Question:
Why did God separate all the people at the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9), when they seemed to be of one accord? Doesn’t the Lord want all Christians to be together?

Answer:
The people in this story “journeyed from the east,” away from the rising of the sun. They turned away from the land the Lord had placed them in, and sought their own land. Then they builded according to their own concepts and ideas, and not according to God’s direction. “Let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name.” They tried through their own efforts to make a name for themselves. We should seek to make a name for God, and not for ourselves. “The children of men builded,” not the children of God, and the Lord came down to condemn it, not to encourage it.

This is a picture of what men are doing today when they seek to make a name for themselves. God’s judgment separated them by changing their languages at the tower of Babel. But on the day of Pentecost, God overcame the language barrier and caused His good news of “Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21) to be heard in at least seventeen languages. And now every believer in Christ is part of “one” body of Christians. God wants us to exalt Christ by gathering unto Him, and thus showing this “one body” in the way He shows us in His word to gather together. As the Lord tells us: “For where two or three are gathered together unto My name, there am I in the midst of them” (Matthew 18:20).