Chapter 6!
(Leading 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) in the same year that Noah finished building the ark. In the same year, God brought Noah and his entire family into the ark along with all the domestic animals, all the wild animals, the birds of the air, and a few pairs of the wild animals. Then the door of the ark was closed.
God opened the floodgates of the heavens and the fountains of the depths of the earth. It rained on the earth for 40 days and 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 man 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 from perishing in the water.
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. It was because of them that the people started multiplying after the flood.
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 these were pious people. 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. 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. So their cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone.
In later days, the land of Ham, Egypt and Canaan, where 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 pious and blessed them. The descendants of both of them were godly and blessed. Though the descendants of both of them - Japheth and Sahem were godly, 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 bron as a man as a woman's seed (virgin's womb). He wanted to take upon Himself the sin of the entire human race and make the whole world a pious offspring. Yes, 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. Man started resorting to shortcuts to attain godliness.
Idolatry began to enter into the godly life of descendants of Shem. Man forgotten the God who created him and started seeking foreign gods; he made gods for himself. It was at such a time that a devotee named Abraham was born in the 9th generation of Shem's descendants.
