). On their return to the city, each person is irretrievably altered, forever changed and yet still in the desert, so to speak, forever situated outside the walls of the city’s spiritual dominion.
The Nature of the City
Let us take another adventure into the character of the city, and examine more closely its inner nature. We must understand that civilization is expressed by a city. All through history — Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome, and in China and India, metropolitan centers emerged wherever people gathered, in the pattern of ancient Babylon with its first city creator, Nimrod.
As soon as a city comes into existence, she draws all activity outside of her into her. Thus, she is by definition a parasite. She cannot live of and by herself, but sucks vitality for her own existence from the countryside around her. By herself the city is dead, and can produce nothing unless food, building materials, fuel, and even men are brought into her. There must be a constant supply of fresh blood from outside to sustain her industrial capacity.
To function, the city requires constant contributions from outside its walls. While tractors, fertilizers, electricity, and other things that the farmers need are moved outside its confines, these things are just a minimum of what she consumes. The ideas and paradigms in the fields of economics, art, humanitarianism, and intellectual scholarship are usable only within the city, or to influence those in the countryside of its character.
Modern intellectual life, the work of learned scholars from Plato, to Racine, to Churchill could not have existed outside of Athens, Paris, or London. Intellectual life exists outside of cities, of course, but the germ of that life in human affairs finds its nest solidly within the city. There we find industry, commerce, finance, and all economic life centered.
To many residents there seems to be a mystical attraction to the concrete and asphalt byways of the city. Its seductive power causes the people to assume her manners, language, clothing styles, simplistic attitudes, and rhythm of living, the way he treats his wife and his children, the manners in which he works, and the way he drives his car. The moves of the city reach into the lives of everyone in it, subtly over time imprinting its character upon all. For those that stream into the city, as one author put it:
“In the history of every civilization the same process is carried out: life becomes more supple and finally bends, ancestral customs disappear, modes of thought and mental make-up are modified, both the surest instincts and the most defective mysticisms are lost, and everyone everywhere is certain of the city’s absolute material necessity.” (112)
The loss of liberty by the city’s residents is manifested by the iron schedule of work hours, the loss of sunlight and wind in high-rise shrouded streets, and the endless signage that directs pedestrians and drivers throughout the residential and industrial areas. The threat of a collision with other cars passing sometimes inches away keeps drivers always on the alert, stressed with eyes ever scanning the ugliness of roadways and bridges.
Architects and city planners may try to somehow conform their designs for zoning, traffic flow, parking, and parks to bring about an idyllic functioning of people’s lives, encapsulating human liberties along with these designs, but liberty never gets off the drawing boards. The result is always the same over time: a capturing of lives to the service of the spirit of the city.
It seems as if all of mankind’s efforts are put into the concept of the city. Even if war or societal upheaval were to wipe away the substance of her streets and structures, the city would continue to exist, if not at the exact locale where she was, then somewhere else nearby. Efforts are made to modify her intrinsic evils by decentralizing big cities, upgrading sewage disposal systems and streets, and the like, but the central concept of the city is never challenged by its masters.
Perhaps nowhere else within a city is its spirit more vociferously expressed than in the sports stadiums. Like the ancient coliseums of Rome, modern college and professional stadium complexes meld together the spirit of competition, rivalry, and passionate conquest of war, the teams of football, soccer, baseball, hockey, and basketball fighting it out before raucous, partisan crowds in enclosed areas, while downing their beer, hotdogs, and popcorn as they join the rising and falling roar of the crowd, as they view the exploits of the gladiators on the field. The lions and bears, and fighting to the death, are missing today, but injuries and occasional mayhem are not excluded; rather they are expected, and no one would even consider removing this violence from the games. It is all part of the city, its spirit encapsulated and accepted in spite of the injury and war game atmosphere. To vouch for the home team at the expense of the “invading” city’s’ teams is a rite of life within the city: protect the sanctity of the spirit to which one has become welded. That spirit must be honored, bowed down to despite the merciless offerings and sacrifices required to maintain that honor. (114)
It is most curious that mankind, in his quest to improve upon his existence, considers changing most everything except the city. He can think of his future only in terms of an urban future, with more and more people squeezed into its confines to run the factories and businesses that must churn out ever more production. To lower costs these factories must be close together to reduce transportation costs while transforming raw materials, shipped in from outside the city, into finished products. The workers performing this transformation must live nearby. While in the Middle Ages cities were built around cathedrals — a sort-of Tower of Babel attraction — nowadays cities are built around industry, or in some cases around technology, as in Silicon Valley.
As cities expand, multi-story apartment buildings are scattered among greenery that gets filled in bit-by-bit with stores, cinemas, schools, shopping districts, and various businesses. Beyond these areas live ritzy, gated residential districts where presidents, chairmen of boards, organizers, and more wealthy residents live. The layout of these entities varies, of course, from city to city, but they are all present, and dispersing or dissolving them would mean the end of the production model by which industry within cities operates. Look at Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Minneapolis, Denver, Salt Lake City, Portland, or Phoenix; they all follow the pattern, though automobile transportation has allowed workers to migrate much further from office and industrial centers than in decades past, albeit at the expense of enduring crowded freeway traffic.
The strong movement to depopulate urban centers has resulted in residents creating smaller cities that grow up in more rural areas, such as Sioux Falls, Joplin, Tulare, Kinston, and countless others. Since they absorb more and more agricultural land within the confines of these smaller cities, the end result is an acceleration of the urbanization of the countryside and a further reduction of the rural population. As the cost-price squeeze continues to press more and more farmers to join the urban work force — in 2019 off-farm income comprised 82% of the total income for all family farms in the U.S. — farm size increases, and with it the industrialization of the land. Crop and livestock production serve as conduits to feed the industrial uses of corn soybeans, wheat, sorghum, cotton, beef, and poultry into the coffers of grain and livestock marketers, along trade channels of multinational commodity companies such as Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge, and COFO, and food and livestock companies such as Tyson Foods, Land-O-Lakes, Cargill, and Smithfield. The flow of money and profits leads through these sea merchants and their controlling banks, whom John termed the “great men of the earth” (116):
“The merchants of these things, who became rich by her, will stand at a distance for fear of her torment, weeping and wailing …. The light of a lamp shall not shine in you anymore, and the voice of bridegroom and bride shall not be heard in you anymore. For your merchants were the great men of the earth, for by your sorcery all the nations were deceived” (Revelation 18:15, 23).
These multinational merchants are shown to be destroyed at the end of the age, but that discussion is for another day. What is important to understand here is that all of this commercial activity is carried out through the auspices of the city: Babylon (Revelation 18:2). This Babylon is actually the world-wide complex of trading and control of money, production, consumption, and distribution of goods upon which people of all nations depend, for their food, clothing, building materials, all of the items utilized in civilization as listed in Revelation 18:11-13. Here they are listed: gold, silver, precious stones, pearls, fine linen and purple, silk and scarlet, citron wood [all wood products], ivory, precious wood, bronze, iron [metals and ore of all sorts], marble, spices, wine, oil, flour and wheat [grains in general], cattle and sheep, horses and chariots [cars, trucks, and machines in general], and human slaves.
The fiat/digital money system of trade behind these transactions are controlled by the powers invested in the City of London and their cooperating entities, such as the Vatican and the District of Columbia: cities! It is here that the forces of evil are especially concentrated.
The Great Divide
There exists a “great divide” between people living in the city and those outside of it. I have covered this reality to some extent already, and will cover it even more in the following section. The city encourages liberal, big government bias due to the resident having to rely almost totally on the inputs of others for their survival: food, fuel, sewage disposal, snow removal, and so on. And because of the crowding of hundreds of thousands or millions of people within a small area, there are consequences of this crowding in daily living.
Take Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, as a typical case. The urban-rural divide is real and growing as is discussed in the next section. The liberal, Democratic-party-dominated city cares little for the sparsely populated countryside and small towns occupying the rest of the state. The rural communities conclude that “no one cares about us,” a claim reinforced by impressions that Minneapolis is rolling in prosperity. Indeed such is the case, in many instances, since the seven-county metro area has more high-paying jobs, which contribute to a huge disparity in pay versus rural areas of the state. Tax money is largely spent within the city’s bounds, leaving rural areas to receive less of the taxes they contribute. (117)
Besides, Minnesota farmers and miners draw food and minerals from the earth, which enrich the processors and retailers in the Twin Cities. Thus, most of the money made from agriculture is reaped in the Twin Cities, even though the crops are raised in rural communities. Moreover, the shouts of “white privilege” from racial minorities, in the city, which accusations are hardly justified, further divide city and largely white rural areas. As one sociological researcher stated, “Nearly everyone I spoke with in greater Minnesota let loose with the same exasperation: ‘Minneapolis is out of touch with reality,’ or less politely, ‘You guys are nuts!’” (118)
One well-placed state leader bluntly diagnosed the state’s political (liberal versus conservative) malady and its source: “The urban/rural divide is a serious problem, and Minneapolis is the cause.” Another veteran political strategist commented that because of the city’s inherent moral and political character, “Minneapolis liberalism is off the charts, its own left enclave that greater Minnesota can’t comprehend.” (119)
Let us not point the finger of this ideological divide just at Minneapolis. The same divide exists between all cities and their rural surroundings across the world: London, Frankfurt, Barcelona, Oslo, St. Petersburg, Delhi, Jakarta, Mexico City, and Rio De Janeiro. The inherent dependency of city dwellers upon governments at the city, state, and federal levels leads residents to forsake the laws of God, and embrace the institutions of men that sustain them. In essence, we can generalize that country folk, because of a greater conscience towards their Creator, care about their own communities as well as those living in cities, whereas city dwellers tend to focus upon themselves, and may even scorn those living in rural areas. They may be viewed as “hicks,” less educated, and inferior in various ways, though one cannot generalize too much, for there are conservative and God-fearing people within the confines of big cities as well.
