It is one of the grandest epics of the Bible – a story shrouded in such mystery that thousands of years later, archaeologists, historians, theologians and linguists are only beginning to understand its true significance.

On the Plain of Shinar in ancient Babylon (modern-day Iraq), the scientific and theological elite of that day gathered together to put the finishing touches on the Empire State Building or the Space Shuttle of that era – the fabled and legendary Tower of Babel.

Though their faces may have been colored black, white, brown, yellow and red, these engineers, astronomers and spiritualists were of one mind. They had channeled their social energy into constructing what the Bible calls "a tower that would reach unto heaven."

Yet due to divine intervention, their plans would not succeed. As the account authored by Moses in Genesis tells it, God struck the legions with a sudden jolt from the blue. In an instant, the masses were unable to understand or communicate with one another in a single language. Construction of the Tower – most likely an astrological observatory called a ziggurat – came to an abrupt halt.

In due course, all of the world's population then began to scatter to the four corners of the earth. And the global language of Babel was diffused into ten thousand different tongues – most of them never developed an alphabet.

Considering the magnitude of this judgment, and its ensuing effect on mankind, the Bible has precious little to say about the reason for God's intervention concerning man's mono-lingualism. God gives the scant and simple answer: "Soon they (mankind) will be able to do anything."

In this first year of the third millennium, despite God's intervention at Babel, mankind does indeed seem to "be able to do anything." The pyramids, voyages of Columbus and Magellan, vaccines of Jonas Salk and the Burma road have given way to cloning, genetic engineering, organ transplants, space flight and perhaps colonization of other planets.

Fueling these bold and maverick initiatives is the use of English as a global language. It is no small accident that this transformation is occurring in this present age. The great British industrialist Cecil Rhodes founded his own nation of Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), and sought to build a united, British-controlled Africa from Cape Town to Cairo. Rhodes believed this new nation would rival the U.S. in power and influence.

More importantly, Rhodes worked tirelessly to create a "world federation of English-speaking peoples" controlled by an Anglo-American corporate elite.

As Rhodes' ideals near fruition, the study and use of English is once again channeling the diverse thoughts, talents and energies of the world's population into a single language and world view, just as a single language did in the ancient days of Babel.

"The Romans had their roads and the Latin alphabet, the British their ships and Anglophile ideas," says Loyal Gould, the retired head of Baylor University's department of journalism. Dr. Gould earned his Ph.D. in applied linguistics at the University of North Carolina.

"Today, English is increasingly being used as a force for the linguistic and cultural colonization of the world by the transnational powerbrokers."

The Global language tree

Linguists today can trace all of the world's languages back to three major branches of what is known as the "language tree." Evidence of an ancient universal language is not difficult to find. Examples of diverse linguistic similarities in diverse languages and cultures are legion.

For example, the word for "stupid" in Spanish is "bobo." On the other side of the world in Korea, the word for "stupid" is "babo." Many scholars today link modern Korean with some northern and eastern European languages.

Culturally, the story of Noah's Ark can be found in the Indian Epic of Giglamesh, the Greek scholarly writings and in both American Indian and Aboriginal folklore. How did these scattered and isolated cultures all develop the Ark legend unless all mankind at Babel once shared in them?

One of the three linguistic branches – the Indo-European – has emerged as the pre-eminent facilitator of global commerce.

"Our students need to speak English," says Professor Sue Kap Yun of Hanyang Women's University in Seoul, South Korea.

"Many of them want to be airline stewardesses or travel agents, and the ability to speak English is their ticket to success in the global economy."

Karen Macey, a Canadian teacher of English as a Second Language, or ESL, who worked in Mexico and South Korea, echoes Yun's sentiments.

"In Mexico, I taught ESL to Mexican workers at their companies in the early morning hours and after work. English was seen as the single most important key to their advancement within the company," says Macey.

"It was mind-boggling to see grown men break down and cry if they failed an English test or didn't make it to a higher level. It meant that they could lose their job and the means to support their families – that's how brutally competitive it was."

The total number of languages spoken in the world today is just over 6,000 – down from the aforementioned peak of 10,000 at the height of the Babel Diaspora. By the year 2100, that number will have dwindled to 3,000 – most of them minor tongues spoken by a relative handful of tribes and peoples. As the global drive to learn English eats up those remaining languages, it will also consume many or all of the aspects of those cultures.

Some of the changes will no doubt be positive – the elimination of female genital mutilation in Kenya is one example. Just as the British eliminated the practice of Sutee in India (a Hindu ritual in which a widow would burn herself alive on her husband's funeral pyre), had Kenya remained a British colony, female genital mutilation likely would have been outlawed.

