Some Thoughts on the Flood, the Tower of Babel, AI, and Genetic Engineering by Aaron Hecht

The word "technology" and the term "genetic engineering" do not appear in the Bible. But both phenomena are vividly described.

Let's start with the story of the Tower of Babel.

If you're like most people, you probably haven't read the story about the Tower of Babel since you were a child. It almost never gets mentioned in sermons made from the pulpit of any major Christian denomination and the Jewish Rabbis don't talk about it much either, mostly because they simply don't know what to say about it.

But I have been deeply fascinated by it ever since I was a small child and lately, I've been thinking about it a lot and I believe it has EVERYTHING to do with our modern circumstances.

But before I say more about that, go ahead and read this story for yourself.

Genesis 11:1-9

Now the whole earth had one language and one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They had brick for stone, and they had asphalt for mortar. And they said, “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.”

But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Now, when I first read that story as a child, something about it just didn't seem to make sense for me. I thought to myself "why would the God who created this entire physical universe be worried about a bunch of human beings making a tower out of bricks made of sand and asphalt, or even an entire city built out of such materials"?

Around that time, my mother had taken me and my sister on a trip to New York City, and I had seen the massive skyscrapers there. I found it difficult to imagine that these desert people 5,000 years ago had been able to build towers that would be even that tall out of bricks and asphalt, much less something that "reached to Heaven." Furthermore, God had allowed human beings to build the Empire State Building, so why had He been so concerned about the Tower of Babel?

It was not the only thing I was reading in my children's Bible back then that I found puzzling. The Book of Genesis has several stories that include elements that sounded very strange and illogical to me. But to be fair to my 7-year-old self, at that point in my educational journey, I had not yet learned the words "allegory" or "metaphor" and I actually had not yet even been introduced to these concepts.

Now, at THIS point in my journey, I can look back on that and what I THINK (this is informed speculation on my part so please don't burn me at the stake for this) that the "Tower of Babel" that would be the centerpiece of this city that God came down to the land of Shinar and saw people building was not a literal pile of sunbaked bricks held together by asphalt.

Now let's back up for just a moment and recall where the Book of Genesis comes from.

Moses wrote that Book after spending several days talking with God face to face up on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:20) and I think it's at least plausible to believe that when God told Moses the story about what happened at the Tower of Babel (which scholars estimate happened about 800 years previously and had probably been lost to collective memory) and also many other stories about this ancient history that happened before He called Abraham, He used allegorical/metaphorical language that Moses (and the people He was writing the Book of Genesis for) would have been able to understand.

So, with that in mind, I don't believe that the Tower of Babel and the surrounding city were simply buildings made out of sunbaked bricks held together by asphalt.

Rather, I think that these human beings were developing something that would allow them to, in modern language "play God." In other words, their "tower whose top is in heaven" is a metaphor for some technology that God saw them developing that impressed Him. 

It impressed the God who had spoken the entire physical universe into existence. 

It impressed Him so much that He thought he needed to do something immediately to make sure that the progress they were making towards the development of this technology would be stopped cold.

He had already sent the Flood to put a stop to the terrible wickedness that had existed in the world in "the days of Noah" but He had also promised that He wouldn't do that again. So, He had to do something different. He decided to "confuse their language" so that they wouldn't be able to communicate with each other and continue to make progress towards a goal that God had decided it wouldn't be good for them to continue pursuing.

A modern-day Tower of Babel

In the last few years, the human race has once again started to build a tower whose top is in the heavens" and this modern-day Tower of Babel is called "artificial intelligence."

It is a project hailed by some as giving humanity the tools we need to solve every imaginable problem that we have by unlocking the secrets of the physical universe which have been eluding us for thousands of years. Indeed, AI models have already solved some mathematical equations that the most brilliant human minds had failed to solve. Problems of chemistry, physics, medicine, etc. have all been solved and the solutions to these problems are in the process of being applied to the fabrication of new medications and vaccines, machines, computers, communications networks, etc. that are likely to bring rapid and unimaginable change to every aspect of our lives, in good and bad ways.

