Leading The Way

Guest (Male): Welcome to Leading the Way, featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Michael Youssef. Secularism has grown and is multiplying in our world at an alarming rate. Biblical values have been uprooted and practically erased from culture.

On this episode of Leading the Way audio, a challenge to become more like the heavenly Father, rather than conforming to current thought and culture to gain social acceptance. Listen and be encouraged in your faith.

Dr. Michael Youssef: Turn with me please to chapters 10 and 11 of Genesis. Here I'm going to show you how the city of man was founded by Cain, progressed in a downward direction. Evil, my beloved friends, evil never stands still.

If you allow evil in your life, if you allow evil in your home, if you allow evil in your church, if you allow evil in society, evil cannot stand still. It will keep going down and down and down. It cannot stand still; it can only get worse.

And that's what happened. Adam and Eve lived outside of the garden. Cain went and built a city to run away from God. Now we see Nimrod building a city in defiance of God.

Now, in the last message, we saw how Noah, the preacher of righteousness, was pleading with people. Turn to God, turn to God, be saved from the coming flood, be saved from the coming flood. They mocked him, they jeered him, they laughed at him.

But then God took him and his family inside that ark and He saved them. He had three sons, three sons after the flood they came out, and their names were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And God said to them to repopulate the earth.

Ham sinned against his father, and therefore he received a curse, and that curse continued on to his descendants. But then Shem was respectful of his father, honored his father, and he received a blessing, and that blessing continued on to his descendants.

And that is why I want to take a moment and just speak to the young people here today. Just listen to me for a minute. When you obey your godly parents, you will receive a blessing and that blessing is going to be with you forever and even your next generation. Don't ever forget that.

Ham's descendant was Canaan. Canaan dwelt in the city of man. His descendant was Nimrod, Nimrod who took rebellion against God to a new low.

Nimrod's attitude is very similar to the attitude of so many people in our culture today, including some of our leaders. Who is this God who tells us what to do? What are these moral absolutes? Where did they come from? And we don't like them.

What kind of a God who wants to restrict our pleasure, no matter how perverted it may be? We can legislate him out of our society. We can muzzle all of his followers so they will not make us feel guilty about our perverted pleasure.

Nimrod, like many in our society today, many of our leaders today, instead of recognizing their sin and the consequences of sin and the curse of sin and turned to God, he instead built Babylon, a city that stood in defiance to God.

This is exactly what happened now all over the Western culture. Instead of acknowledging and thanking the God who delivered us in Second World War from the evils of Nazism and Fascism, we gave ourselves the credit.

Today, instead of knowing and bowing down to God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in gratitude for all of His blessings and even for our Western civilization, instead we bow to political correctness, we bow to materialism, we bow to our own intellect, and we bow to pluralism.

Instead of making wise decisions and laws, we are giving the foxes the keys to the hen houses so that we can be destroyed from within.

Genesis 10:8 to 12 and Genesis 11:1 to 9, you see the beginning of what we are seeing now at the end times. You see like the beginning, the end is going to be very similar and in a very same geographical location in the Middle East.

Nimrod decided to build the city of Babylon, a city that opposes the very true God who saved their ancestors from the flood. Short memories, short attention span. It's not just from our modern day; it happened there.

Verse 4 of chapter 11, in that city they wanted to build a tower and that tower in some way connected to heaven. Let me break the word Babel. Babel is the Hebrew word for Babylon. Bab El.

Bab is the same word in translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic word means door. El, you know who El is, Emmanuel, God. A door to God. What they want to do is to create a back door to God.

You see they wanted to come to God their way. They want to reach to God their own way. Now, most of your translations says reach heaven. This is any more reaching than this telephone commercial old one used to say reach out and touch someone.

How can you reach someone with the phone? You couldn't. But it's a symbolic word and I'm going to explain that in a minute. It's very important. Because some people thought, oh man they were so foolish back then, they're not as bright as we are, they were not scientifically in tuned as we are.

And in their foolishness they thought they can really build a tower and they reach all the way to heaven. They couldn't understand the space and the millions of miles that is away. It is not so. That's not what they were doing.

They were building a civilizations will not only make the God of their forefathers obsolete, but they building a civilization that opposed to the God of their ancestors. Don't miss what I'm going to tell you.

From that moment of history, Babylon came to occupy a very significant place in the whole of the Bible. In fact, I think the symbolic explanation or the symbolic meaning of Babylon cannot be exaggerated in the scripture.

From Genesis to Revelation 21, Babylon is a symbol of living for self at enmity with God because self will always be at enmity with God. Let me prove it to you.

When God's judgment fell upon Israel after year after year, 200 years of rejecting God, rejecting God, who did God choose as an instrument of judgment? Of all the people of the earth He used the Babylonians.

What was the religion of the king Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon? Self-worship. He was narcissistic self-worshipping dude.

Beloved, listen to me. We are up to our eyeballs in narcissistic self-worshipping dudes and dudettes. He wanted everyone to bow and worship the image of himself.