Other cultures such as the bushman of Northern Namibia, who have no words for greed or jealousy, will be adversely affected. Additionally, numerous oral traditions will be lost forever. Some smaller tribes, like the Hmong of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, have only recently developed a Romanized alphabetic version of their tongue to spare them from such a fate. "It would behoove the West to acknowledge that our victory in World War II was greatly aided by the Navajo code talkers," says Gould. "The Japanese couldn't break the code because Navajo was so obscure."

Liberty, equality, fraternity

Today English is spoken by 20 percent of the world's population as a primary or secondary language. It may be fairly argued that the English language is one of the pillars of the growing might of the British Commonwealth.

Some nations, like Nigeria and Singapore, are developing versions of English that cannot be understood outside of their respective nations. Yet the grand quest to envelop the world in a single language marches on – and not without a plethora of contrasts, contradictions, blunders and even tragedy.

The widespread use of English has helped the earth's peoples to better communicate and help one another. Travelers, brain surgeons and rescue workers, for example, can facilitate their knowledge, goals and needs in an easier fashion.

In South Africa, former President Nelson Mandela and the ANC long encouraged the black cadres to burn down their schools and forego Afrikaans (a mixture of Dutch and German), as the "language of the oppressor." Yet in his 1994 inaugural address, Mandela recanted and spoke in Afrikaans, as it was the only language all of South Africa's peoples could understand.

In Somalia, the inability of a kaleidoscope of U.N. intervention forces to communicate in English tragically led to the death of several U.S. Delta Force Special Forces servicemen and the subsequent dragging of their bodies through the streets in Mogadishu in full view of the vaunted "global community." This sad event led directly to the scuttling of the entire foreign expedition in Somalia.

In South Korea, the government has outlawed the private tutoring of Korean nationals by Westerners (lessons which often cost $20-50 per hour), because Korean families were willing to spend almost 90 percent of their disposable income on ESL lessons. Contrast this phenomenon with some Hispanics in the U.S. who refuse to learn English and wish to make Spanish an official language in America.

Pretenders and competitors

"But why the English language?" many wonder. Why not the French or Chinese languages? After all, China is the most populated nation on the planet and will boast the world's No. 1 economy by the year 2025, according to economic forecasts.

The answers to this question are as varied and complex as the gorgeous mosaic of peoples that make up the world's population.

The first answer may lay in the decline and ascent of the British and American empires – two overlapping empires that shared the same linguistic and cultural heritage and were guided by Rhodes' vision for an English-speaking planet.

Secondly, the French language, once the primary language of diplomacy in Africa and the Middle East has radically declined, along with the fortunes of the French Empire itself. At the La Francophone summit held this past August in New Brunswick, Canada under the guise of former U.N. Secretary General Boutros-Boutros Gali, French-speaking nations as diverse as Haiti, Laos, Cambodia, Congo and even Louisiana and Quebec were unable to form a coherent agenda. Most of those states had long given up any idea of a cultural identity with French culture. Furthermore, the widespread use and study of ESL in their respective countries had undercut their dreams of a Francophone renaissance at home.

"It is no accident that the French-speaking nations in the Third World are among the poorest on earth," adds Yun. "English is the language of the future."

The exclusion from global English also affects the economic well-being of non-French colonials. For example, the poor, but oil-rich nation of Azerbaijan, a former Soviet-Republic, has only a $500 per capita income, according to the U.S. State Department.

"Azerbaijan is unable to harvest its vast oil wealth and join the global economy because Stalin forced them to change their alphabet not once but twice," says Gould. "This was done in response to Azerbaijan's alliances with Persia (modern Iran) and then Turkey."

Today, Azerbaijan is caught somewhere between Arabic, Cyrillic (the Russian alphabet) and Latin. The confusion over the three alphabets has hurt the development of English-language skills in that troubled nation.

Thirdly, English has become a giant black hole of sorts, sucking up a pantheon of words from other languages – "commando" from Afrikaans; "Sputnik" from Russian; Vermont, or "the green mountains," and Detroit, "The three" (Great Lakes) from French; San Diego, or "Saint James," and Corpus Christi or "Body of Christ" from Spanish.

Latin words from the Pax Romana, the progenitor of the black hole of English and the Romance languages within European culture itself, are still with us.

"Veni, vidi, vici," or "I came, I saw, I conquered." "In hoc signo vinces," or "In this sign you will conquer," was the message given to the Roman Gen. Constantine in the form of a burning cross above the sun prior to his Christian conversion. Even the term "et cetera" finds its roots in Latin.