As a journalist who covers, among other things, military affairs, I am astounded, frightened but most of all saddened at all the items coming across my desk over the last several months which are related to the application of AI to weapons development. The killer cyborgs James Cameraon showed us in the Terminator movies are not ready to take the field just yet, but machines that that will be terrifyingly effective and efficient at killing large numbers of human beings very quickly are already being built. Meanwhile, AI-enhanced targeting software to guide more old-fashioned but still very deadly weapons to their targets have already been used on the battlefields of Ukraine and also in this ongoing US-Israeli war with Iran.

This is just the beginning, and the weapons that we're seeing now are the AI equivalent of a Sopwith Camel. I don't even want to imagine what the AI equivalent of an F-15 will look like and be capable of.

But once again, God might not allow things to get to that point.

There's an old saying that "history never repeats itself but sometimes it rhymes" and I am fairly certain that this current situation rhymes with the circumstances described in Genesis 11:1-9.

I believe some of these changes that AI could bring will be so monumental that they will be enough to impress even God Himself. In the case of AI-enhanced weapons, they will do more than impress Him, they will also alarm Him, for our sake, not His, just as the original Tower of Babel did. There is certainly the potential for these changes to derail the plans and purposes God has for the Human Race, and just as He sovereignly intervened in human history several times in order to prevent His plans and purposes from being derailed, I believe He will do so this time as well.

What will He do?

I doubt he'll confuse our languages like He did back then. I'm sure He won't send another worldwide flood, as He promised He wouldn't do that again.

But I'm sure He will do something, and I'm also quite certain we human beings won't enjoy it. Just like the confusion of languages at the original Tower of Babel, it'll be necessary to save us from getting ourselves into a much worse situation, but it won't be much fun.

I can, for instance, easily imagine Him sending unprecedentedly powerful storms and hurricanes to physically destroy all the AI data centers. This might include massive bolts of lightning to short-circuit the electrical grid which sends these data centers the electricity they need to keep running. Of course, these storms will also destroy all the homes, businesses, airplanes, and much else that are all around the data centers and electrical power stations.

Or He might do something totally different. 

The point is, the God who created this physical universe and everything in it, including you and me, is capable of manipulating the physical properties of this universe He created in ways that the human beings He created keep trying to emulate. But every time we get close to being able to actually do it, every time we try with all our might to "build a tower that reaches Heaven" He effortlessly changes something that takes away our ability to keep building the tower.

That brings me to the other modern-day Tower of Babel that has gotten far less attention than AI has gotten, and that's what's called "genetic engineering" but which I think is more correctly referred to as "genetic tinkering."

God invented Genetic Engineering

Once again, the term "genetic engineering" isn't in the Bible, but it is referred to several times.

You've probably never thought about it, but when God created the first humans, Adam and Eve, along with all the animals, birds, fish, insects, and all the plants in Genesis chapter 1, that was an exercise in genetic engineering. In fact, it was the ULTIMATE act of genetic engineering, but it wasn't the last time God conducted an exercise in genetic engineering.

The early chapters of Genesis speak of human beings routinely living for hundreds of years. One man, Methuselah, lived to be almost 1,000 years old.

But then we come to Genesis 6:3, And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.

Now I know there's some arguments about what this verse means, as some scholars believe that God was saying that God was declaring there would only be 120 more years before He sent the Flood to destroy humanity. This argument is strengthened by the fact that in later Biblical passages it speaks of people who were born after the Flood living longer than 120 years, including Abraham. But the sequence of Biblical passages is not always an indication of the chronological sequence of the historical events they describe. Certainly, by the time of Abraham's grandson, Jacob/Israel, the Bible isn't talking anymore about people living to be hundreds of years old as it does in previous chapters. For most of recorded human history, all over the world, only a handful of people live much longer than 100 years and most modern geneticists agree that the maximum age that a human being is capable of reaching is 120 years.

Now, in recent years, those same geneticists have cloned animals, given us new plants that have massively increased crop yields and are resistant to various pests that have long plagued farmers, etc.

Once again, these things are bringing tremendous benefits to the Human Race, but they are nevertheless an attempt to "build a tower which reaches heaven". Furthermore, it is also very similar to what is being described in the rest of Genesis chapter 6, with demons conducting some "genetic engineering" experiments of their own, as described in Genesis 6:4; There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown.

I believe this is another story which God told to Moses so he would write it in the Book of Genesis using some allegorical language that Moses and the readers of Genesis would be able to understand. I'm not sure demonic beings actually had sexual intercourse with human females and impregnated them. Later passages of Scripture which talk about angels and demons seem to be saying that these spiritual beings do not have physical bodies or gender the way human beings do, so this is not even physiologically possible.