Let us examine a bit more what it is like to live in a modern big city today. We have already discussed the noise, pollution, and lack of privacy inherent within any concentrated population Then there is reliance on governments to maintain order and essentials for living, with the sacrifice of liberties in space and independence that are inherent with rural areas.
What is abundantly apparent with city living is the affect upon one’s character. Anonymity and rudeness become part of virtually everyone within an environment in which thousands of people crowd sidewalks, commuter trains, airports, and highways. In a city of size, you do not smile at strangers. It is an unwritten social rule. As one researcher put it, “Not smiling or engaging with others avoids contact with crazy, loquacious, and predatorial people. If you smile at a hotdog vendor in Central Park of New York City, you are likely to be asked by the vendor, “What small town are you from?” (120)
People in big cities work hard to avoid eye contact and interaction with strangers every day. A psychologist in Manhattan made clear that such avoidance is not brashness or rudeness, but rather protection from the harsh realities of city life, especially for women. This psychologist said that by isolating oneself in the city, one is choosing to focus on things that build up life, not tear it down: noticing a flower along the street (if you can find one), not the scowling or worried face of a pedestrian (which can be seen most everywhere). Thus, people are prioritizing their own mental health, coping with the wild and crowded surroundings in the best possible way.
As a professor of cognitive neuroscience stated, “Things that happen in urban environments could lead to poorly regulated emotions. These are the effects of crowding and noise — all of the things that come with living somewhere with millions of people.” (121)
One professor of psychology Dr. Glenn Geher, was frank enough to admit the real source of this assault on the human psyche. He makes a profound admission. “On an unconscious level, we’re all trying to cope with the fact that we were never meant to congregate in cities in the first place. Yet, here we are, living on top of each other, trying to achieve our dreams in the concrete jungle.” (122)
Dr. Geher makes plain that throughout most of mankind’s history, people have lived mostly in smaller agricultural communities [excluding the cities of Babylon, Nineveh, Rome, and others], but life today in big cities does not match these historic conditions. “Being surrounded by a high proportion of strangers is unnatural in the human mind historically.” Studies have shown that people in larger cities have a tendency to struggle with mental health more frequently than those in smaller towns or rural areas. (124)
Avoiding interaction with others in a city to keep yourself safe and sane may be a requisite for living there, but that avoidance may seriously impact your mental health and interfere with connecting with the world, as God intended that you should. Wearing ear buds and listening to music to block out the rancor of the city, or staring at an iphone to avoid looking around at the dingy commuter train and its passengers, are not the means to cultivate healthy minds and bodies. Let’s face it: people made in God’s image are meant to live abundantly among the green trees and grass, the animals and birds and insects, under blue or cloud-decked skies. It is there that the mind is at ease and can communicate with the Creator and His creation, and find peace and privacy to meditate and pray.
It is an interesting phenomenon that when some city dwellers vacation they oftentimes travel to other cities, rather than flee to the open, verdant countryside. Some do indeed take pains to escape the confines of the city, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, and flood the freeways after work hours on Fridays to escape to Yosemite, Sequoia, and Kings Canyon parks in California to enjoy the incredible handiwork of God. Others, however, find themselves trapped on an ocean-going super-vessel cruise ship, a city afloat that takes them to other city ports of call. They seem to be unable to escape the lure of people crammed in above and below them on multiple decks.
Even so, it is buried deeply within the heart of man to surround himself with the creation. So, we find homeowners and businesses installing wood-grained floor or siding, ornately designed floral rugs and carpets, and pictures and artwork displaying beautiful flowers, mountains and valleys streams, sunset, and wildlife to try and bring the world of nature into their surroundings. I personally have on display in my home such framed pictures, plus several from the renowned Northern Plains painter Harvey Dunn, whose inspiring pictures not only depict the beauty of the native prairie, but the spirit of pioneer families living in freedom, close to nature, reaping the fruits of hard work on the land and overcoming great trials. (125)
The great divide between the city and the countryside is also epitomized by the well-documented fact that rural families have historically been large. Pioneer families of five to 10 children or more were not uncommon, a fulfillment of the command given to both Adam and Noah, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Genesis 1:28; 9:1). Large families provide many hands to work the fields, harvest the grain, tend the cattle, milk the cows, and provide for parents and grandparents in their older age. Provision for these children was from the land: gardens, orchards, and livestock raised on their own land. Taxes were nil, and the cost of living not considered because the Creator showered sunshine and rain on the land that nourished their gardens and orchards.
Cities, however, made childrearing less important in the sense that no land and livestock needed tending. Children became a liability, expensive to support with high costs for food and shelter. Today, a child is projected to cost parents about $290,000 from birth to age 18, so many parents simply opt out of having children altogether. The city, then, encourages mankind to abrogate one of the major commands for humankind, that of reproduction and multiplication of the human race. (127)
The Spirit of City and Countryside:
Red and Blue
A clear evidence of the great spiritual divide between the city and the countryside, inside versus outside the camp, is the separation between so-called “red” and “blue” populations. Red areas on U.S. maps are those that vote predominantly Republican (conservative), whereas blue areas are those whose residents vote mostly Democrat ( liberal and progressive). The characteristics of these two ideological camps are compared below. Keep in mind that not every voter fits neatly into either camp, but there are general characteristics of each group.
Note that the conservative “red” areas in the map shown here are in mainly rural, which we might term as being outside the camp, especially from the Great Plains and on westward, up to the West Coast, where high population centers turn deep “blue,” or liberal. These blue areas are inside cities and urban areas. The same is true on the East Coast, especially in the Northeast, again where populations are high. In the Midwest and South, many areas are highly conservative outside cities, but wherever a city exists, that county is predominantly blue or liberal. Note the blue of Houston, Dallas, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Chicago and cities bordering Lake Michigan and Lake Erie, Kansas City, St. Louis, Denver, Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and the list goes on. Where cities are, the inhabitants tend to be liberal and progressive.
These progressives in general, as the list above indicates, believe that government should be large and solve social problems rather than individuals and families, the federal bureaucracy should trump state government, government should regulate business and the economy rather than individuals and free enterprise, belief in God is not vital for living, taxes are good, the military should be neutered, sexual deviates should be given equal rights to normal people, guns should be severely restricted or outlawed entirely, abortion should be made available to all on demand, evolutionary theory must trump creationism, global warming is real and a carbon tax is good, illegal aliens should be allowed freely into the country, poverty should be solved through government handouts, and election fraud committed to elect progressive candidates, though illegal, is justified to elect more liberal officials to maintain control of the government. (130)
All of these evils are focused within cities. They are opposed to the spirit of God and His eternal laws, so cannot support a stable, long-lasting, loving society. They are ideas based upon the Adversary in his quest to destroy mankind made in Elohim’s image.
One innovative artist named Dicken Schrader even devised a map to divide the United States into progressive and conservative area, based on the voting patterns within counties for the previous 12 years. This map on the previous page shows again the interesting pattern of highly urbanized areas of the two coasts being liberal and blue, along with Indian reservations and highly Hispanic border areas, plus the Great Lakes region and other metropolitan areas. (131)
Pew polls, have consistently shown that large metropolises are perpetually more left-leaning than their surrounding suburbs, small town, and rural areas. These urban people prefer to live where houses are smaller and closer together, while political conservatives prefer more space. Also, liberals prefer by a large margin — 76% versus 20% — living among people of a different ethnic and racial background, compared to rural conservatives. Liberals also did not believe that living near people having the same religious belief was very important, while conservatives felt that was very important by a 57% to 17% margin. Most people from either persuasion did not want to mix their families with those of the other camp. (132)
The city clearly contains a predominance of people absorbed in ideas and behaviors averse to Godliness. It is the breeder of anti-Biblical thoughts and motives. We might ask why this is. There are several reasons: (133)
• The city is usually composed of many minorities and immigrants, which tend to have higher unemployment and thus require more government welfare handouts.
• Because people close together, the cry for regulations to protect from criminals, dog poop, and motorized scooters, to name just a few things, is great, so government intervention grows.
• Big cities are costly, so to find housing and other essentials people look to the government for help.
• Social and family ties are looser. A family moving to a big city to start a new life away from a rural family likely finds it hard to fit in to a long-lasting and reliable community. Lost among the anonymous crowds, in hard times these people will turn to the government for help.
• The lure of the anonymity, concentration of wealth, and economic bustle of the city draws people who are interested in instant riches, sensual exploits, and selfish gain without the typical restraints of community standards as found in rural settings.
The city thus takes on a life of its own, without the moral restraints that an “outside the camp” community would provide, where everybody knows everybody. The spirit of the city steers more and more souls to itself. Peer pressure relentlessly over time drives many people to its heart of evil.
Government and the City — Smart Cities
The governments of all nations are based within the power of the city. That was true for Cain in the pre-Flood world, as it was true for Nimrod in the post-Flood world. Governments of men in the modern world cannot function in a dispersed population over the country side. The countryside must be depopulated in order for the mechanism of the state to function at its best.
In order for that reality to reap its highest apex, leaders throughout the centuries have attempted to move people from the countryside into cities … and not just to suburban areas, but to concentrated city centers where they can be stacked on top of one another like so many rats in cages. As author Simon Parker states in Cities, Politics, and Power, (135) the function of cities in modern times has moved to not just a center for urban governance, but major cities of economic, social, cultural, and strategic force in their own right. Cities and urban regions function as multiple sites and agents of raw power. Other writers have called cities “urban growth machines,” (136) implying they possess an internal core of self-assemblance whose power reaches beyond the physical realm.
