Imagine a toddler who decides they know how to drive a car. Their parent lovingly tells them no, but the toddler stomps their feet and shouts, “I can do it myself!”
If the parent actually lets the toddler grab the steering wheel, the car will crash. The toddler does not have the wisdom or the size to drive.
This is the exact story of human history. The “adversary” is not a spooky monster with horns and a pitchfork. The true adversary is the human ego. It is the pride inside the human mind that looks at God and says, “I do not need to listen to You. I can do it, myself. I am just as capable!“
God is the perfect parent. Instead of just squashing us, He has used history as a giant classroom. He allows humans to try and rule themselves so we can see, over and over again, that our own pride always leads to a crash.
Here is how the human ego has grown, and failed, throughout time. The Scriptures show us a definitive pattern: God repeats these cycles across different periods of history. As the population of the earth multiplies, He allows the scale of human pride to increase so that the consequences of the crash become much more severe and undeniable to everyone.
History on Repeat: The Building of Bigger Cages
1. The Garden of Eden (The First Stomp)
The problem in the Garden of Eden was never really about a piece of fruit. It was about the human mind deciding it wanted to be the boss.
Genesis 3:5: “For Elohim knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be like Elohim, knowing good and evil.”
That was the birth of the ego. Adam and Eve believed the thought that they could decide what was right and wrong without their Creator. They chose human independence. God counseled them to make that choice, and it brought sadness, pain, and thorns into the world. The toddler grabbed the steering wheel.
2. The Tower of Babel (The Collective Ego)
Before there was an Egypt or a Babylon, there was the very first attempt at a unified, global human system. Babel is the purest early example of the collective flesh trying to save itself.
Genesis 11:4: “And they said: Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make for ourselves a name, lest we be scattered over the surface of the entire earth.”
The Lesson: Notice the obsession with self-preservation and legacy (“let us make a name”). They thought they could engineer their way to the heavens and secure their own survival through brick and mortar. God did not even use violence to stop them. He simply scrambled their language. He proved that human unity built on pride is so fragile that it collapses the second communication breaks down.
3. Pharaoh in Egypt (The Playground Bully)
As families grew into nations, that same ego grew bigger. It turned into empires. The king of Egypt, Pharaoh, was a perfect example of the human mind puffed up like a giant balloon. Pharaoh thought he was a literal god. He forced the Israelites to make bricks in the mud to build giant statues of himself.
Exodus 5:2: “Yet Pharaoh said: Who is Yahweh that I should hearken to His voice to send Israel away? I do not know Yahweh, and Israel, also, I shall not send away.”
Pharaoh’s ego was absolute. But God allowed Pharaoh to act so tough just to prove how weak human power really is. The Red Sea swallowed Pharaoh’s massive army in a single moment, proving that the biggest bully on the playground is nothing compared to the Creator.
4. Sennacherib of Assyria (The Direct Challenge)
The Assyrian empire was the ultimate military machine of the ancient world. King Sennacherib brought his massive army to the gates of Jerusalem and sent his commander to wage psychological warfare. He literally stood outside the walls and mocked the idea that Yahweh could save the city, pointing out that no other nation’s gods had stopped the Assyrian war machine.
Isaiah 37:23: “Whom do you reproach and revile? And against Whom do you raise your voice, and lift up your eyes to the height? Against the Holy One of Israel!”
The Lesson: Sennacherib believed his logistics and numbers were absolute truth. God proved that human military might is a vapor. A single angel went into the Assyrian camp and wiped out 185,000 soldiers in one night. Israel did not fire a single arrow. The ego of the world’s greatest general was completely broken by dawn.
5. Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon (The Tower of Blocks)
Hundreds of years later, the human ego tried again. King Nebuchadnezzar built the most beautiful city in the world, filled with golden statues and hanging gardens. One day, he walked on his roof and let his pride take over completely.
Daniel 4:30: “The king is answering and saying: Is not this Babylon the great which I myself have built for the house of the kingdom, by the strength of my might and for the preciousness of my glory?”
He thought he built his tower of blocks all by himself. God immediately showed him the truth. God took away the king’s human understanding. Nebuchadnezzar went out into the fields and ate grass like a cow. God proved that without the Creator holding us together, the smartest human mind is no different than a wild animal.
6. Belshazzar (The Delusion of Invincibility)
This is the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, and his story perfectly captures the arrogant blindness of the human mind right before its destruction. Belshazzar threw a massive party while the Medo-Persian army was literally camped outside his city. He felt so secure behind the massive walls of Babylon that he decided to mock God by drinking wine out of the sacred cups stolen from the Jerusalem temple.
Daniel 5:23: “…yet the El in Whose hand is your breath, and Whose are all your paths, you do not glorify.”