However, I've also always wondered if this is what some of the Greek mythology is based on, as it includes several stories about "gods" having sexual intercourse with mortal human females leading to the birth of "men of renown" such as Hercules.

If anyone has any thoughts on this, or anything else in this blog, please share them in the comments section.

In any case, these experiments in "genetic engineering" that were going on "in the days of Noah" were threatening to derail the plans and purposes of God for the human race He'd created and the Earth He'd built for us to live on. It was one of the things which prompted Him to send the Flood to destroy all flesh except Noah and his family. Noah, as Genesis 6:9 tells us, was "perfect in his generations" which I believe means he was of a family lineage that did not include any of these creatures who were products of demonic genetic engineering. That's why God chose him and his family to go into the Ark so they would be preserved, along with examples of all the animals which God had created, and which were also not the result of any of these demonic experiments.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, please hear me.

There's a LOT going on in the world today that I believe very closely resembles the circumstances described in Biblical stories which ended with God supernaturally intervening in human history in order to prevent us from doing things which would do irreparable damage to the perfect plans and purposes He has for us.

I believe that we might be very close to something similar happening.

I more then half suspect that this "Super El Nino" that is already intensifying in the Pacific is part of the intervention that God is about to make in our world. Even if it's not, it's going to bring some very intense meteorological events to many parts of the world. In fact, it already is.

Climate scientists are saying that 2026 is on track to be the hottest year ever recorded on this planet. We have already seen massively disruptive weather events and natural disasters all over the world as a result of these unusually high temperatures and the attendant droughts that have hit many regions. We are approaching the end of September and it still feels like high summer here in Jerusalem where I live. Similar conditions are persisting in many other parts of the world.

I think the high temperatures, the raging wildfires, the floods, the hurricanes, the storms and all the rest of these unusual events in the natural world are a reflection of the tremendous tensions in the spiritual world. 

So, buckle up! Be in urgent prayer for your families, your governments, your congregations and your communities, and anything else God has put under your stewardship.

Also, if I'm right, and God does sovereignly interfere in history in order to put a stop to either AI, or attempts at genetic tinkering, or anything else, it's going to freak people out. So, remember 1 Peter 3:15 But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear;

That's what I've got for you this week brothers and sisters. I hope it blesses someone.

Some Thoughts for Back to School Week by Aaron Hecht

This week, my two sons joined 2.6 million other Israeli children, and tens of millions more all over the world, in that most beloved (and hated) of childhood traditions, the first day of the new school year.

I know how blessed we are that both of my sons are in an educational framework that is WAY above the average for Israel. I won't say much more about that, but I've seen the evidence that the principal's at both my eldest son's high school and my youngest son's primary school cited to back up their claims to being among the best schools in the country and I was convinced by it.

However, I am also under no illusions that this is sufficient.

The test scores of Israeli high school graduates have been at the bottom of the barrel for OECD countries every year for a very long time, and it's no mystery why. A recent study was published showing that Israeli teachers have some of the lowest levels of professional skills in the OECD. If the teachers are barely able to read, write, and explain complex situations, we can't expect the students to have these skills.

The problems go beyond poor test scores and have also begun to show up on factory floors and board rooms, as older workers (many of whom were immigrants from the former Soviet Union, which for all its faults had an excellent education system) retire and companies struggle to find younger people who have the skills and knowledge necessary to replace them.

But Israel is not alone in having problems along these lines.

In the last few years, I have seen one news report after another about university freshman in America, Canada, Western Europe and Australia showing up on campus unable to read even basic passages out of their textbooks or take notes in class. Professors also report students being unable to hold serious discussions about many topics because they simply don't have the vocabulary and also have a hard time focusing on anything for any great length of time.

I am therefore "that dad" who takes away his kids' screens for at least two hours every evening after they come home from school and makes them read books, play educational games (often playing with them, because that makes it more fun for everyone) or going outside and burning off energy at the park by playing with our wonderful little dog.

I'm even "that dad" who downloads worksheets with math and science problems for my sons to work on if their teacher didn't give them enough homework. I'm "that dad" who pays for them to take karate lessons and signs them up for whatever summer school programs are available from the municipality, sends them to the camps provided by our church, or anything else I can think of to get them off the couch and off their screens.