This fact leads once again to the conclusion that cities are constructs of Satanic origin. Their government possesses an overall goal of a concentration of powers in the hands of a few administrators who attempt to dictate the lives of its citizens. It is an insatiable power that contradicts human rationale, shown when learned men such as Richard Schragger, professor of law at the University of Virginia, claims that cities should not only fully exercise the powers they already have to the greatest extent possible, but they should advocate for even more power. While claiming that cities create economic development, help generate a middle class, and encourage a robust self-government, they are also responsible for inequality. Yet, he claims that while inequality is “a function of the city itself, [it is] both something the city creates and something the city can solve.” Apparently he believes that the cause of a problem can also be its solution. (137)
In order to speed the migration of rural populations into cities, highly visible leaders such as Barak Obama have verbalized this desire publicly. (138) However, the most recent efforts to encourage the increase in population of large cities are wrapped up in the promotion of “smart cities,” sometimes called “15-minute cities,” where residents can presumably obtain all of their necessities for living within a 15-minute walk from where they live.
While smart cities can be defined in different ways, one way is as follows:
“A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sources to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources, and services efficiently; in return, that data is used to improve operations across the city. This includes data collected from citizens, devices, buildings, and assets that is processed and analyzed to monitor and manage traffic and transportation systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services. Smart cities are defined as smart both in the ways in which their governments harness technology as well as in how they monitor, analyze, plan, and govern the city.” (139)
These objectives of smart cities sound altruistic, to say the least, as if there are only positives surrounding these innovations Yet, what is truly behind the promotion of smart cities?
The Agenda 21 Sustainable Development program was initiated in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro by the United Nations to implement a worldwide inventory and control of all land, construction, means of productivity, energy, information, and human activity. Governments of all nations were encouraged to usurp the constitutional rights guaranteed to individuals, in non-Communist nations, at least, and pack them into human settlements, close to employment centers and transportation. A program called the Wildlands Project was to set aside most land for wilderness uses. The push was to get people off the land, even out of the suburbs, and move them into cities, into high-rises and condominiums. Instead of private cars, people were motivated to use bicycles. Tax money was to be redirected into the Redevelopment Agency and given to favored developers of low-income housing and “mixed use” : businesses housing residents upstairs or in the same vicinity. The emphasis on “bike lanes” along highways was to promote these cities. (140)
Agenda 21 was a “whole life plan” involving the educational system, the energy market, transportation systems, government, health, food production, and virtually every phase of living. As one commentator put it:
“The plan is to restrict your choices, limit your funds, narrow your freedom, and take away your voice. One of the ways is by using the Delphi Technique to ‘manufacture concensus.’ Another is to infiltrate community groups or actually start neighborhood associations with handpicked- leaders.’” (141) [The Delphi Technique is a structured communication technique or method, originally developed as a systematic, interactive forecasting method which relies on a panel of experts. (142)
Other means to achieve the Agenda 21 goals are to groom and train future candidates for local offices, sponsor non-governmental groups to enter schools and train children, offer federal and private grants for funding city programs that further their agenda, convert factories to other uses, introduce energy measures that penalize manufacturing, set reduced energy consumption goals, and allow unrestricted illegal immigration to lower living standards and drain local resources. (143)
Then in 2015 Agenda 2030 was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly and promoted by the World Economic Forum. Under the false claim that smart cities and 15-minute cities would “save the planet” and help all of humanity, this agenda is an attempt to place Agenda 21 on steroids, and accelerate the transformation of cities into concrete total digital surveillance regions. Termed “the next generation of urban living,” digital information from millions of internet-connected sensors, devices, and objects would be mined and fed to authorities, who would supposedly help run cities more efficiently and sustainably. This digital information would come from smart vehicles, water meters and electrical devices, wastebin containers, smart home security systems, smart wearable devices, smart telephones, internet connected home appliances (refrigerators, washers and dryers, and air conditioners), and even sensor-embedded clothing. (144)
An example of a smart city is Barcelona, Spain. It is a “sensory bustle,” and filled with a plethora of frequencies emitted through the air or fiber optic cables. According to writer Claudia Cieb,
“Elaborate tiled buildings glint beneath swaying palm trees while vendors hawk their goods in Spanish and Catalan. Amid such color and sound, it would be easy to overlook the gray plastic shields that have appeared on lamp posts along the city’s main drag. It’s even easier to miss what they contain: sensor boxes that collect data on everything around them. Each is equipped with its own hand device and a wifi-enabled sensor, which tracks elements of its environment like noise and crowd levels and pollution and traffic congestion, then transmits it to a central data service via a fiber-optic cable.” (147)
So, beneath Barcelona’s old-world charm lies a vast net of new-world technology, a harbinger of Agenda 2030 promoters. Other cities like Singapore, London, Dubai, and Hamburg have begun equipping their cities to collect data on residents and their activities. India is revamping 100 of its cities to become smart cities as we speak. (148)
Then there is the plan to divide the British city of Oxford into six 15-minute cities. In these six districts, most household essentials will be accessible by a one-fourth hour walk or a quick bicycle ride, so residents will not need a car. (149)
The draconian regulations for these smart cities pronounce fines for anyone traveling outside the 15-minute radius of their homes for more than 100 days a year, unless special permission is received. Residents will be tracked through their smart phones and facial recognition technology via E-Gates, which are electronic gates that utilize facial recognition. (150)
The Oxford plan, though promoted as being good for people, the environment, and the “greater good,” is obviously a way to control people. Moreover, the restrictions originate from high-placed politicians and institutions which will not follow their own rules. This “Great Reset,” as it is put by the World Economic Forum, removes private ownership and privacy, two pivotal tenets of God’s provision by the fact of one’s birth. As stated by Amy Mek:
“At the time [in February, 2022, in a speech by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban], most media ignored the … speech, which alludes to the UN’s ‘Agenda 2030,’ a corporate-government fascist scheme. In the 1990s, the United Nations drafted ‘Agenda 21,’ their so-called plan for defeating ‘climate change.’ In 2015, it was re-branded by socialists into ‘Agenda 2030.’ Neither had anything to do with ‘global warming’ and everything to do with reshaping our world according to their socialist vision …. This document describes nothing less than a global government takeover of every nation across the planet. The 17 stated ‘goals’ of Agenda 2030 are code words for a corporate-government fascist agenda that will imprison humanity in a devasting cycle of poverty, while enriching the world’s most powerful globalist corporations and individuals.” (151)
Thus, we can see that the city is indeed the desired destination, as plotted by the Adversary, for every human being. There the individual can be controlled, especially nowadays through the explosive proliferation of digital tracking available in smart cities. The objective of Satan is to control every human being made in Elohim’s image, and make those awesome creations into his own image, and thus attempt to thwart the Eternal’s plans.
Scripture plainly states that true liberty and freedom came from the laws of God working within the hearts of men:
“Be he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does” (James 1:25).
liberty = eleutheria, “freedom”; from eleutheros, “unrestrained (to go at pleasure).”
“… because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Romans 8:21).
“Now the Lord is the spirit; and where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (II Corinthians 3:17).
The critical importance of this liberty is recognized even by modern psychology, as voiced by Dr. Matina Cartwright in Psychology Today. Speaking from a secular point of view, she made clear that liberty is a state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authorities on one’s way of life, behavior, or political view. She makes clear how restrictions conspire to create anxiety and unhappiness, whereas solid societies are founded on the basis of rules that respect individual freedom of choice while being mindful and respectful of diversity of opinion and thought. Relationships thrive when two people can disagree while respecting the opinions of others, without fearing contempt or rejection. She stated,
“Our nation was founded by a group of rebels seeking to escape repression of thought and action. Strong, courageous, and resourceful, these individuals chose to revel in a society that relished independence and rejected tyranny. History has demonstrated that tyranny gains a foothold when a society welcomes centralized powers and individuals become victims instead of participants, and when poor life decisions are rewarded without consequences.
“Tyranny … results in an unhappy individual seeking to find meaning elsewhere. Eventually, chronic repression leads to helplessness, depression, anxiety, and defeat. The loss of liberty is the heart of much unhappiness because someone surrenders his or her freedom to another. They compromise too much of what makes them who they are. In dong so, their free will dies like a flame quenched with water until their internal light is no longer — no longer an individual but an extension of another. Change is scary, but loss of self is worse.” (152) [Emphasis mine]
Here we have, from a psychological standpoint, the great evil of men ruling over other men — a tyranny. This is the model of city life, where government rules over individuals because they have lost their independence in their need for food, shelter, clothing, energy, and solitude for meditation. The faceless crowd requires the mind and heart to retreat within the self for sheer self-preservation.
The governments of men operate through fear and force, striving to gain favoritism through any means at hand to maintain political favor. During the early history of the United States what became known as the “political machine” was pervasive in cities like Chicago and New York. A single boss or small autocratic group would command enough votes to maintain political and administrative control of a city, county, or state.
In New York City, Tammany Hall, run by boss William Tweed, built a loyal voter following, especially among immigrants, and actually helped provide jobs and housing, but much of it through bribes, payoffs, and patronage (organizers who “deliver” votes in exchange for a job). The machine controlled elected and appointed posts, often along racial or family lines, controlled government salaries and revenues, and would accept kickbacks from business in return for tax or zoning favors, or the award of lucrative contracts. Sometimes the machine would accept money from organized crime syndicates in exchange for legal protection. (154)
These affairs were centered in the city. The countryside offers no opportunities for such evil. In the city, the government is always the master since it controls the food supply. If a farm economy was structured to prevent food transport to the city, the city of course would die. So, it is essential that forces within government control the supply of food into the city. It is also essential, then, that the government see to it that a food supply for the city’s use is maintained; free enterprise on the farm thus must to some degree be captured to state purposes or the viability of the city would be threatened This is done through contracts between large growers of vegetables, fruits, and grains and food distributors and processors, all based in the city.
Of Mice and Misery
Perhaps it is worthy to take a short excursion to investigate a long-term series of rat and mouse experiments relating to cities. These studies were conducted by a biologist named John Calhoun, who joined the Rodent Ecology Project in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1946, after achieving a Ph.D. in zoology. The purpose of this project was to find ways to eliminate rodent pests in cities. (155)
These efforts achieved limited success: no one could figure out what aspects of rodent behavior to target. However, intrigued by rodent behavior for its own sake, Dr. Calhoun decided to go out on his own and set up controlled rodent environments at his own residence. Architects and civil engineers at this time were having vigorous debates about how to build better cities, so Calhoun thought that rodent studies might be extrapolated to humans and how to best design urban areas.