The biblical clear biblical characteristic of the Antichrist when he shows up at the end of time, I mean there are many other things in the Bible about the Antichrist, what's the one thing that is absolutely standout? He is going to be what? Narcissistic self-worshipping dude.

The world is being prepared for the Antichrist. Eventually he's going to demand that people worship him and he is a mask of Satan.

No wonder Babylon came to represent not only enmity with the only one true God, but also the religion of self-worship. Do you recognize where we are as a culture today? Can you see it?

Before I get carried away, let me give you three characteristics of the original Babylon that are duplicated in every modern-day Babylon, which is deeply embedded in our Western society today.

Three characteristics. First of all, it was a city without the one true God. Secondly, it was a city that was stealing God's glory and giving it to themselves. And thirdly, it was a city that was dedicated to self-worship.

A city without the one true God. Look at Europe today, a continent that has rejected the Lord Jesus Christ and the true Christian faith after 500 years of reformation, they rejected the Christian faith.

But what is happening as a result of that is that they living in terror and fear. Terror and fear is always the consequences of rejecting the one true God.

While the Muslim population in Europe is doubling every eight years, the European population is dwindling.

Beloved, any city, any culture, any society that keeps out the one true God, any government that outlaws the God of the Bible, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and His absolutes, any people who reject the one and only savior the Lord Jesus Christ, they will end up living in terror and fear.

The citizens of Babylon in a deliberate act of rejection of the one true God, the God of their ancestors, they ended up building not only a city but a tower inside that city which was dedicated to the worshipping of the occult.

And whenever that self-worship, that self-focus takes place, the only consequence will be fear and terror. And that is why the Bible speaks of the mystery of Babylon.

What is the mystery of Babylon? As a matter of fact, Revelation 17:5 says that Babylon is the mother of harlots, that is the origin of all unfaithfulness to God. It's the center of abomination on the earth.

And what is this mystery of Babylon? Listen carefully. It is any household, it's any community, it's any denomination, it is any city, it is any civilization, it is any nation that rejects God's moral absolutes and begin to live with their own instinct and invented morality.

That is the mystery of Babylon. From Genesis 11 to Revelation, Babylon becomes synonymous with the rejection of the God of the Bible.

So I have a question. What message was God giving His people Israel? Don't you ever forget they're the apple of His eye, whom He redeemed from the slavery of Egypt. He loved Israel.

But what instrument did He use in order to judge them for their sin and rebellion? The Babylonians were His instrument of His judgment of all the people of the earth.

As if to say to His own people Israel, when you, my people, who should have known better, reject me, the one true God, your God, you are worse than the Babylonians. Think about this. It tears you up, think about it.

They wanted a city without God. In their city, secondly, they wanted to steal God's glory. Think about this. If they really want to build physically a tower that goes to heaven, wouldn't they've gone to the mountain to get some leg up? Not in the valley. They were building it in the valley.

No, no, no. This was a symbolic way of saying that they wanted to worship the stars, that they wanted to know what the stars have said to them personally. They wanted, in their so self-focused, they thought that the stars can speak to them.

So more literally translated would be something like they wanted to be in or on or with or by heaven. What does it mean? On the top of that tower there were atop a roof that was dedicated to the zodiac.

Astrology is based on the zodiac. Astrology originated in Babylon. Astrology is associated with self-worship.

And from Babylon it went all the way to Egypt. As a matter of fact, when astrology came into Egypt and got mixed up with local animism of Egypt, it produced the pyramids and the Sphinx.

You say, how come? The pyramids of Egypt, they were constructed mathematically in relationship to the stars. Even the Sphinx has astrological significance.

The Sphinx has the head of a woman which symbolize Virgo, the first sign of the zodiac. And the body is a body of a lion symbolizing Leo, the last sign of the zodiac. And thus the Sphinx of Egypt links the first and last signs of the zodiac.

This is more than you want to know, but you need to know. When God's people were in Egypt for nearly 400 years and they came out of Egypt and redeemed by the Lord, when they came out into Sinai desert, they were up to their eyeballs in this stuff.

And that is why God told them again and again and again and again, Leviticus 19:31, Deuteronomy 18, that they should not worship the zodiac. Why? Because the zodiac is a front for Satan.

Babylon was stealing God's glory and giving it to themselves, but in reality they were not giving it to themselves, they were handing it to Satan.

Babylon was a symbol of any society that rejects the one true God. Babylon is a society, any society that steals the glory of God.

And thirdly, Babylon is any society where man is glorified and not God. You see the Bible says the Babylonians took counsel. They got together and took a counsel. They discussed this issue.

Let's build a city with a tower for the worship of the stars. Why? Look at verse 4 of chapter 11, it tells you exactly why. It tells you why. So that we may make a name for ourselves.

We don't like Yahweh. He's too constricting. We want to make a name for ourselves. We want to be the measure of all things.

Please understand that self-preservation is God's gift to humanity for survival. Just like all the other gifts that God gives us. God gave us the gift of fear. Why? So that we might fear God, but instead Satan perverted it and make us fear him and evil people.

The gift of pleasure, pleasure is God's idea, not man's idea, but Satan perverted it. You see, and here the very gift for survival, he perverted it again and turned into self-worship.

