The Days Of Creation
We are not told when "the beginning" was, and it is useless for us to speculate. We do know that after God created the earth it was "without form and void." How long it remained in this condition we have not been informed. Sometime later, however, God placed the world in its present natural state. On the first day of creation He made light and created day and night. Heaven (called the firmament) was made on the second day. On the following days He made the heavenly bodies and members of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, with each species of plant and animal bringing forth after its kind. Last of all on the sixth day He made man in His own image. On the seventh day God rested from His labor.
The Fall Of Man
God placed the first man, Adam, in a beautiful garden in Eden. Because it was not good for Adam to be alone, God caused a deep sleep to come upon him and from his side He took a rib, from which He made a woman who became Adam's wife. Adam named her Eve because she was the mother of all living. God gave the first couple the responsibility of keeping the garden and placed on them only one prohibition - they could not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. "When you eat of it you will surely die", God told them. (Gen. 2:17) One day, however, the serpent (which was able to talk) told Eve that they would not die if they ate of that tree. This is the first lie recorded in the Bible. Eve believed him, ate some of the fruit and gave some to Adam who also ate. Immediately they knew the difference between right and wrong and hid themselves from God because they realized for the first time that they were naked. This was man's first sin. We are told that "Sin is lawlessness,” (1 John 3:4) and Adam and Eve had transgressed God's law in disobeying His commandment.
Because they sinned, God punished them in several ways. They were cast out of the garden; woman was given the pain of childbearing; man was forced to labor for his food among the thorns and thistles; worst of all, death was brought on mankind. From that day until this, all men, with the exception of Enoch and Elijah, have died physically. Furthermore, spiritual death - eternal separation from God - entered the world on the day that Adam and Eve sinned.
From our parents we inherit the human weakness which in time leads us to sin. But we do not inherit the GUILT of Adam's sin or of our parents'. We are told, "So then, each of us will give an account of Himself to God."(Rom. 14:12) We must answer for the sins we have committed, not those of our forebears. Because of our sin, “we all fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23) and have need of Christ to redeem us from that sin so that we might have an eternal home in heaven. This will be discussed in detail in another lesson.
The first two children born to Adam and Eve were Cain and Abel. One day Cain became angry with his brother and killed him. This was the first murder. For his sin Cain was banished from his people. Adam and Eve had many other children (Gen. 5:4) and undoubtedly they married among themselves to produce the first families. Little is told about the following years except that the number of men on earth greatly multiplied and people forsook God for the ways of sin. In those days men lived to be very old. The oldest man mentioned in the Bible is Methuselah who was 969 years old when he died. Even Adam lived to be 930.
The Flood
The wickedness of man was so grieved God that He decided to destroy him. There was one just man named Noah, whom Peter calls a "preacher of righteousness."(2 Peter 2:5) The Lord resolved to save him and his family. He commanded Noah to build an ark and gave him exact specifications. Noah built the large boat precisely as God had ordered. Just as it was important for Noah to follow the blueprint the Lord gave him, so we today must be sure to follow God's commands exactly as He has given them to us. When the ark was finished, God told Noah to take into it, seven pairs of every clean animal and one pair of every unclean animal. Sometimes people wonder if the ark was big enough to hold every species. Actually, there was plenty of room since the ark was 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and three stories high. (That would be at least 450 feet long and 75 feet wide.)
When all was in readiness Noah, his wife, his three sons (Shem, Ham, and Japheth) and their wives entered the ark and waited there seven days. It began to rain and continued for 40 days, covering the earth with a great flood. Only those in the ark were saved.
Peter, in showing that baptism is essential to salvation, takes Noah as an example when he says, "Who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also..."(1 Peter 3:20, 21)
The water was on the earth for 150 days (Gen. 7:24) before the ark came to rest in the mountains of Ararat. Finally the eight emerged from the ark, a year and then days after the flood began, and offered a sacrifice to God. God promised that never again would He destroy the earth by water and as a seal placed the rainbow in the sky.
The flood ended the Antediluvian Period (before the flood). The time after the flood is known as the Postdiluvian Period.
After the flood, the descendants of Noah were afraid that once again they might be scattered. They resolved to build at Babel a tower which would reach to heaven. This did not please God, so He confounded their language that they might not understand one another. This made them scatter in different directions. The sons of Japheth went north. Most of the peoples of Europe and America are probably descendants of Japheth. Ham's children settled in Canaan and Egypt and other countries in that region while Shem became the father of the Semitic peoples who include the Jews. Jesus Christ was a descendant of Shem. To gain a better understanding of this period, read the first eleven chapters of Genesis.