Dr. Calhoun designed many “utopian” experiments with rats and mice, but his most famous one was the 25th, that came to be dubbed “Universe 25.” This experiment began in July of 1968, where he placed eight albino mice in a 4.5 foot cube. The mice had everything they needed: unlimited food, water, perfect climate, paper to build cozy nests, and 256 separate compartments accessible by mesh tubes bolted to the walls, There were no predators and no diseases. Theoretically the mice should have lived in comfort to an extraordinarily old age. (156)
After an adjustment period the first pups were born 3.5 months later, and the populations doubled every 55 days thereafter. The rate of growth slowed somewhat over time, but at the end of 19 months the mouse population peaked at 2,200.
Things began to fall apart as the months passed, into a literal “mouse hell.” With such a population density not experienced in natural surroundings, where predators, disease, and cold culled most of the rodents, several problems cropped up. Dominant alpha males would secure their harems in separte compartments, and the losing males could not escape the cube. Normally, in nature they would scurry away some distance and start life over, but inside the cube the hoards of losing male mice would congregate in the center of the pen, full of scars and cuts. Every so often huge brawls amongst these unattached males would break out with clawing and biting, for no obvious purpose. (157)
The alpha males struggled as well in the fully occupied compartments, for the challengers to their position from abundant aspiring males was nearly constant, and would exhaust the alpha males. Some stopped defending their apartments altogether, and rogue males would invade the nursing female quarters. The mothers fought back, but themselves would get stressed and often booted out their pups from the nest early, before they were prepared for independent life. Some mothers even attacked their own young amid the violence, or abandoned them and fled to different apartments, leaving the pups to die of neglect.
Over time, other deviant behavior appeared. Mice raised improperly or kicked out of their nest early often failed to develop healthy social bonds, so they struggled with good social interactions with other mice. The females of this unfortunate group would isolate themselves like hermits in empty apartments, while the males took to grooming themselves all day, preening and licking themselves hour after hour. Social deviance turned their concerns inward. Calhoun had a special name for these male misfits: “the beautiful ones.” These “beautiful ones” had zero interest in sex and courting females. (159)
Moreover, this deviant behavior among both males and females spread like a contagion to other mice. It was as if the deviance had become accepted as normal behavior. Due to the lack of sexual activity and the inability to raise pups properly, which sharply increased infant mortality, the population of the colony began to plummet. After 21 months, newborn pups rarely survived more than a few days; soon, births stopped altogether. The older mice continued on for a time, hiding as hermits or grooming all day. They too died, and none were left. The colony of albino mice by the spring of 1973, less than five years after the initiation of the experiment, had gone from a maximum of 2,200 to zero. Mouse heaven had become mouse hell. (160)
The implications of this experiment for a simulated city have been debated by many experts ever since 1973. Few of the speculators have agreed on the reasons for what appears to be a gloomy metaphor for human society. The study was conducted about the time that Dr. Paul Ehrlich was publishing The Population Bomb, (162) a book that predicted imminent starvation and population crashes due to overpopulation. The movie Soylent Green (163) came out at this time as well, which depicted people crowded in cities being culled and turned into a food slurry. The messengers of doom considered Dr. Calhoun’s work to point towards the need to curb human populations or face disastrous consequences.
Parallels between the crash of the mouse population of Universe 25, and the rather recent sharp drop in birth rates in developed countries — and with many young people in those nations losing interest in sex — ties in with the rise of modern crowded urban society during the Industrial Revolution. Also, some politicians have pointed to “maladaptive behaviors” noted in the Calhoun study, like failing to produce pups in the face of crowding, as a trigger for women to not have children and thus destroy their own genetic interests to “be fruitful and multiply.”
Still others claimed that Universe 25 points toward the dangers of a socialist welfare state, where all of the essential goods for living are provided but no real challenges for personal growth are presented. Then sociologists Claude Fischer and Mark Baldassare claimed that “the city [is] a perversion of nature,” and “A red-eyed, sharp-fanged obsession about urban life that stalks contemporary thought.” (164)
Dr. Calhoun himself believed that “status” was the main issue that governed the life of mice in Universe 25. The males who lost the fights for dominance could not leave to start over somewhere else. They were stuck in pathetic, humiliating roles that lacked a meaningful place in mouse society. Likewise for the females who could not nurse their pups properly. These groups of mice became depressed and angry, and lashed out at other mice. Because mice are highly social, if their inborn natures are squelched, they become hostile.
While the interpretation of the Universe 25 results may be varied and open to question, and their application to human urban society rather murky, one thing is certain: man, like mice, are not meant to be squeezed into small spaces. As for mice, the Creator designed us to have room to grow, to expand our families into surrounding communities, to respond to the need to reproduce and build families, not to resort to selfish preening like “the beautiful ones.”
The mice of the 4.5 foot cube in Dr. Calhoun’s experiment had nowhere to go if they had the need to leave the closed space, to regroup and start anew. People in cities likewise have the need to not feel captured, to be free to escape the noisy, polluted confines of concrete and steel. However, most of the time the lives of city dwellers are indeed confined, and for some who are poor and have nowhere else to go they are almost totally confined.
Rodents and certain other creatures perhaps can teach us a thing or two. While the story of lemmings hurtling en masse off a cliff to their death in the sea is a myth, (165) perhaps there are other events in animals’ lives that hold a grain of truth and ought to be considered. Animals can devolve into a “behavioral sink” when overcrowded. Might there not be a similar response among humans when crowded tightly into cities, who end up following the crowd into deviant behavior apart from their Creator?
V. The Future of Cities
We live within a culture worldwide that has its beginning this side of the Flood at Babylon. As we read in Daniel 2:31-39, all of the civilizations of mankind from Babylon, to Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, up to today, have enfolded the character of previous civilization to produce the culture of today. We are a conglomerate of ages past, those ages being a product of Satan the devil’s devices, for he is the god of this world (II Corinthians 4:4; Ephesians 2:2; Luke 4:5-6), and he “… deceives the whole world …” (Revelation 12:9).
The devil’s fate is, at the end of this age, to be cast into a “bottomless pit,” shut up, and have a seal set on him so he can deceive the nations no more for a thousand years (Revelation 20:1-3). Without the influence of Satan in the world — for he is the spirit of the camp — the structure of society will be incredibly different than it is today. We must conclude that cities as well will be altered, or should we say eliminated as we know them, for an angel came down from heaven, having great authority, and cried out:
“Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and has become a dwelling place of demons …” (Revelation 18:2).
fallen = pipto, “to fall.”
The entire culture and foundation of sand on which Babylon is built will be destroyed! The stone that strikes the image that represents all of post-Flood history’s nations wrapped together is Jesus Christ, when He returns to this earth to rule as King of Kings and Lord of Lords! His loving rulership will fill the earth for a thousand years (Revelation 19:11-16; 20:4), and then beyond!.
“You watched while a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver, and the gold were crushed together, and became like chaff from the summer threshing floors; the wind carried them away so that no trace of them was found. And the stone [Jesus Christ] that struck the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth …. And in the days of these kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:34-35, 44).
Clearly, the present Babylonian city culture will be totally destroyed, pulverized into dust, and in its place will arise the civilization that our heavenly Father and Jesus Christ establish. There will be a capital city, the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21 and 22), but this city will be totally different than any of man’s cities created in Satan’s image. The nature of this city has already been discussed: its sea of glass, throne of the Father, 24 elders, living creatures, spirits of God, and innumerable angels and other spirits. We can add to this scene the saints and their thrones, who will be alongside Jesus on His throne (Revelation 3:21). The faulty designs of past and present-day cities will be destroyed. What will replace them?
The New Earth
For a thousand years Jesus Christ and the saints will reign on the earth.
“And I saw thrones, and they sat on them, and judgment was committed to them. Then I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and for the word of God, who had not worshipped the beast or his image, and had not received his mark on their foreheads or on their hands. And they lived and reigned with Christ for a thousand years” (Revelation 20:4).
This thousand year reign is the “new heaven and new earth” prophesied by Isaiah, Peter, and John (Isaiah 65:17; 66:22; II Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1), and recorded by Peter in Acts 3:19-21. This is the next great transforamtion of the earth, with another “new heaven and new earth” following the 1,000 years (Revealtion 21:1):
“Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send Jesus Christ, who was preached to you before, whom heaven must receive until the times of restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”
I have covered many details about this “restoration of all things” in my book The Bridge to Eden, (167) in which you can discover some details regarding the nature of the coming age. This “restoration” is a return to the character of Eden itself! This Eden is prophesied to spread over all the earth during the millennial reign of Christ, not over just one small parcel of land in the area of Jerusalem. But our concern here is to focus on cities over all the earth in the new age. What will they be like, if they will exist at all?
We know that our Creator designed the Garden of Eden as a perfect environment for joyous, abundant, productive, healthful living, for He made man in His own express image, and devised the very best for him. We can deduce the following from Genesis 2:8-15:
(1) The garden was populated by many beautiful trees and plants.
(2) Many of these trees and plants were good for food, having seeds.
(3) There was also a tree called the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil” that produced a fruit which was forbidden to be eaten, since it would bring on death.
(4) There was a tree species called the “tree of life” which, if the fruit was eaten regularly, would impart unending life.
(5) Animals of all sorts abounded in the garden, some of which Adam named.
(6) The climate in the garden was wonderfully pleasant, not too warm and not too cold, since Adam and Eve were without insulating clothing.
(7) There was no shortage of moisture to water the plants in the garden, since a “mist” watered the plants and soils (Genesis 2:6).
(8) There was no harsh sunlight because a water canopy enveloping the earth absorbed harmful solar frequencies and diffused the light (Genesis 1:6-7).
(9) Food of all sorts and varieties of fruit, berries, nuts, leaves, roots, etc., were available throughout the year, having optimum nutritional value to support vibrant, disease-free health, and eternal life by consuming regularly the tree of life, and without cost.