The Lesson: The writing on the wall (“Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin”) was God’s definitive measure of the human ego. Belshazzar was weighed in the balances and found wanting. He thought his military walls made him a god, but he was killed that very night.
7. Herod Agrippa (The Consumed Flesh)
This is a chilling, first-century example of the pattern scaled down to a single, political figure. King Herod gave a brilliant political speech to the people of Tyre and Sidon. The crowd, wanting to flatter him, began shouting that he spoke with the voice of a god and not a man.
Acts 12:23: “Now instantly a messenger of the Lord smites him, because he gives not the glory to God. And, becoming worm-eaten, he expires.”
The Lesson: Herod absorbed the worship instead of rejecting it. He allowed the ego climate to reach its ultimate conclusion in his own mind. God’s response was brutal and deeply symbolic. The man who thought he was a divine, untouchable ruler was immediately consumed by the lowest, most earthly creatures imaginable. It is the ultimate visual of the flesh returning to the dust.
Each of these events acts as a definitive, recorded measure of the exact same truth. Whether it is a global building project like Babel, an arrogant king behind a wall like Belshazzar, a military superpower like Assyria, or a smooth-talking politician like Herod. The human ego always attempts to elevate itself to the throne, and God always pulls the rug out from under it to prove that flesh is entirely bankrupt.
8. The 20th Century (The Dangerous Machine)
The pattern keeps repeating, but it gets bigger and more dangerous every time. In the 1930s and 1940s, a man named Adolf Hitler showed the world what the human ego looks like when it has factories and modern weapons.
His terrible empire did not happen because a ghost possessed him. It happened because the human carnal mind, when left entirely to itself, hates anyone who does not fit its selfish rules. The ego decided it wanted to wipe out the Jewish people completely. But once again, the human plan failed. God used the ashes of that terrible time to bring the nation of Israel back to life, proving that human hatred can never stop God’s promises.
9. The Man of Lawlessness (The Global Cage)
Today, the world is building the biggest “I can do it myself” machine ever.
Instead of turning to God, people want a human leader and super-smart computers to fix the world’s problems. Eventually, a final leader will step up. The Bible calls him the Man of Lawlessness. He is the final result of human pride.
2 Thessalonians 2:4: “…who is opposing and elevating himself over everyone termed a god or an object of veneration, so that he is seated in the temple of God, demonstrating that he himself is God.”
This final system will look like the ultimate rescue. It will use digital money, global tracking, and artificial intelligence to promise everyone safety. But it will just be a giant digital cage. The world will lock itself inside, thinking it finally figured out how to survive without the Creator.
Jeremiah 17:5: “Thus says Yahweh: Cursed is the master who trusts in a human, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart turns away from Yahweh.”
10. The Millennial Rebellion (The Worldwide Treason)
After the Man of Lawlessness is defeated, Jesus Christ will physically rule the earth for 1,000 years. For ten centuries, the world will be a literal utopia. There will be no war, no poverty, and perfect justice. The human ego will be completely locked away. Humans will not be able to blame their bad choices on a broken government or a bad environment, because the environment will be perfect.
But at the end of the 1,000 years, God gives humanity one absolute final test. He takes the lock off the human ego one last time.
Revelation 20:7-8: “And whenever the thousand years should be finished, Satan will be loosed out of his prison. And he will be coming out to deceive all the nations which are in the four corners of the earth…”
The result is terrifying. Even after living in a perfect world with the true King on the throne, the moment the human ego is allowed to breathe, it immediately chooses rebellion. A massive crowd of people decide they still want to rule themselves. They march across the earth to try and overthrow the Kingdom of God.
The Lesson: God allows this final rebellion to prove one ultimate point to the entire universe. The carnal human mind is completely unfixable. Even in a perfect world, the human ego will always choose pride. God stops this final rebellion instantly with fire from heaven. The classroom is officially closed forever.
The Lesson of the Classroom
God is the absolute sovereign over all things.
Isaiah 45:7: “Former of light and Creator of darkness, Maker of good and Creator of evil, I, Yahweh, make all these things.“
God purposely designed this entire classroom, including the ego climate and the empires of evil, for a very specific reason. He created the pride of the flesh to act as the ultimate contrast to His grace. He makes these empires rise and fall to prove, once and for all, that flesh profits absolutely nothing.
Every time humans build a giant tower of pride, it falls over. From Eden, to Egypt, to Babylon, and all the way to the final rebellion at the end of the Millennium, God is patiently letting the carnal mind run out of gas. When the universe finally sees that human independence is a total failure, the old flesh is destroyed forever, and God’s perfect, eternal Kingdom becomes the only reality.