I am also "that dad" who reads the daily portion from the One-Year Bible to my children at bedtime, and you better believe I'm "that dad" who prays for them every night as they're going to sleep, and also every morning as they're on their way to school.

Brothers and sisters, I'm not saying all this to brag on myself, but rather to give you some ideas about how you can invest in your own children.

The schools do their best to give our children what they need and their teachers and coaches are, for the most part, dedicated and sincere professionals who care about the children and want what's best for them. The same is true of the pastors and youth leaders at our churches.

But they simply can't do it all themselves. 

If we want our children to grow up to be happy, successful, high-functioning human beings who will make positive contributions to society and stay with the faith after they grow old enough to make their own decisions then we have to intentionally invest our time, effort, money and other resources into making sure that happens.

It's not enough to drop them off at school in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon and then let them do whatever they want in the evening. It's not even enough to take them to church once a week and make sure they go into the Sunday school.

That's important, but it's not sufficient.

We must do more than that, not only for the obvious reason that we want our children to have the skills and knowledge they will need to get a decent job when they're done with school. It's not just about them getting a good job; it's also about them NOT falling away from the Faith and/or turning into a zombie/barbarian.

Beyond your local congregation (which you can and MUST sow into with your time, effort and above all your prayers) I can recommend two parachurch organizations which have been a huge blessing to my own life, especially my parenting journey.

The first is Family Life Today and the second is Moms in Prayer.

Last but certainly not least, I can't end this blog without saying once again that getting a dog for my family was one of the best decisions I ever made, and I recommend it for everyone.

Some Thoughts on Doom, Gloom, Prepping and the Bible by Aaron Hecht

I have been a "prepper" for several years now.

Some people might prefer to call me a "doomer" since they don't think the future is anything to worry about and anyone who does worry is just being overly pessimistic and ridiculous.

I don't mind it when people call me a "doomer" because it says more about them then it says about me, and I also don't mind because there's a chance, they're correct, and that I'm worrying about the possibility bad things happening too much. 

But I doubt it.

For that matter, my own lived experience has already provided me with plenty of confirmation that I'm doing the right thing.

In the last three years that Israel has been at war I have had many occasions to use the supplies, tools, skills and knowledge I had acquired on my prepping journey before the war started to make life more manageable for my family and neighbors. A few days after the war started, a young woman who had made Aliyah from America less than a year previously turned to me one morning as we were sitting down in the building's bomb shelter during a rocket alert and said, "you're one of those survivalist nutcases my mother warned me to stay away from, and I'm SO GLAD you're here with us now!"

Aside from when my wife said yes to my proposal of marriage it's probably one of the nicest things anyone ever said to me.

The most important "prep" I had prior to the war was being in good physical condition. I had been doing aerobics and weight lifting six days a week for several years and when this war started I found myself running around a LOT to help people in my neighborhood with all kinds of physically demanding chores, from cleaning out bomb shelters and safe rooms (which involves going up and down stairs a lot) to helping people do long overdue cleaning and maintenance on their apartments and giving out loads of free advice to people about what foods and drink, sanitary items, etc. they should be getting extra supplies of in order to get them ready to shelter in place for long periods of time if they needed to. I got many more expressions of gratitude for all this, but no one else ever called me a "survivalist nutcase" which made me kind of sad.

In the course of the war, especially during the really intense times as we were being bombarded by Iranian missiles, I had many more opportunities to help my neighbors and advise people about how to get ready for problems I saw coming around the corner.

But even I have my blind spots.

This evening's adventure

As I am sitting here writing this blog in my Jerusalem apartment, I have just spent most of the last three hours doing a "flight of the bumblebee" maneuver to try and get my home as ready as possible for a potential water cutoff after the Gihon company, which is the national water company in Israel, issued a warning that the taps might be running dry in several neighborhoods sometime this evening. Water supplies were already cut off to farmers in southern Israel this morning, and although I have no way of being sure, I'm guessing that if Gihon was issuing a warning here in Jerusalem, they were also doing so in other cities.

The reason for this interruption of the regular supply of water is that five of Israel's six ocean-water desalinization plants, which supply 80% of the drinking water, are currently offline. I saw the article about that in the newspaper this morning, in which the reason Gihon was giving for what they said would be a "temporary shutdown" was "severe turbidity" in the ocean water. I had to look up the word "turbidity" because I had never seen that word before, and according to dictionary.com it means "a quality of cloudiness or murkiness, particularly of water."

