Who made Babylon?

The city of Babylon was the capital of the ancient land of Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia.  It was situated on the Euphrates River about 50 miles south of Baghdad.  The tremendous wealth and power of this city, along with its monumental size and appearance, were considered a Biblical myth, until its foundations were unearthed and its riches substantiated during the nineteenth century. 

“Cush became the father of Nimrod….the beginning of his kingdom was Babel….in the land of Shinar (in Babylonia).”  “The Lord there confounded the language of all the earth; and from that place the Lord scattered them abroad upon the face of the earth.” Genesis 10:8-10; 11:9  (Amplified)  The name of Babel in the Bible means “confused.”  Throughout the Bible, Babylon was a symbol of confusion caused by godlessness.

The earliest known inhabitants of Mesopotamia were the Sumerians.  Sargon united the people of Babylonia under his rule about 2300 B.C.  Many scholars believe that Sargon might have been the same person as Nimrod.

It was the Babylonians, under King Nebuchadnezzar II, who destroyed Jerusalem, the capital of the Kingdom of Judah, and carried God's covenant people into captivity in 606 BC, for 70 years.

The Bible also uses Babylon symbolically as the mother of false and blasphemous systems of worship. Revelation 17:3-6, “…and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored best, full of names of blasphemy…and the woman was …decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: and upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus…”

This horrible symbolic Babylon with her harlot daughters will be destroyed in the last days. “When the kings of earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury see the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her….After this I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven shouting, ‘Hallelujah!  Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments.  He has condemned the great prostitute, who corrupted the earth with her adulteries.  He has avenged on her the blood of his servants….Hallelujah!’ ”  Rev. 18:9, 19:1-3  NIV

Explain about NIMROD. Is he the antiChrist, the son of Satan?

Nimrod is an Old Testament personage from Genesis 10:8 “Now Cush (the son of Ham) became the father of Nimrod; he became a mighty one on the earth.”

He was the great grandson of Noah and would have had first-hand knowledge from his parents about the Lord. He had also been told how God saved Noah and his family from the flood and from the fallen angels who populated the earth before the flood.  As a close descendant of Noah, one can imagine that he was highly respected. He is credited in Genesis 10:10-12 with building many cities including the Tower of Babel in Babylon.

As the ruler of the city, Nimrod must have been influential in the building of this structure. A tall tower could have served as a high shelter to save people from another flood. Therefore, the tower was a rejection of God’s promise that there would be no more floods to destroy the earth.  It was also an example of great pride that people could escape God’s judgments by creating a tall refuge.

This displeased the Lord and in Genesis 11:5-8, the Lord mixes the languages and the people scattered to different places in the Earth: “The LORD came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. The LORD said, Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they began to do, and now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another's speech.  So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of the whole earth; and they stopped building the city.  Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

In addition to this, there are many archeological artifacts which illustrate that Nimrod was involved with the introduction of many evil pagan worship practices and pagan doctrines. An interesting book along this line is The Two Babylons by Rev. Alexander Hislop. The author traces various Christian beliefs back to their evil inception in Babylon. However, evil as Nimrod was, he was a mere man – not the AntiChrist nor the son of Satan.