We have been studying the Old Testament by types.  Thus far, we have studied Adam, Cain and Abel, Enoch, and Noah.  What we have learned from them is this, among other things:

• Everyone of us was born with Adam’s nature and, thus, we will deal with sin in our lives till we die or we are raptured.  We must have the likeness and image of Jesus to finally be sinless.
• When you live righteously, like Abel, religious people, like Cain, will oppose you, even to death.  Look what the Pharisees did to Jesus.
• As Enoch preached against the ungodly of his day, so we preach against the ungodly of our day.  Their best hope is to for them to get saved and go up in the rapture with us.
• From Noah’s flood we learned that even if you get rid of all the wicked people in the world, the world will still be wicked.  The destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was after the flood.

Today, we’re going to study Nimrod, a type of the antichrist.

Nimrod is the 13th from Adam.  Adam – Seth – Enos – Cainan – Mahalaleel – Jared – Enoch – Methuselah – Lamech – Noah – Ham – Cush – Nimrod.  13 is the number of rebellion.  See Gen 14:4.  Notice Gen 13:13, 1 Sam 13:13; Prov 13:13; and Rev 13, where the antichrist is.    Nimrod’s name means “Rebel”.

In Gen 10:8 and 1 Chr 1:10 he began to be “mighty” upon the earth.  The mighty ones before the flood were the giants, Gen 6:4, who were the descendants of the sons of God.  So, Nimrod is like them.  Study the giants; they are not good.

Nimrod was a mighty hunter, Gen 10:9.  Esau was also a hunter, Gen 25:27.  But Nimrod appears to be a hunter of men.  In 1 Sam 24:11 Saul hunted for David.  Job 10:6 says, “thou huntest me as a fierce lion”.  In Jer 16:16 the Lord said, “I will send for many hunters”. Ezek 13:18 asks, “will ye hunt the souls of my people”?  Mic 7:2 says, “they hunt every man his brother with a net”.  Men with aspirations for world rule are often ruthless killers.

He was a mighty hunter “before the Lord”, Gen 10:9.  This indicates an open defiance of God.  In Gen 13:13 the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the Lord exceedingly.  In 1 Sam 2:17 the sin of the young men (Eli’s sons) was very great before the Lord.  “Before the Lord” is an expression indicating that the people doing something know they are doing it in plain sight of the Lord.  So, Nimrod flaunted his might before the Lord in open defiance.  Compare him to the prophecy of the antichrist in Dan 11:36-37.

In Gen 10:10, he began “his kingdom”.  He’s a king and this is the first mention of a kingdom in the Bible.  Yet this is ‘his’ kingdom; God didn’t give it to him.  Compare Dan 11:36.  There’s something wicked about his rise to power.  The devil is king over all the children of pride, Job 41:34.  In Is 14:4 we see the king of Babylon connected with Lucifer, Is 14:12.

Nimrod’s kingdom was in a city called Babel… in the land of Shinar.  Babel, later, is Babylon, Dan 1:1-2.  Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh (in Assyria).  In Mic 5:5-6 Assyria is the land of Nimrod.  Jonah preached against Nineveh.  The references to the Assyrian king in Is 10:5-14; 52:4-6 show that he is the enemy of Israel.

In Gen 11:1-9 we see the characteristics of Nimrod’s kingdom.  He had:

A city.  This becomes Babylon the great, Rev 17:5, 18:2, 18:10, 18:16, 18:18-19, 18:21.  Our city is New Jerusalem.

A tower.  Is 23:13, “Behold the land of the Chaldeans; this people was not, till the Assyrian founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness: they set up the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof; and he brought it to ruin”.  Zeph 3:6 towers are typical in cities.  They represent preeminence, strength (Deut 1:28), and defense.  Our tower is the Lord, 2 Sam 22:3

A name. The antichrist has a name by which people buy and sell in the Tribulation, Rev 13:17.  The name identifies them with the group, those who are included in the “community”.  We are Christians.  The name brings you into unity with the others in the group.  Notice in Gen 11:6 “the people is ‘one’”.

To overthrow Nimrod’s plot, the Lord scattered the people. God is a divider; the devil is a unifier.  Study Deut 32:8; Acts 17:26-27 carefully.  They built the city and tower, and came up with a name to keep from being scattered.

The Lord said, in Gen 11:6, “now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do”.  The more we go beyond the restraints of God, the further we get from God.  The global economy, NAFTA, world-wide use of the English language, and so forth put us right back where the world was in Nimrod’s day.  These are ripe conditions for the antichrist.

Babel, instead of meaning “the gate of God”, now means “confusion”, because God confused the languages there.  We use the word “babble” meaning “to utter meaningless or unintelligible sounds”.  Babel, Babylon, Baal, Belial, Baalam, and Balak, all have bad connotations. God simply scattered the people by confounding the languages.

To remedy the language problem when God wanted the gospel to be preached in all the world, he gave the apostles the gift of tongues.  And then he scattered the disciples.  Today we send missionaries to reach the nations.

But when the antichrist rises to power, God will bring the nations together again in an attack on Jerusalem, so that he can destroy them, Zeph 3:8.

To study the prior lesson in this series, see Noah Condemned the World. To study the next lesson, see Why God Chose Abraham.