Chapter 6 - The Great Flood on Earth
(How to Lead a Life of Godliness?)
God, who wanted to save Noah and his family from the great destruction of the flood, ordered him to make an ark (ship) out of the copra tree. It was the first ship built on the face of the earth. But people laughed at it. They neither repented of their sinful habits nor sought after God who made them.
Noah's grandfather Methuselah also died (969) after Noah finished building the ark. In the same year, God asked Noah and his entire family to get into the ark along with few pairs of every kind of domestic animals, wild animals, and the birds of the air. Then the door of the ark was closed.
God opened the floodgates of heaven and the fountains of the depths of the earth. It rained on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights. All the mountains and all the high peaks above the earth were covered with water.
Because of the flood, everything that lived on the earth, from mankind to animal life, and everything that breathed through the nostrils died. God destroyed the sinful and ungodly world with water. But He kept Noah and his entire family safe during the flood inside the ark.
The Bible says, "The Lord knows how to deliver the godly from temptation and to reserve the ungodly for the day of judgment" (2 Peter 2:9).
Yes, God saved Noah, his wife, his three sons (Shem, Ham, Japheth) and their wives (a total of 8 people) from the great flood that came on earth as a judgment. They came out of the ark after the flood to lead their life on the face of the earth.
After the flood!
After the flood, God blessed Noah and his sons and said: "Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth" (Genesis 9:1). And so their offspring began to multiply on this earth. Noah's firstborn son was Japheth; second son was Shem; and the youngest was Ham.
The first two of three sons of Noah were godly. But there was some kind of ungodliness in Ham, the third son. He was ill-mannered. The sin of homosexual was found in him and in his descendants. So he was cursed by his father. Since then a curse was on his offspring.
One of Ham's sons, Canaan, became the father of many nations. In the descendants of Canaan, the sin of homosexual was found more and more. Due to sin, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where some of the descendants of Canaan lived, were destroyed by fire and brimstone.
In later days, the land of Ham - Egypt and Canaan, where more of the descendants of Ham lived, were judged and destroyed by God. The entire land of Canaan was captured by the descendants of Shem in war and the nation of Israel was formed.
Descendant of Shem!
The Bible says, "The Lord has chosen for himself the godly..." (Psalm 4:3). Therefore, God chose Japheth and Shem, who were godly, and blessed them. The descendants of both of them were godly and blessed. Especially, God chose the offspring of Shem to fullfil his plan of Salvation on earth.
It was in the offspring of Shem, God himself became flesh and born as a man of woman's seed (virgin's womb). He revealed on earth as a man to take upon Himself the sin of the entire human race and to make remission of sins of those who believe in Him. He is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Shem's offspring was chosen by God to be godly and blessed among the people who lived on earth after the flood. As days went by and times changed, true godliness began to decline in that generation as well. Men started resorting to shortcuts to attain godliness.
Idolatry began to enter into the godly life of descendants of Shem. Man forgotten God who created him and started seeking foreign gods; he made gods for himself. It was at such a time that Abraham was born in the 9th generation of Shem's descendants.
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