It is the English language that is the giant dumping ground for the words of other tongues and cultures. And as the West leads the world into most new technologies, the terminology of those scientific advances will be spread in English to the Third World.

Why not Chinese?

As for the inability of the Chinese language to make inroads into global commerce and culture, the reason is simple: Chinese is the only language in the world that utilizes a writing system in which individual words are represented by individual characters.

Chinese rulers in the third century B.C. combined eight separate languages and innumerable dialects into a single, unifying tongue. This accounts for the thousands of characters in Chinese, as opposed to 26 letters in the Roman alphabet.

"Chinese characters are extremely complex," says Yun. "They might take on a whole different meaning when combined together than when they are used alone."

Today, most Korean students study Chinese characters in addition to English – as they are a large part of Korea's culture and heritage. (China dominated and controlled Korea for many years in its history.) For example, the popular Korean girl's name "Mi Song," or "Beautiful Star," is really Chinese. The Korean word for "star" is "byul." So while Korean parents may spend a fortune for private English lessons for their children, they still defer to the Chinese cultural link when naming them.

Crazy English

While working as an ESL teacher less than two years ago in the People's Republic of China's Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong, this writer had the opportunity to attend a performance of Li Yang, China's preeminent ESL teacher.

"She's as fine as frog's hair!" shouted one of Li devotees, as Li called out to a rowdy throng of 3,000 young Chinese grammar school students who crammed into a large mainland gymnasium to hear his boisterous ESL presentation.

"Don't worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon," another student then yelled at the top of his lungs. The students then shouted the phrases back at Li and each other in unison.

Li is more of a Tony Roberts motivational speaker than a pure ESL teacher, but his methods and philosophies are helping to sweep mainland China into the ESL global dynamic.

Li's method is called "Crazy English," and the charismatic 30-year-old, ex-radio disk jockey has transformed himself into an Anglo-Sino linguistic colonizer all his own.

"When President Clinton came to China last year, he appeared on a national radio show," Li tells the audience. "He made a brief speech, played some music, then gave away sensitive satellite technology to the 13th caller."

"He gave away satellite technology to the 13th caller," the students shout back.

Li's company, Stone-Clitz, has blossomed through Crazy English and turned its founder into a millionaire. Crazy English seminars, books and audiotapes are in huge demand, as is Li himself.

For Li, learning English as a college student was so difficult that he actually began to hate himself.

"I was tofu scum, unworthy to eat even jellyfish," he said in an interview with WorldNetDaily.

Then one day, Li ran to the roof of a university building on his campus and began to shout out his English lessons at the top of his lungs. Soon afterwards, he claims, his grades radically improved – and a new movement in ESL was born.

Li believes that the total mastery of English is the fundamental ingredient to making China the world's most powerful nation. Pride in China's vast heritage and increasing the self-image of his students are also vital ingredients in his lectures.

Speaking in Mandarin, Li tells the 3,000-strong crowd that "China has the world's best chefs, but people only know Burger King and Pepsi." China has the world's greatest military strategist – Sun Tzu, but "people only know G.I. Joe and G.I. Jane," he laments.

"You must learn English; it is your patriotic duty. Then master foreign technologies and marketing philosophies," Li urges the students. "In this way China can defeat all foreign competition."

During a question and answer session with the crowd, one student told Li that he hated the Japanese for their rape and occupation of the mainland prior to World War II. The student then said he didn't want to study Japanese because of this hatred.

"If you really hate the Japanese, then you will learn their language," Li told the student and the crowd. "If you really want revenge against Japan, then master their language."

As for the growing anti-American sentiment in China against America and the West following the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Serbia, Li refuses to urge any of his students to hate or seek revenge by learning English. But learn English they do, in leaps and bounds by the hundreds of millions.

The teachers

Another question behind the multi-billion dollar global ESL mania is, "Just who is doing the teaching of English in non-Western countries?" The answer, it seems, is just about every Yank, Brit, Aussie, Afrikaner or Swede who can't find a decent job in their home country.

"You can save a ton of money working in the Asian Tiger countries," says Canadian ESL teacher Marcus Dolman, who taught ESL in South Korea for a year.

"My health really suffered with the pollution and crowds in Seoul, not to mention the mental stress of being on the verge of nuclear war with North Korea every day. But it beat working at Taco Bell."

Many of the expatriate ESL teachers find their jobs on Dave Sperling's ESL Caf? Internet site, the largest ESL marketplace on the World Wide Web. Sperling lists new ESL teaching positions each and every day – jobs stretching from France to Fiji, from Morocco to Mexico.