The article also said that Gihon was denying this shutdown was caused by a cyberattack from Iran or anywhere else.

Candidly, I'm skeptical.

If Gihon were to tell us that "extreme turbidity" had shut down one, or even two, of the desalinization plants it operates, I might be willing to believe them. But five out of six, all at once? That's a little hard to believe.

However, when I saw the article in the newspaper this morning, I was not particularly alarmed, even though I thought it was highly likely that an Iranian cyberattack HAD caused the desalinization plants to go offline. I know Israel has some of the best cyber defenses in the world and I also knew that this country gets hit by millions of cyberattacks every single hour, and this has been going on for years, and they almost never cause any serious problems. So I figured this problem would get fixed quickly and there was no danger of any serious issues.

Then, around 3 PM, the alert came in from Gihon that water pressure would be falling in several Jerusalem neighborhoods sometime in the evening and urging the general public to limit water use to essential needs.

I have to admit; I was quite shocked by this.

As much as I've been paying attention and trying to stay ahead of so many problems and issues, I had NO IDEA that the water supply in Israel was so tight. I had no idea how dependent we have become on desalinization, and I had no idea how quickly the supply could run out if those desalinization plants were to stop working for whatever reason. I always thought there were reserves available for at least a few weeks, if not longer, but we started feeling the pinch in less than 24 hours.

So, like I said, after getting the warning on my phone from Gihon, I immediately ran to the grocery store and got a few extra bottles of water, milk, juice and a bunch of fresh fruit (we were down to our last two bananas so I'd planned on getting more fruit this evening anyway.)

Then I did a load of laundry and washed the dishes which were in the sink and did a few other water-intensive chores that needed to be done in any case, but I wanted to get them done as quickly as possible in case the water pressure dropped significantly.

In the event, later in the evening, even as I was writing this blog, the word came down that the desalinization plants were beginning to come back online and there was no immediate danger.

But I don't regret the flight of the bumblebee routine I did today. It was good practice, and I'll use all the extra water and juice and fruit I bought today in the course of time. For that matter, the desalinization plants could stop working again at literally any moment, and next time the problem might not get fixed quickly like it was this time.

In a more general sense, I advise EVERYONE to take prepping seriously because the world is not getting any more stable, politically, environmentally, economically, culturally, socially, or in any other way. Natural disasters keep coming faster and faster, social unrest is increasing in many countries all over the world, there are all kinds of issues with supply chains for all kinds of things, including basic necessities like food and fuel, electricity and much else. These problems feed off of and into each other, and they can escalate very quickly and in unexpected ways. At the same time, the infrastructure that we rely on to make our lives what we've become accustomed to them being is a lot more fragile than most people realize, and there are many potential points of failure.

It's important to build margin into our lives so we can absorb shocks when they come.

What does the Bible have to say about all this?

Every time this topic comes up, someone will point out that the Bible advises us in 365 separate verses "fear not" and in Luke 12:26-28, Yeshua specifically says "If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothes the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith?

Yes, brothers and sisters, Jesus DID say that, but as is so often the case, one must look to the context of the verse to get its true meaning.

Jesus wasn't telling people not to work and earn money so they could pay for the things they needed. He wasn't telling them to not take sensible precautions and avoid problems if possible.

In fact, in Luke Chapter 4, when the Devil is tempting Yeshua and trying to get Him to do stupid, careless things by reminding Him that God has promised to take care of His followers, Jesus responds by reminding the Devil what God told the Israelites in Deuteronomy 6:16, "do not put the Lord your God to the test."

Then in Mark 13:32-37 He says But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray; for you do not know when the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and gave authority to his servants, and to each his work, and commanded the doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the rooster, or in the morning lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!”

This passage is a warning about being complacent and not paying attention to what is happening around you and the times in which you live.

It is NOT a commandment to be obsessed with "doom and gloom" but it IS a commandment to not be careless or negligent in looking after the things God has given you responsibility to look after.

As with so many other things, one needs to find the "sweet spot" where you're not worrying too much about the bad things that might happen but you're also not ignoring the fact that bad things certainly WILL happen.

That's what I've got for you this week brothers and sisters, I hope it blessed someone.