Someone may say, well Michael, Michael, Michael, Michael, nobody really worship self. I've really haven't seen anybody worshipping themselves, certainly not among Christians. I mean this is just way out there. I've never seen anyone look in the mirror and bow down to themselves.

Let me ask you, how much of God's gift of time does God get? How much of God's gift of money does God get? How much of God's gift of intellect does God get?

Today in America the God of self reigns supreme. My goodness, watch the commercials. All the commercial. Self, self, self, self, self, self, self. Even we have a magazine called Self.

This powerful god of self is reviving the Babylonian religion in our society and replacing the one true God. And that is why the judgment for that sin is going to be Islamic terrorism.

Listen to me. I wish to God I was not able to say that. But notice, even when people today would volunteer or do some good things, when you ask them the question and you say why, "It makes me feel good." The god of self is reigning supreme.

Hear me out, please. Be on your guard, my beloved friends, of the god of self. Be on your guard, believers, who know the Lord Jesus. Be on your guard of the god of self.

Do you know why? Because it is a very subtle god, because it's very easily accommodated, because it's very easily rationalized, because it's very easily explained. I have needs.

Why I'm warning you against this god of self, the Babylonian god being revived today? Why I'm warning you? I warn myself on a regular basis, trust me.

Because God is a jealous God. We forget this in our busyness in life. We forget that our God is a jealous God. God is jealous and He does not take lightly when His bride go into infidelity and unfaithfulness any more than a spouse not hurt deeply when the spouse goes into infidelity and immorality and unfaithfulness and adultery.

God does not like to have rivals when it comes to His bride. God does not like to be sidelined, even if we can rationalize it in our head.

Beloved, the consequences of misplaced love, the consequences of misplaced worship, the consequences of misplaced devotion will produce no other than fear, terror, anxiety, and restlessness.

The Bible said when the Babylonian took counsel and decided to go up their way, not God's way, our way, God the Holy Trinity took counsel and He said we go down and confuse them.

The Babylonian assembled their counsel to bypass God. The Holy Trinity assembled their counsel and decided it's time to make them look like babbling idiots. It's not in the Bible, I'm making it up, but you know what I mean.

We talk about a person babbling. That's where it comes from. The Babylonians assembled to steal God's glory, the Holy Trinity assembled to confuse them and make confusion to be their fate.

Verse 7, God said let us go down and confuse their language. Who is us? Let us. God the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God since before eternity will one day conclude that enough is enough.

Make no mistake about it, God the Holy Trinity will always prevail. God the Holy Trinity always win. God the Holy Trinity always will have the last word. God the Holy Trinity always have the upper hand.

Many of you will testify to the fact that we have never seen more confusion than we seeing in our day. It's confused people. When babies can be murdered in their mother's womb, but a tree is sacred. That's confusion.

Now, I don't want to leave you without the rest of the story, namely that God will have the last word. That they may think that they can go up without God, but God will come down to judge them.

Our generation says our science will save us and God says your science looks like a pimple on the face of humanity. And they may say our wealth will save us. God says you all look like ants from up here.

All of the self-esteem and all of the self-image is like dust to God. And so let me give you a word of to the faithful.

No matter how dark it may get, our God is the God of power and might. No matter how chilling and challenging times are going to be, our God will give us the ultimate victory.

No matter how the powerful and the mighty forces attack us and work against us and they use their power and use their force against us, we end up winning.

No matter how much they may persecute us, we are on the winning side. No matter how much they may ridicule us, it's okay, count it all joy. We are victorious in Jesus' name.

Guest (Male): Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for this episode of Leading the Way. Now, if you missed any part of today's message, "Unholy Alliance of the Antichrist", or other messages in this series and you want to catch up, just visit ltw.org.

That's where you can stream all of Dr. Youssef's audio and video content. You can also listen and watch with the Leading the Way mobile and television app.

By the way, content in this series is developed further and connected to recent and current events in Dr. Youssef's brand-new book, *An Unholy Alliance*. Here's more.

Order your copy of Dr. Michael Youssef's eye-opening new book, *An Unholy Alliance*, today for your gift of any amount. You'll discover why two ideologies radically opposed to one another are working together to undermine faith and freedom.

How this alliance is advancing on college campuses, in the media, and in public institutions across America. What history, scripture, and documented evidence reveal about where this alliance leads, and what you can do about it.

How Christians can respond, not with fear or outrage, but with courage, compassion, and gospel truth. Order your copy of *An Unholy Alliance* today for your gift of any amount to Leading the Way. Your generosity will help reach the lost for Christ and call the church to revival.

One of the Leading the Way ministry representatives can get your order in process today. Give us a call at 866-626-4356 and online at ltw.org. Or through the mail at Leading the Way, Post Office Box 20100, Atlanta, Georgia 30325. Again, Post Office Box 20100, Atlanta, Georgia 30325.

Well, time is gone for this episode. Do plan to join Dr. Michael Youssef right here next time when he passionately proclaims uncompromising truth on Leading the Way. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef.