And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and they had tar for mortar. And they said, Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top is in the heavens; and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered over the surface of the whole earth. – Genesis 11:3-4
In Message 36 of the Life-Study of Genesis, Brother Witness Lee makes it quite clear that the building of the tower of Babel is a vivid picture of what is happening in society today, both in school and in the work place. The people began by coming together to make bricks by burning the earth thoroughly. What is it to make bricks? The earth has all the elements necessary for producing life: vegetables, grains, and even the animals are supplied by the elements found in the earth. To make bricks is to kill and burn every bit of the element in the earth that grows life. These bricks were then used, by human labor, to produce a godless and lifeless city.
We must realize that the earth signifies humanity, and Satan wants nothing more than to burn out the element in man that grows life and misuse man to build something against God. Human culture today is doing one thing – burning earth into bricks and killing the element in man that grows life in order to build a city of misused mankind that is without God and without life. We must be aware that whether we are studying or working, the system around us has one view – to burn us thoroughly, to quench the life within us, and to render us useless to God so we can be built into Satan’s counterfeit building.
May the Lord grant us all mercy to have such a view, and the resolution that we will not be burned into bricks, no matter how demanding our school or profession. Although the world around us may be obliviously usurped and scorched, we are not here to be made into a brick for the tower of Babel or to be built into Pharaoh’s treasure cities. We are here as living stones, being transformed by beholding the Precious Stone, and thus being built together in order to become the New Jerusalem. Hallelujah, we are not bricks for Satan’s counterfeit, but stones for God’s glorious building!