(10) There was no money system; everything needed for living was provided by the Creator and was freely available.
(11) The work given to Adam, to “tend and keep” the garden, was enjoyable, rewarding, and conducive to optimum physical, spiritual, and mental health.
(12) Together with the wife Adam was given, being taken out of him and thus a perfect counterpart to himself, they lived a wonderfully blessed life in preparation for raising children to repopulate the world.
(13) Adam and Eve had direct access to Elohim at any time they desired (Genesis 3:8).
Nowhere in this perfect environment of Eden do we see the presence of a city or camp. That is because Eden was not a city or camp. THIS IDEAL ENVIRONMENT FOR MANKIND TO LIVE WAS THE NATURAL WORLD THAT GOD CREATED FOR HIM. THIS IS THE TYPE OF ENVIRONMENT THAT HE DESIRES MANKIND TO ENJOY TODAY, AND WILL PROVIDE FOR ALL OF MANKIND ACROSS THE EARTH IN THE COMING AGE AS THE KINGDOM OF GOD OVERSPREADS THE EARTH!
This reality is in direct opposition to the visions most people have of the future world. So fixed is the image of the city in the mind’s eye of people, as the epitome of social development, that a discussion of the future brings to mind first of all a city, and not just any city, but a megalopolis of high rise towers and spirals, and glittering glass of multi-story condominiums and apartments laced with a menagerie of super highways and streets spiraling amongst the steel, glass, and concrete canyons. Jet-like cars and even anti-gravity cars and airships idyllically move between the skyward-stretching towers, like depicted in so many sci-fi movies, books, and comic books. People of my generation will remember Gotham City, the fictional city depicted in Batman comic books and movies. That city was inspired by cities like Chicago, Pittsburg, Los Angels, New York City, London, and Glasgow. The fictional “sister city” of Metropolis existed in Superman comic books. (172)
Most depictions of future cities are laced with the usual huge uprising building complexes, as well as robotic and artificial intelligence control, many of them showing 1984-type 24-hour-surveillance to control the population. Some depictions portray a highly dystropian society of ruling elites living in plush surroundings, with a repressed working class subsisting elsewhere in total repression. Some novel cities are associated with space aliens puported to exist on other planets. Among the many fictional cities are Academy City (a city within Tokyo), Diaspar, Hondo City, New New York, Krondor, Wakanda, Superbia, and Umbar. (174)
These futuristic pictures of civilization strangely haunt us, visions strongly imprinted within the human psyche. Yet, they are the opposite of God’s great plan for His creatures made in His own image.
Community Sufficiency — the New (Old)
Paradigm
We have spoken now of the fact that the new age will be a renewal of Eden upon the earth. Can we paint an accurate picture of this new age in all of its glorious splendor, as I have attempted to do in The Bridge to Eden? Yes, I think we can!
The picture of the new age I would call community sufficiency. It is a system of living whereby everyone is proverbially sitting under his own vine and fig tree, not sitting on a park bench in Lower Manhattan feeding pigeons! See what the prophesies say. In the latter days of this age, which I believe is right upon us, “the mountain [government] of the Lord’s house [in the New Jerusalem] shall be established on the top of the mountains [above all governments on earth], and shall be exalted above the hills; and people shall flow to it” (Micah 4:1). Many nations will seek God’s government, His way of life, and will follow His teachings which proceed from the City of God at Jerusalem (Micah 4:2):
“He shall judge between many peoples, and rebuke strong nations afar off; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore. But everyone shall sit under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken” (Micah 4:3-4).
This prophecy is repeated in Isaiah 2:2-4; it is a sure prophecy. We see nations, having their power concentrated in cities within which war is imagined and the weapons of war built, now figuratively turning their materials and productivity into the making of instruments for plant husbandry: plowshares, pruninghooks, and such tools as are used in crop production, although here the imagery is symbolic. The Hebrew word for plowshare is ayth, “a hoe or other digging implement,” not a moldboard plow that totally ruptures and overturns the topsoil. In terms of the coming age, in which plowing, cultivating, disking, and so on are the most destructive acts a farmer can apply to soils and will not be used, the meaning of ayth likely means planting perennial crops such as trees, shrubs, grasses, and vegetables, most of which will be perennials and not require replanting year after year as in today’s world of agriculture. Work may be required to suppress competing plants while these crops get established, but once established a perennial landscape will require little work to sustain.
Perennial plants can grow indefinitely, not just sequoia trees that we know can survive and thrive for over 3,000 years, but if disease and insect attacks are removed, and if sunlight, air, climatic conditions, and soil fertility are optimal — as will be the case in the new age — then even fruit trees, nut trees, berry bushes, corn plants, herbs, and any number of plants can survive decade after decade. Without seasonal extremes there will be luxurious growth all across the earth’s land masses.
As Isaiah 65:22 states “… for as the days of a tree, so shall be the days of My people.” I predict that the lifespans of people will surpass even those of the pre-Flood patriarchs, who typically lived over 900 years. They could well live the full 1,000 years, and in vibrant, disease-free health, “as the days of a tree.”
Pruninghooks comes from the Hebrew word mazmerah, meaning “a pruning knife,” from the root word zamar, “to trim.” As a keeper of grape vines and fruit trees myself, I am well aware of the need to prune vines and branches so the grape plants and trees do not get out of hand, but I believe that pruning should be done to encourage the plant to achieve its genetically designed conformation, not to the designs of farmers who machine-prune their vineyards and groves to save labor, and prevent growth that is too tall to easily harvest.
A plant, just as an animal or a human, has within it a potential for growth as prescribed by the Creator, and it ought to be the object of any pruning to encourage that full development, cutting out erratic growth that is too thick or ugly. Just as we are pruned from any evil ways in our own character, likewise we are admonished to “… train up a child in the way he should go …” (Proverbs 22:6), so a plant needs to be trained in the way it ought to mature, not in the way man designs, but according to the pattern the Eternal has designed within for the plant.
There should be no question that there was no money used in the Garden of Eden. Money in its many forms is used as a medium of exchange between production and consumption, between the labor expended by a workman and the food, shelter, clothing, and his other needs. In the Garden everything was supplied. Food was free for the taking any time of the year. While clothing was not worn by Adam and Eve until after they sinned and lost their “clothing of light,” it is surmised that clothing will be worn in the millennial age. Fibers of cotton, ramie, wool, goat’s hair, and other sources can be spun and woven as has been done for millennia. Whether animal skins (leather) would be used is questionable, since the need for animal sacrifices and animal slaughter for food will be gone: Jesus Christ paid the price for sins once, and that penalty needed to be performed only once (Hebrews 9:26). The Edenic diet did not consist of meat, but only fruits and vegetables (Genesis 1:29).
It is also supposed that industrial power based on the energy sources used today, such as coal, petroleum, natural gas, and nuclear energy, will not be used in the coming age. These energy sources fuel cities and all of society nowadays, though wind and solar power are increasing as a proportion of the total. Some innovators are attempting to totally replace carbon fuel sources with these renewable sources, but fail to consider the cost of mining the minerals that are required to make batteries for electrically powered cars, or the fact that the electricity requirements to charge an all-electric auto and truck fleet in the United States could never be supplied by these renewable sources. (176)
Neither have the considerations been carefully thought through of the great costs involved with building wind generators, and their disposal after use, much less the science behind the so-called global warming hypothesis that has infected the minds of so many politicians and pseudo-scientists who claim that man-made CO2 emissions are causing global warming. The idea that global warming is caused by mankind is demonstrably false, but has, and is, causing much conflict throughout the world. (177)
The heavy energy use by mankind today is centered in the city. It is the life-blood of industry and commerce, transportation and every facet of modern life since the Industrial Revolution began.
The Solution
So, what is the solution? It is the renewable energy of the sun, which has powered civilization since the beginning. Sunlight powers chlorophyll in green plants to capture certain electromagnetic frequencies and convert them into the food, feed, and fiber of all civilizations. It always has, and it always will. Our current road, air, and railroad traffic need not exist were communities dependent upon the energy of the sun to drive their livelihoods, by growing their crops upon which they themselves and their livestock feed, and which grow the fibers for clothing, and the building materials for constructing homes and other structures.
This is not to say that other forms of energy cannot be utilized that may be tapped from the energy that permeates every corner of the universe. Free energy and anti-gravity technology do exist, and they could power automobiles, motors, and other accoutrements, but we ought not forget that God designed the human body to work, not to atrophy by sitting in front of a computer or television screen.
Muscles require work, to tend and keep the gardens, fields, and forests of the earth, and to build homesteads and families. The body was made to walk, to run, to jump, to blend with the outdoors and its array of animals, trees, flowers, insects, and every facet of the created world. Working with one’s hands is the admonition the Eternal has given to mankind, for that effort produces fulfillment and joy in living (Deuteronomy 14:29;15:10; 16:15; 24:19; 28:12; 30:9; Isaiah 65:22; I Corinthians 4:12; Ephesians 4:28; I Thessalonians 4:11). These opportunities are found outside the camp.
Community sufficiency is a term seldom heard of in today’s urbanized age, for the city, where most people reside inside the camp, is anything but self-sufficient. A well-ordered community of families living under its own vine and fig tree will find a social and economic structure utterly changed from today’s system. Note what some of these changes will be.
• No banks or lending institutions, for there will be no money system. Banks survive on the interest of borrowers, which practice is condemned by the Creator (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:36-37; Deuteronomy 23:19-20). Deuteronomy 23:20 did allow charging usury to a stranger (nokriy, “a foreigner, a non-relative”, a non-Israelite, but that was for a society of that time, not for a Kingdom setting where all will have access to God’s truth.
