These final two chapters of my Remnant Rats – Catastrophic Christianity series, (all about biblical reasons why people fall away from God), is focussed on money, wealth and finance. One of the first cases of massive falling away on a catastrophic level in the scriptures is the story of the tower of Babel. Here is the text.

Genesis 11:1-7 The Tower of Babel 

Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

There are a number of thoughts and deeds of the people at this time that were condemned by God. God had commanded the people to fill the whole earth and subdue it in covenants with both Adam and Noah (Gen 1:28, 9:1). Here, they decided that they did not want to obey God but instead they wanted to settle down and use the power and wealth that they had already accumulated and build something great for themselves and their families. The tower project came from a desire to build a new identity for themselves as a great people. One of the most instant actions of the 2003 rebellion against the ICOC leadership was a sudden mass cancellation of financial contributions by church membership. Most appointed leaders were laid off with minimal notice and severance. In the UK for example some 70+ staff suddenly had a crisis not unlike what companies faced as a result of the COVID 19 crisis. They had to find new jobs at short notice. These men and women, who had given up careers and invested some of their best years into the lives of many of my friends and I, suddenly faced blatant rejection by those they had poured themselves out for, by working long hours and giving up the privacy of their homes for the sake of the gospel. It was a hard knock and only the most rooted stayed with their congregations in the face of such harshness. I feel it is the responsibility of those who saw this devastation to represent it to our many younger disciples baptised in the ICC since then. A sign of the intended direction of former ICOC churches, from 2003 onwards was the single retention of the UK ICOC’s deacon for Kingdom Kids. Although the members no longer had the conviction of The Great Commission they wanted to continue to pay someone to look after their kids! This strategic decision has played out since 2003 leading to the former ICOC churches becoming a monument to the ICOC. 

Monument building is a well documented human pastime. Almost every country in the world is riddled with tens of thousands of monuments. Jesus never asked anyone to build a monument. Jesus made a covenant with His eleven faithful trained disciples to ‘Go and make disciples of all nations’ (Matt 28:18-20), to go fourth and multiply and fill the whole earth with disciples.
It is clear, with the current state of the former ICOC churches, that they have settled down and are no longer moving forward to fill the earth with the gospel. They’re building a monument to a former movement that grew and spread rapidly up until 2003. They are now a group of churches with a focus on good family living for the working and middle-class and to summarise how one of their own Evangelists in Europe put it recently, ‘to have a kingdom dream to have a cute family but neglect the gospel‘. Their rate of growth and their focus on their children and family life, shows clearly that they have become very much like the Babel-onians building their tower. This process requires a good deal of their wealth and I will show rough calculations in the second part of this final part of my study, for at least what is going on in Europe. Each one of their baptisms is costing a lot more than £10,000! .. And yet there are so few additions compared to their numbers throughout the world, who only exist as a result of the rapid spread of the ICOC in the 1980s and 90s during the period when it was faithful to God’s plan to fill the earth with His Word. It was during this fruitful and blessed period of expansion throughout the world that I contributed financially to the ICOC from my wealth. The Tower of Babel project was made possible by the accumulation of wealth by the people. Their misuse of their  finances and employment of a strategy contradicting God’s will, was something that God found to be ultimately evil and worthy of harsh punishment. They fell away from God catastrophically! I have shown in these last few articles how sex, power and now wealth are key factors in the love of most growing cold (Matt 24:12). This pattern is repeated in the whole history of God’s people.

Part 2

RR 8.2 – More BANG for you Buck!