"The demand for native-speaking ESL teachers is a significant phenomenon in the 1990s," says Sperling. "As is the willingness of Westerners to travel overseas to find teaching jobs."

What these ESL mercenaries find abroad ranges from financial splendor to economic ruin, a healthy tan in Indonesia or pneumonia in Nagano. Propelled by a desire to escape a future of fast-food restaurant work, the expatriot ESL teacher often endures all types of hardships and even homesickness for the almighty dollar.

No simple language

Make no mistake; English is among the most complex of languages. Don't be fooled by the fact that Homer Simpson's "Doh!" was added to the dictionary. With English, boxing rings are square, quicksand will kill you slowly, and you drive on a parkway while parking on a driveway. As such, it is easy to see that English was not invented by computers.

A recent study found that dyslexia is most prevalent among English speakers. Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability affecting millions worldwide. About 7 percent of Americans suffer from dyslexia, which interferes with one's ability to read, despite often superior motivation and intellect on the part of the reader.

Using a technique that measures brain activity by tracking blood-flow changes, an international team of researchers who studied adult dyslexics in the UK, France and Italy found that dyslexia is neurologically universal across cultures.

However, the study, undertaken by Dr. Eraldo Paulesu of the University of Milan, found that dyslexia manifests itself in different ways, depending on the regularity of a particular language's writing system. The study showed that dyslexia is most common among English-speaking nations because the writing system is highly complex due to "historical influences on the language."

In English, there are 1,120 ways to represent 40 sounds using different letter combinations. Because of this, linking letters to sounds is very challenging to English learners, particularly those with dyslexia. Add to that the difference between "a red apple," and "Sally read the book." Pairs of words like mint/pint, cough/bough, clove/love and others can only be read properly if the sounds have been mastered beforehand. After all, a word is merely a reflection of sounds, meanings and rules.

In contrast, Italian, which is simpler than English and uses a system that is derived closely from Latin, is far less complex. In Italy, only 3.5 percent of the population is dyslexic. In the Italian language, there are only 33 letter combinations which represent 25 sounds.

Regular and irregular verbs are also extremely difficult for English learners. Regular verbs like climb and talk are easily put in past tense as "Yesterday I climbed" and "Yesterday I talked with my neighbor." However, other newer verbs like "diss," and "spam" are usually instinctively conjugated as regular verbs in the past tense; "He dissed [disrespected] me" and "My e-mail account got spammed." Irregular verbs like think are conjugated in the past tense as "thought," not "thinked." As such, the question we must ask ourselves is why our children constantly revert to the regular verbs when formulating language. "The bad man holded up the bank," or "The duck swimded across the water," are not uncommon utterances from our small English-speaking children. We correct them, of course, but it is an uphill battle.

According to Steven Pinker, a professor at M.I.T. and author of "How the Mind Works," "Many irregulars [irregular verbs] can be traced back over 5,500 years to a mysterious tribe that came to dominate Europe, western Asia and northern India. Its language, Indo-Europea, is the ancestor of Hindi, Persian, Russian, Greek, Latin, Gaelic and English. … That is why forms from Chaucer's time such as chide-chid and writhe-wrothe turned into chied and writhed."

Adds Pinker, "A slip of the child's tongue may link the migrations of great prehistoric tribes to the brain-imaging technologies of the next millennium."

The future of English

Just where all of this ESL mania will lead to is anyone's guess. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel becomes even more of a conundrum when compared to its antithetical New Testament counterpart.

In the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel states that God sent the gift of tongues upon Jesus' followers to enable them to preach the Good News in many different languages around the world.

"If what happened in the Book of Acts is taken literally, it would seem as though God was trying to undo what he had done at Babel," says Yun.

For the foreseeable future, English as a Second Language will continue to spread to the four corners of the world like a wildfire.

English language ability will no doubt continue to be coveted by the peoples of the developing world, China, Europe and the former Soviet Union. The reasons are three-fold. First, it is the gateway to global economic prosperity, and secondly, it is the key to gaining entrance to elite American graduate schools and other cultural institutions such as law, medicine and the arts. Third, English is the language of computers and the digital world.

Since words fire the imagination – towards hatred like Hitler, or to fight for one's freedom like Moses, William Wallace or Martin Luther King – he who would attempt to control the emerging global culture through ESL would also gain access to the minds of all ESL students.

How this tremendous linguistic current of history is directed will perhaps be the key to mankind's future. A future in which mankind – if left unchecked in his new global allegiance – might one day soon be able to defy God by recreating Babel, and indeed "be able to do anything."

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This story originally appeared in WorldNet magazine. To subscribe to WorldNet, go to WorldNetDaily's online store.