• No supermarkets or food transport systems. Fruits and vegetables will be available in abundance locally, year-round, in all lands, for the climate will be amiable for excellent crop productivity. With ideal radiation, moisture, temperature, and high oxygen pressure without crop diseases, the yields of crops will be uniformly excellent year-round. As a result, food shipments hundreds or thousands of miles, even across oceans, will be irrelevant. The ocean-going merchants of the earth will no longer ship their grain, livestock, fruits, and vegetables through an international marketing scheme (Revelation 18:10-23). Babylon, that great merchandising system, has been destroyed.
• No agribusiness system. Fertilizers will be unnecessary with the recycling of nutrients to the same land from which the crop was taken. Manures and organic residues will fall on the soils from which the plants grew; they will be locally recycled. Moreover, with the end-time upsets of volcanic eruptions and meteoric dust settling on the land, replenishing soil nutrients, the new age will begin with superb soil fertility to grow abundant yields of nutrient-dense food crops.
Add to this the uplift of ocean bottoms that are rich in fertility (Revelation 6:12-14; 8:7-12; 16:17-20; Isaiah 13:10; Ezekiel 32:7; Matthew 24:29; Mark 13:24). Plant and fruit tree species ideal for food will likely be restored after having been lost to civilization through the 6,000 years since the Garden of Eden. Farm chemicals — pesticides, herbicides, nematicides, insecticides, etc. — will be a thing of the past. Moreover, open-pollinated, non-hybrid, and non-GMO species will prevail, those that are designed by the Creator to provide maximum health from nutrient-dense foods.
• No doctors and hospitals. With superb food quality for fruits and herbs grown on soils of high fertility, and with little nutrient, water, sunlight, and disease stress, the health of people everywhere will be rich and exuberant. The water will be pristine and healthful from crystal clear, energetic springs and streams. Without pesticides and other chemicals, food will be free of toxic, disease-causing residues. A mild climate with non-burning sunlight and an outdoor, skin-exposed lifestyle will keep Vitamin D levels high. Stress levels will be low once the fast-paced, noisy, unfriendly city environment is gone.
The healing power of the Father will always be available to heal injuries that inevitably will occur. Because the technology level will be family and community oriented, without speeding vehicles, airplanes, and trucks, chances for accidents will be greatly reduced.
Life will proceed at the pace it was designed to, with a balance of work, recreation, and the qualities of God’s spirit throughout all lands: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, humility, and gentleness (Galatians 5:22-23). War will be no more, and with that the elimination of death and injury, and the disruption to families, communities, and nations these horrible events create.
• Technology based upon love and fulfillment. Machines that replace labor, the work of one’s hands that grant joy and fulfillment in life, will be replaced by hand tools and devices produced locally. One might call them “low-tech” tools. Without the need for people to grow vast amounts of low-nutrient-density hybrid and GMO crops, food supplies will be ample with a minimal amount of work once the new ecosystem is established. For example, water-powered sawmills were common in the early history of the United States.
• Communications centered around communities. With family life centered within communities, and fathers, mothers, children, grandchildren, and multiple generations living in the same proximity — without the need to migrate hundreds or thousands of miles to find work — news will be transmitted verbally and perhaps by local papers. There will be no need for nationwide or worldwide instant communications when wars and calamities no longer occur; only good news will pervade society, without the fears and uncertainties that dog everyday life in today’s world. Huge printing presses that now are used to produce newspapers, books, and magazines will likely be few in number, though it is possible that the printing of the word of God will be a major enterprise. Then again, perhaps hand-written communications with replace those of the machine. With the knowledge of the Eternal pervading all of the earth (Habakkuk 2:14), there may be no need for machine printed books as we know them today.
There is the prospect that the full capabilities of the human mind will be unleashed so that knowledge will be recalled without the use of printed material. Perhaps even the entire word of God can be memorized. In centuries past even children committed entire chapters of the Bible to memory. The brain and psyche presumably contain the memory of everything that has occurred during one’s life. We are currenly tapping only a fraction of its potential, a potential that no computer can match.
The harmful radiation of radio, television, and cell phone transmission will be gone, as will be cell phones, which besides causing disease also multiply the curse of loneliness. (183) Today the spirit of the city is broadcast through the air via electromagnetic frequencies as radio, television, and cell phone messages that make living outside the camp not so simple. In one sense, the whole world has become a city of Babylon with that Satan’s spirit being broadcast and available to all, unless the discerning purveyors of truth are selective in what they tune in to.
The threat of centralized control of people’s lives, and the compromising of personal liberties, will be removed when these communications are eliminated. People will travel by foot, and likely by animal power, bringing good news to neighbors rather than the depressing, continual hammering of news media about death, disease, war, and human conflict. Isaiah made plain that such reporting is evil, inside the camp and not outside:
“Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings? He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who despises the gain of oppression, who gestures with his hands, refusing bribes, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes from seeing evil; he will dwell on high; his place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; bread will be given him, his water will be sure” (Isaiah 33:14-16).
These are the edicts that will reign outside the city in the next age, when cities like in today’s world will no longer exist. Only the New Jerusalem will grace the earth as a city of gathering of many people, as far as we know. That “crowd,” however, will consist of the righteous ones, and perhaps only during special conclaves will it be inhabited by unnumbered multitudes as we read in Revelation 5:11.
“Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it. But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life” (Revelation 21:25-27).
• Entertainment. What does the city offer for entertainment and social connecting? The attractions vary, with large venues like football, baseball, basketball, hockey, and soccer stadiums where raucous crowds roar as their favorite sports stars score a goal or make a basket. Then there are lesser venues, like theaters, sports bars, strip clubs, operas, rock concert, breweries, casinos, night clubs, and race tracks.
Many people stay at home and watch television, with its disappointing array of movies, soap operas, game shows, and pornography. This is not to say that some of the venues and programs are not uplifting, such as orchestras, dancers, Christian singers, wildlife and history programs, weather reports, and restaurants. On balance, however, the entertainment offered in the city is laced with plenty of sensuality, drunkenness, revelry, and rivalry, fruits of the flesh as pointed out in Galatians 5:19-21.
While television, casinos, and certain other unsavory venues are also found in the country-side, they are not as prevalent as in the city, though the city has moved its tentacles into much of the countryside. It is difficult to blend a casino or a rock concert with a farm, forest, and prairie setting; they are incongruous spirits, unless the spirit of the city invades the country for a short time such as at the Woodstock or Luckenbach concert events. There the spirits of the city migrated outside the camp for a short while, only to retreat after a short time back to the camp. It is much like the miscreant Israelites fashioning a golden calf inside the camp and rising up to play before the forces of God, in the form of Moses and the Levites, return and scatter the evil spirits (Exodus 32:19-28).
•Education. Nearly all educational institutions — colleges, universities, seminaries, primary and secondary schools, and trade schools — are located within cities. While many of them like Harvard, Yale, and other Ivy League schools began as religious centers, over time they have devolved into centers of anti-Christian, humanistic, socialist-bent curricula. The sciences are built upon evolutionary principles, and their gods have become Plato, Socrates, Marx, Nietzsche, and Hegel. The laws of Almighty God are vilified by many students, with some notable exceptions such and Hillsdale College, Brigham Young University, Bob Jones University, and Bethel University. Public government schools have begun promoting Critical Race Theory and the LGBTQ agenda in many cases, and promote free sex and abortion. (184)
All of these forces within education find their focus within the camp. Future generations are being taught to reject the creator God who made them, and embrace governmental philosophies that favor totalitarianism, slavery, sexual perversion, and other ideals of the evil spirits of the city.
The Way Out
So, we are told to come out of Babylon in no uncertain terms. Read this warning in Revelation 18:4-7:
“And I heard another voice from heaven saying, ‘Come out of her [Mystery, Babylon the Great; Revelation 17:5] my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues. For her sins have reached to heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Render to her just as she rendered to you, and repay her double according to her works; in the cup which she has mixed, mix double for her. In the measure that she glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow; for she says in her heart, “I sit as queen, and am no widow, and will not see sorrow.”’”
Even Isaiah warned about fleeing from Babylon: “Go forth from Babylon! Flee from the Chaldeans!” (Isaiah 48:20).
In the light of this command to come out of the city of Babylon, let us first summarize the major differences of living within the camp or living outside of it. They are many, and they are profound. Note some of these differences in the table.
It is impossible to make this comparison of inside versus outside the city as a pure case, because the influences of the city in this modern world have permeated far outside the camp, especially with the power of the media and cell phones that have showered all corners of the United States, and the entire world, with the influences of the evil one, the “prince of the power of the air” (Ephesians 2:2). This is also not to say that evil has been spared throughout history from any corner of the earth, inside the city or outside of it. Yet, the relative prevalence of certain characteristics cannot be denied. Note the text box below for some comparisons.
Treating Cancer
The process of vacating the city is much like removing a cancerous growth from the body. While this can be done through radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy, even then the tumor is likely to return. This is like removing a city through war, famine, disease, or food delivery disruptions. Even then the city is likely to return; it is their nature. Using natural methods, however, by enhancing the immune system, cancer can be overcome just as a city will no longer be a city if its houses, industry, and avenues are returned to trees, fields, and gardens in a community-based society
With communications as rapid and pervasive as they are, the personality of the city reaches everywhere, in a sense making the entire earth one big city — one huge camp. Still, outside the city it is possible to escape the insidious negativities of city life and spirit influences. Being separated from the masses gives a person the opportunities to contemplate the overarching questions of life and act upon them.
God condemns the city, so clearly spelled out in Isaiah 5:8:
“Woe to those who join house to house; they add field to field, till there is no place; where they may dwell alone in the midst of the land!”
It is critical for everyone’s spiritual well-being to have space for solitude, to walk peacefully among the trees, flowers, animals, trilling birds, bubbling brooks, and soft breezes, the sky above beckoning to us in the day with the sun and clouds, and in the night with the moon and stars. Meditation is easy and natural amid the beauty and peace of the creation. The city and its noise, artificial lights, pollution, and business of people everywhere squelches meditation. The Eternal designed Eden and its serenity to be our home.
