Everyone today speaks a language, maybe multiple languages. We might learn them from birth, or learn in school, or learn a new language as an adult. But what if we all spoke the same language?
Would that not be great? If we could all understand each other, maybe that would lead to world peace and harmony?
Technology is currently working at bringing us to that point. A universal translator that everyone could use would enable us all to understand whatever a person is saying. Human translators would be out of work though, and there is the possibility that a translator might give you a literal translation but would it be understood in another language?
What if I said that someone’s old man kicked the bucket. Try translating that into Mandarin and see if a Chinese person would understand what you meant. Colloquialisms abound in our modern languages, and can often be hard to translate. Someone’s old man is their father, to kick the bucket means they died.
And we have the Bible in our own languages, many different versions, especially in English. Which is the best version? The most accurate? The best in terms of getting to the real meaning? I cannot recommend any one Bible version as the perfect one to use, it is always best to use multiple versions to get a feel for what was intended in the original inspired Scriptures. I personally tend to use the following: New King James Version, English Standard Version, International Standard Version, Modern English Version, or any other modern translation that explains things well. I do not use archaic versions like the King James Version as it is very inaccurate in places, hard to read, and not based on the oldest Hebrew manuscripts like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
How did we come to have so many different languages though? The Bible tells us what happened, some time after Noah’s Flood, when mankind was building a great tower.
Look at Genesis 11:1–9 (New International Reader’s Version):
“1 The whole world had only one language, and everyone spoke it. 2 They moved to the east and found a broad valley in Babylon. There they made their home.
3 They said to one another, ‘Come on! Let’s make bricks and bake them well.’ They used bricks instead of stones. They used tar to hold the bricks together. 4 Then they said, ‘Come on! Let’s build a city for ourselves. Let’s build a tower that reaches to the sky. We’ll make a name for ourselves. Then we won’t be scattered over the whole earth.’
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 He said, ‘All these people are united and speak the same language. That is why they can do all this. Now they will be able to do anything they plan. 7 Come on! Let us go down and mix up their language. Then they will not be able to understand one other.’
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over the whole earth. And they stopped building the city. 9 There the Lord mixed up the language of the whole world. That’s why the city was called Babel. From there the Lord scattered them over the whole earth.”
They did so in defiance of God, to build what was probably a temple for worshipping demons, or, as some have speculated, something that was designed to open a portal to the spirit world, to free the demons locked up in the Abyss (the Bottomless Pit) and Tartarus — both of which are spiritual prisons where demons are held awaiting judgment. The Book of Revelation tells us that the demons in the Abyss will be released at the right time, but not before.
We read that in Revelation 9:1–3, 11 (NIRV)
“1 The fifth angel blew his trumpet. Then I saw a star that had fallen from the sky to the earth. The star was given the key to the tunnel leading down into a bottomless pit. The pit was called the Abyss. 2 The star opened the Abyss. Then smoke rose up from it like the smoke from a huge furnace. The sun and sky were darkened by the smoke from the Abyss. 3 Out of the smoke came locusts. They came down on the earth. They were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth… 11 Their king was the angel of the Abyss. In the Hebrew language his name is Abaddon. In Greek it is Apollyon. His name means Destroyer.”
This star that fell is also called the Destroyer. This can only refer to Satan the Devil, and the “locusts” that come out of the Abyss are demons. Satan is given the key to open the Abyss, something he cannot do until he is given that key, no matter how hard he tries.
Satan wanted the Tower of Babel to be built, and as mankind had a common language, they would have gone on to do more of what Satan would inspire. God had to stop them from what they were doing, and He did so by confusing the languages. They were all mixed up so that people no longer understood what everyone else was saying.
Up until that point, all people spoke the same language, that which was originally given to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. But what was that language?
We see that God spoke freely to Adam and Eve, and they understood God clearly. They did not have to be taught the language. Which suggests to me that it was already programmed into them. If you understand computers, you understand that they are only as good as the programs running on them, and the data they are using. In each human is our DNA, which is a long code in a format that is far more complex than any language or computer code. Scientists have tried to understand DNA, and so far have only decoded a small part. Some of them then say that the rest of the DNA is junk DNA rather than admit that they cannot understand it.
God programmed our DNA in such a way that every person will naturally grow into the same sort of shape, with legs, arms, a heart, head, eyes, brain, etc. Perhaps God programmed a language into the DNA which is there in all of us, which Adam and Eve automatically knew as it was part of their DNA.
Then, when mankind was building the Tower of Babel, God saw what was happening and had to put a stop to it, so he encrypted that part of the DNA with the original language encoded into it, so no one could use that language any more. He then supernaturally gave people different languages, and they gathered in groups of people they could understand. Those languages given then eventually over thousands of years have developed into the languages we have today.
In the future, after Christ returns, one pure language will be restored to mankind. Perhaps when Christ returns, God will decrypt the original language in all people, so they can all speak that language again.
Read it in Zephaniah 3:9 (NKJV):
“For then I will restore to the peoples a pure language, that they all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one accord.”
The context of that passage is where God prophesies bringing judgment on all the nations, which happens when Christ returns, after the Great Tribulation, and then sets up the Kingdom of God on the Earth.
Animals, Birds, and Babies
Consider that animals all make their own unique noises. Birds have their own unique songs and tweets. If a sparrow sings, it is different to the noise a chicken makes, or how a duck quacks. Each type of bird or animal has its own language programmed into its DNA already, so that it can communicate with others of the same species.
Dogs bark, cats meow, and horses neigh. A dog never meows, neighs, or sings like a bird. They cannot learn the languages of other animals or birds. Humans can learn other languages, such as French, Italian, German, Mandarin, Hebrew, or Greek.
But when human babies are born they make no speech. They can cry, but no words come out of their mouths. When God created Adam and Eve, He spoke to them, they spoke to Him, and they all understood each other. They were created as adults, not as babies. But babies can communicate. They have a sort of baby-language, they can use it to communicate with other babies, but it is a very limited basic language.
This sort of language of babies is probably programmed into our DNA and accessible from birth, but as babies grow up they learn an adult language, like English or German, and speak that instead. The baby language is programmed into us just to get us started. Just as animals and birds have their own languages programmed into them. If a baby bird is separated from its parents and birds of the same species, it will still sing just as it should, it does not need to learn to sing, it is already in the bird’s DNA.
Babies probably do have the original language of Adam in their DNA, but it is encrypted and inaccessible. Although I would think that when Adam and Eve had children, they were not speaking as babies, but took time to figure out how to speak, but the language came naturally as it was programmed into them already.
As mankind advanced, no doubt new words were added to their vocabularies, and the one language was the same throughout. Then the Flood came, and took away most of mankind, so if there had been some variations, those who spoke it were drowned, leaving just Noah and his family, and the pure language that had continued since Adam.
After the Flood this language remained in place, until the Tower of Babel was built, and then God encrypted that language in their DNA, and gave them new languages.
The Future
When Christ returns, that original pure language will be restored to all people, and we shall be able to communicate with anyone, and directly with God the Father and Jesus Christ. Although God understands all human languages anyway, so we do not need to learn a special language to speak to Him.
This article is in part speculation, and I could be wrong about the language in the DNA, but it makes sense, at least for now, as a theory we can work with.