We see in Christ’s statement in Matthew 24:36-41 what life will be like in the end time, just before His return. “But as the days of Noah were, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man be” (verse 37). People were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. They will be wicked, violent, and corrupt just as in the pre-Flood days; the thoughts of people’s hearts will be evil continually (Genesis 6:5, 11-12). The character of people in the end-time will encapsulate the love of money, love of self, boasting, disobedience to parents, pride, thanklessness, unholiness, lack of forgiveness, brutality, the love of pleasure, a lack of self-control, and despising what is good, “… having a form of godliness but denying its power” (II Timothy 3:2-5). This is prophesied to be the condition of mankind’s societies just before Christ’s return.
We see these conditions in the world today, and they are centered upon the spirit of the city, just as the highly populated world before the Flood was centered within cities. The city of Jerusalem today is no exception; it is called Sodom and Egypt (Revelation 11:8). Isaiah shouts:
“Depart! Depart! Go out from there [Jerusalem], touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her, be clean, you who bare the vessels of the Lord” (Isaiah 52:11).
Note: It is the elect who “bear the vessels of the Lord” through our obedience to Him, so this Scripture applies to us today!
A few verses before this quote in Isaiah 52:7-9, Yahweh assures us that Zion in Jerusalem will return; the “waste places of Jerusalem” will be rebuilt. He will redeem Jerusalem and comfort His people, proclaim salvation, and say in Zion, “Your God reigns!” But, that pronouncement is for the next age, after Christ descends on the Mount of Olives and installs His government worldwide. As for now, Jerusalem is cursed like every other city.
Yahweh assures us that the present city of Jerusalem will fall, just like Babylon, of which it is a part. It is filled with pride, but will be totally revised as the New Jerusalem. He “… will appoint salvation for walls and bulwarks …,” and rebuild this city into one wherein the Creator will dwell:
“Open the gates, that the righteous nation which keeps the truth may enter in. You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in Yah, the Lord, is everlasting strength. For He brings down those who dwell on high, the lofty city; He lays it low. He lays it low to the ground, He brings it down to the dust” (Isaiah 26:2-5).
Then, in verse 6 we see that it is the poor, humble, and needy who will tread down the lofty city, not just present-day evil Jerusalem, but all cities. If more cities are built in the next age, they will likewise possess the character of humility, though will not be built on the pattern of what we call cities today. They will be communities of families spread out across the land, for populations are not to be concentrated so residences do not have privacy and peace.
Babylon will Never Be Finished
The story of Babylon and its attempt to unify mankind under the forces of evil is a most impressive one. It points out that within the city man can no longer understand his fellow man and get along. A quote from Ellul makes this point clear:
“The city — the place of noncommunication among men, the place where the immense irony of God hides. The result of this confusion is dispersion and a halt to construction. The city is not destroyed, but the builders separate and stop building. There is no other solution, because what they have lost in the affair is the meaning of the city they were building. When men no longer understand themselves, the city which was the seal of their understanding loses all meaning for them …. Man can live in their towers, they can build their skyscrapers and their giant cities, they can cover the world with a web of interlocking cities, but these have no meaning for them. Babel will never be finished. The city is only one stone on top of another; a fortress here, a cathedral there, then a house and a slaughter house, it is no longer for man the proof of his spiritual power, it is no longer a clear conscious attempt to make himself God.” (189)
We can say that man’s cities will never be finished because he has not pursued the purpose for which he was born: to become a son of God in His very image. Thus, he has lost the vision of living itself, why he has been placed here on this good earth. If he had pursued such visions he would have built his houses outside the camp in close touch with his Creator’s world, in which the Eternal reveals himself continually. Within the ranks of like-minded group-think, apart from God’s mind, mankind’s insecurity in his purpose leads him to wrap himself within the insecurity of others, so they might all attempt in their collective loneliness to create a God in their own image.
So, while Babylon will never be finished, we as God’s people wait for the city to utterly collapse in its unfinished condition. Even though some of us may live in a city, we are not a part of it. Even if upright men live within a city and as a consequence it is exalted [ruwm “being in a high place, or moving in an upward direction”] (Proverbs 11:10-11), in time that glory fades and the intrinsic character of cities reasserts itself.
We wait for Babylon to fall. Those inside its walls may feel secure from attack, and possess the machines to prosper them in material ways, but the concrete and steel hold the inhabitants captive within a sterile, adventureless environment. The saints wait patiently for prophecy to run its course, and this waiting brings on the very ruin of the city, whose spirit power at the end of the age will be deposed. A Christian living among nonbelievers in close proximity acts as an intolerable acid that eats away at the city’s bonds. They do not truly belong among the servile masses, and the person of Jesus Christ in their midst pronounces the death knell of the city’s life.
Come Outside the Camp!
We have explored an amazing odyssey regarding the nature and meaning of the city, the camp. How does this all apply to us individually? What are we to do?
YOU MUST MOVE OUTSIDE THE CAMP! Get out of the city, in the place of your ease, for it is outside the camp that you meet God. This move is not easy to make. It requires concentrated introspection of our lives to accomplish it. There are powerful metaphors among the points involved here that we need to closely examine.
(1) To live outside the city or camp you should literally move out of it to the countryside, if you can. That may or may not be possible, but do it if you can. If you do move out, you will find many wonderful things happen to you.
• A sense of liberty and freedom will invade your once hemmed-in life.
• Neighbors will be found who will truly lift you up and care for you, in times of trouble and in times of blessing.
• You will have the opportunity to live much more independently: growing a garden and orchard, having livestock, having a water source, and perhaps a flower garden and a literal “Eden on earth.”
• The noise and air pollution of the city will be gone.
• There will be much greater safety from thieves and criminals.
• The sense of community will be real, even if your immediate family does not live nearby.
If you live within an urban area and are unable to leave it, you can certainly be protected there. The Eternal will place a hedge around you if that is where He wants you to live. Lot was preserved in Sodom for a time, until he was forcibly removed before calamity struck (Genesis 19:12-22), and in the book of Job we read that even Satan recognized the protection and blessing that God gives to His elect.
“Have You not made a hedge [sook, ‘entwine, i.e. shut in for protection or restraint’] around him, around his household, and around all that he has on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land” (Job 1:10).
(2) You need to live outside the camp of corporate religious groups that want to capture and enslave you within a pray and pay mentality, and lure you into the worldly spirit of Catholic or Protestant-style obedience to a set of doctrinal statements and “churchianity,” rather than a spirit of love and obedience to the eternal living God in a close personal relationship.
(3) You must abhor corporate, state-sanctioned, faceless, and consciousless entities that are concerned only for their own profit, rather than for the welfare of you personally. This can apply to food supplies, financial entities (banks, credit unions, etc.), and other suppliers of basic needs. By living within a community of talented service providers it is possible to accomplish this task.
(4) Patronize home or private-based education rather than public (government) schools. Education of children and young adults is so critical to the future of families and communities, and the efforts of parents to educate their own kin must be promoted.
(5) Socialize with brethren and friends who live outside the city, so you may absorb the culture of freedom, service, and Godly and brotherly love that the city cannot provide.
(6) Avoid participating in the governments of the world, unless as a service to local services wherein you can be a light. If you are a citizen of a nation (God’s Kingdom) that is not represented in the present world, you might question the wisdom of voting and campaigning for candidates in secular party politics.
Move outside the camp. Get out of the city. Become an independent child of God whose commission is to serve the living God. Remember that the Israelites were brought outside the camp to meet Yahweh at Mt. Sinai. Recall that Christ suffered outside the camp, and we are following in His footsteps and are crucified with Him daily (I John 2:6; Galatians 2:20).
Remember that the prophesies promise that Jesus Christ will return with His saints and angels. He will be King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and will descend on the Mount of Olives, the very spot where He was crucified and from which He ascended to the Father outside of Jerusalem (Revelation 19:11-16; Zechariah 14:4; Acts 1:11-12).
This very place may well be the site of the original Garden of Eden, so it holds extremely special importance for us in particular, but ultimately for all people of planet earth, for this garden is the type of environment prophesied to spread over all the earth (Acts 3:19-21). This will be the recovery phase for a world that has been used and abused by the adversary for 6,000 years by working through leaders and all of mankind to attempt to thwart the incredible plan of our heavenly Father to redeem sinful mankind, and redeem all of the earth at the same time.
God loves His creation, and He hates evil. He will first of all remove the original perpetrator of this evil (Revelation 20:1-3), and then, after purging those who will not listen to Christ when the millennium begins (Acts 3:23), will build upon the earth a Kingdom of joy, peace, love, kindness, humility, and beauty as has not been remotely imagined by any of us (I Corinthians 2:9; Isaiah 65:17).
Before that time let us journey outside the camp and leave the city in all areas of our lives. Let us not be subject to other men, but be subject to the eternal living God who made us. Leave the corporate world that has evolved from Babylon, on down through Medo-Persia, Greece, and Rome, and smash to dust that great image which may still hold sway in your life. Examine your religious, social, educational, business, and political moorings, and sail away from those enslaving shackles into the freedom and liberty of the open sea of abundant living. The responsibility rests within yourself to desert friendship with the world and to be a friend of our Creator (James 4:4). If you follow this path you will be wonderfully blessed!
Bibliography and Notes
1. All Hebrew and Greek translations are obtained from James Strong, The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, edited by John R. Kohlenberger, III, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 2001.
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48. F. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 2, page 27, in Josephus, Complete Works, translated by William Whiston, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1960.
49. See 47, pages 9-10.
50. Anonymous, Who was Nimrod in the Bible?, Got Questions, www.gotquestions.org; R. Price, The identity of Nimrod, Unearthing Truth, January/February, 2018, www.israelmyglory.org.
51. F. Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book I, Chapter 4, page 30, in Josephus, Complete Works, translated by William Whiston, Kregel Publications, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1960.
52. J. Ellul, The Meaning of the City, page 13.
53. Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
54. Picture from www.readingacts.com.
55. See 47, page 25
56. Anonymous, Why did Joshua curse Jericho in Joshua 6:26?, Got Questions, wwww.gotquestions. org.
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60. See 59.
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67. Anonymous, List of countries by urban population, from United Nations World Urban Prospects 2018, August 29, 2019, www.statisticstimes. com.
68. Anonymous, Migration from countryside to urban areas, Groasis, www.groasis.com.
69. D. Thompson, How the tractor (yes, the tractor) explains the middle class crisis, The Atlantic, March 13, 2012, www.theatlantic.com.
70. M. Agnes and D. Guralnik, editors, Webster’s New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, Wiley Publishing, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio, 2004, page 211.
71. Picture from www.caniwalkthere.com.
72. Picture from www.kfarhanokdim.co.il.
73. The author is very appreciative for Jim Rector, whose insights into the nature of the camps of Israel and the world have helped understand the deep meanings behind these settlements of man. Sadly, Jim is no longer with us. To access his Outside the Camp! audio recording from May 14, 2002, go to http://albores.net/csp/cs_who.asp.
74, Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
75. See 50.
76. Picture from www.jw.org.
77. The Book of Jasher, translated from the original Hebrew into English, M.M. Noah and A.S. Gould, New York, 1840, and printed by The Association of the Covenant People, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, chapters 8, 11, and 12.
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79. Picture from www.freebibleimages.com.
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83. J. Curry, Was Jesus crucified and buried on the Mount of Olives?, Christians for Israel Australia, August 23, 2019, www.c4israel.com.au.
84. See 83.
85. Picture from www.bibleplaces.com.
86. See 70, page 326.
87. P. Syltie, Understanding God’s Government, Xulon Press, Maitland, Florida, 2017, pages 91-92.
88. Picture from www.libertychurchonline.wordpress.com.
89. Picture from www.thecityfix.com.
90. See 47, pages 46-47.
91. Picture from Flipped Prof, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=jgNYwi4X18k.
92. See 90.
93. See 90.
94. Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
95. Picture from www.uniquetoursfactory.com.
96. Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
97. S. Waduge, Three corporations run the world: City of London, Washington, D.C., and Vatican City, Sinhalanet, May 31, 2014 , www.sinhalanet.net.
98. See 47, pages 57-58.
99. M. Moiz, A list of tent cities in America, Cauf Society, March 10, 2023, www.caufsociety.com.
100 . Picture from www.aleteia.org.
101. Picture from www.churchgists.com.
102. K. Graham, Information on how the early Christians prepared and/or fled from the destruction of Jerusalem?, Christianity, February 13, 2020, www.christianity.stackexchange.com.
103. Picture from www.wol.jw.org.
104. Anonymous, Temple of Jerusalem, Encyclopedia Britannica, January 3, 2023, www.britannica.com.
105. Anonymous, Charting the holy land: Jerusalem as the earth’s center, Jewish Virtual Library, a project of AICE, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org; D. Bierman, United Nations for Israel, www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi13tfb3LJY.
106. Picture from www.peregrineadventures.com.
107. Picture from www.wol.jw.org.
108. See 47, page 123.
109. Anonymous, Crocodile Dundee, www.wikipedia.org.
110. Picture from www.aknextphase.com.
111. See 47, page 132.
112. See 47.
113. Picture from www.news.ddtc.co.id.com.
114. A. Doherty, Violence in sports: a comparison of gladiatorial games in ancient Rome to the sports of America, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Honors Theses, University Honors Program, 8-2001, www.opensiuc.lib.siu.edu.
115. Picture from www.celebnsports247.com.
116. G. Lewis and D. Maund, The urbanization of the countryside: a framework for analysis, Geografiska Annaler, Series B, Human Geography 58(1), pages 17-27, 1976; Anonymous, Off-farm income a major component of total income for most farm households in 2019, Amber Waves, USDA Economic Research Service, September 7, 2021, www.ers.usda.gov.
117. L. Jacobs, Minnesota’s urban-rural divide is no lie, Hubert H. Humphrey School, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 26, 2019, www.startribune.com.
118. See 117.
119. See 117.
120. M. Longman, If you think city people are rude, you’re right. But it’s not their fault, Fireside chat with Beckman and Jadakis, July1, 2019, www.refinery29.com.
121. See 120.
122. See 120.
123. Picture from www.newyork-onmymind.com.
124. See 120.
125. Anonymous, Harvey Dunn, www.wikipedia. org.
126. Picture from www.history.com.
127. M. LaPonsie, How much does it cost to raise a child?, U.S. News and World Report, September 7, 2022, www.money.usnews.com.
128. Picture from www.grandawakening.win.
129. Picture by D. Schrader, How to split the USA into two countries: red and blue, Strange Maps, November 14, 2018, from www.bigthink.com.
130. Anonymous, Conservative vs. liberal, Differen, www.differen.com.
131. See D. Schrader, 129.
132. T. Youngblood, Why are cities more liberal than rural areas, www.intentionallyvicarious.com; B. Klayko, Pew study, liberals prefer living in cities, walkability while conservatives prefer the country, more space, www.brokensidewalk.com.
133. Anonymous, Republican versus Democrat beliefs, the fundamental differences, www.tex.org A. Donald, What do republicans believe? 16 things a Republican stands for, Soapboxie, www.soapboxie.com; J. Tryst, Why are (big) cities liberal?, www.juliantryst.com.
134. Anonymous, Republican vs. Democrat beliefs, the fundamental differences, www.tex.org.
135. S. Parker, Cities, Politics, and Power, The University of York, DOI: 10.4324/978020308286, November, 2010.
136. S. Gogers, Urban politics, International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Science Direct, 2009, www.sciencedirect.com.
137. A. Harkness, Want empowered cities? Start by understanding city power, Brookings, April 19, 2017, www.brookings.edu.
138. Anonymous, Agenda 21: Population forced to move into cities, video of Barak Obama: To move into cities — “Redistributing the Wealth,” Shift Frequency, July 3, 2013, www.shiftfrequency. com.
139. Anonymous, Smart city, www.wikipedia.org.
140. See 138.
141. See 138.
142. Anonymous, What is Delphi Technique? Definition, process, and example, Toolshero, January 17, 2023, www.toolshero.com.
143. See 138.
144. Anonymous, Smart cities: a digital dictatorship?, September 14, 2022, www.rebelnews.com.
145. Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
146. Picture www.pinterest.com.
147. C. Geib, Smart cities may be the death of privacy as we know it, Futurism, November 7, 2017, www.futurism.com.
148. See 147.
149. A. Mek, UN Agenda 2030 beware: “15-minute cities” are another globalist scheme to control, punish, surveil, and imprison you, December 31, 2022, www.rairfoundation.com.
150. Picture from www.bigissue.com.
151. See 149.
152. M. Cartwright, The suppression of individual liberty: How restrictions contribute to anxiety and unhappiness, Psychology Today, May 21, 2016, www.psychologytoday.com.
153. Picture from www.history.com.
154. Anonymous, Political machine, Encyclopedia Britannica, www.britannica.com.
155. S. Kean, Mouse heaven or mouse hell?, Distillations, May 17, 2022, www.sciencehistory.org.
156. See 155.
157. See 155.
158. Picture from www.telangatoday.com.
159. See 155.
160. See 155.
161. Picture from www.imprific.com.
162. P. Ehrlich and A. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb, Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, New York, New York, 1968.
163. R. Fleischer, director, Soylent Green, MetroGoldwyn-Mayer, 1973.
164. C. Fischer M. Baldassare, and R. Ofshe, Crowding Studies and Urban Life: a Critical Review, Volume 242, Generic, 1974, January, 2022.
165. J. Shields, Lemmings jumping off cliffs en masse is a myth, How Stuff Works, July 20, 2020, www.howstuffworks.com.
166. Picture from www.nationalww2museum.org.
167. P. Syltie, The Bridge to Eden, Xulon Press, Maitland, Florida, 2016.
168. Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
169. Picture from www.ask-ehs.com.
170. Picture from www.architecturestyle.com.
171. Picture from www.open.spotify.com.
172. Anonymous, Gotham City, www.wikipedia.
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173. Picture from www.wallpapercave.com.
174. Anonymous, List of fictional city-states in literature, www.wikipedia.org; C. Cillizza, Why Wacanda might be a model for our future cities, CNN, www.cnn.com.
175. Picture from www.alchetron.com.
176. Anonymous, Developing countries pay environmental cost of electric car batteries, UNCTAD, July 22, 2020, www.unctad.org; N. Lakhani, Revealed: How US transition to electric cars threatens environmental havoc, The Guardian, January 24, 2023, www.the guardian.com.
177. R. Simmons, What’s the true cost of wind power?, Newsweek, April 2, 2023, www.newsweek.com.
178. Picture from www.healthcase.ascension.org.
179. Picture from www.wikipedia.org.
180. Picture from www.kes5.com.
181. Picture from www.westernliving.ca.
182. Picture from www.redeeminggod.com.
183. A. Brice, Moskowitz: Cellphone radiation is harmful, but few want to believe it, Berkeley News, UC Berkeley, July 1, 2021, www.news.berkeley.edu; B. Renner, Smartphone addition increases loneliness, isolation; no different from substance abuse, experts say, StudyFinds, April 18, 2018, www.studyfinds.org.
184. L. Marcus, LGBTQ: forcing us to embrace evil, destructive lies, American Thinker, May 13, 2019, www.americanthinker.com; M. Clark, Exposed: Christian students rejected, failed, and expelled for their faith by state colleges and universities, ACLJ, July 14, 2015, www.aclj.org.
185. Anonymous, Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation: What are the different cancer treatments?, Montreal Children’s Hospital, McGill University Health Center, www.thechildren.com.
186. B. Lynes and J. Crane, The Cancer Cure That Worked: Fifty years of Suppression, Marcus Books, Toronto, Canada, 1987.
187. Picture from www.jw.org.
188. Picture from www.jw.org.
189. See 47, page 19.
190. Picture from www.johnikerd.com.