HomeARC ML 0642
"BIBLE IN PICTURES"- Chapter One - MO 1962 GP No.642
"THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN!" and "NOAH AND THE FLOOD !"
(Transcribed, Edited & Prepared by: Beriah & Beth Wire.)
Copyrighted September, 1977 by the Children of God C.P. 748, 00100 Rome, Italy.
We have been studying the Bible in Pictures. We began with the very beginning, with Genesis--the Creation of man. These first ones talk about how the Bible's full of drama and romance, more than any other book that I know of--it's got all kinds of stories, anything you want to find. We found that the story of Creation is there.
1. The beginning was Chaos,
2. But God created a Light.
3. He caused the dry land to appear,
4. The plants to grow,
5. The sun and the moon and the stars,
6. The fish and the fowl--incidentally, which are related to each other, they were both created the same day.
7. Then the animals.
8. Then man.
9. But man was not His crowning creation, it looks like woman was evidently the final creation. Some people seem to think it's the best one He made, certainly the most beautiful--more beautiful than most of us fellas, anyhow.
10. According to this guy who made this particular map here, why, he put the Garden of Eden clear up near Mt.Ararat. I think that's a little off the beam because I'm more inclined to believe that the Garden of Eden was probably right down here at the conjunction of the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The Tigris is called Hiddekel, this one down here. The Euphrates is mentioned as one of the rivers flowing through the Garden of Eden. Well, both of these rivers flow within just a few miles of each other here and join during floodtide. Some of these other tributary rivers were probably the Pison and the Gihon, which are also mentioned as flowing through the Garden of Eden--right in here; right near the site of the Tower of Babel which was built later on.
Therefore this was the Cradle of Civilization--right in this area there and the famous Fertile Crescent, which you studied in secular history. This is Mesopotamia or ancient Iraq. The Fertile Crescent stretched from the Persian Gulf, Ur where Abraham was born up the Euphrates Valley; and down into Canaan, which today is called Israel, on the Mediterranean Sea; on into Egypt--very fertile and still is to this day, if they get water. This was called the Fertile Crescent and it was the Cradle of Civilization, cradle of man, and the most ancient artifacts having to do with man are still being discovered in this particular area--because this is where man began. So science and the artifacts of archaeology merely confirm the Bible, they do not disprove it but are proving it more every day! They used to say there wasn't any place called Ur, but today they've got the whole city uncovered--birth place of Abraham.
So I'm inclined to believe that the Garden of Eden was right in here near Babel, and there's Mt. Ararat where Noah landed in the ark, remember? And that is just to place you in geography. Here's down below us, Africa and over here's Russia and this is Arabia. Over here is Persia and then India. This is Asia Minor which is now Turkey. This is Greece today over in here and on over this way to Europe.
11. Now there's Mt. Ararat and the Euphrates River flowing from Mt. Ararat, and then that beautiful valley below.
12. God put Adam and Eve in the Garden.
13. They sinned against Him, you remember?
14. And were as a result the object of His judgments,
15. And driven out of the Garden.
16. They had two children called Cain and Abel.
17. One of them got jealous and killed his brother. Which one was that?
18. (Cain killed Abel.)
19. He was chased out from the presence of the Lord and all the folks there, for that reason.
20. So that was the first murder, the first great sin and the first great sorrow as a result of the disobedience of Adam and Eve to God's commandments. He'd put them there; He was giving them a choice to do good or evil. Its almost like a great experiment that God is conducting to show the rest of the universe what happens if anyone is allowed to have their own way and go without God. This is the beginning of going without God, instead of going with God--I have a song "Vaya Con Dios", "Go with God". Well this is going without God and this is the result: Murder to begin with and many other things afterward.
21. Well, they began to build cities.
22. They began to learn music and arts and crafts and so on.
23. But they began to learn much wickedness also. They built themselves idols and terrible worship that they had; in fact, they even sacrificed little babies to this horrible god Moloch--cast them into the fire in his belly there.
24. So God was sorry He even made man, He says. But He found one just man upon the earth and who was that? (Noah.) So He told Noah, "I'm going to send a big flood, going to wash off the whole face of the earth and wash it clean; and I just want to save you and your family--you and your wife and your three sons and their wives."
25. So He told Noah exactly how to build a boat.
26. He built it exactly according to the same dimensions that they build big ocean liners today. This one was about three blocks long and about half a block wide and about five stories high, according to the dimensions given in the Bible.
27. It had enough room to house a lot of animals that God told Noah to put in the ark to spare them while they had a big flood.
28. The Flood wiped away all the wicked people--they were annihilated, and God cleansed the face of the earth.
29. Then finally the waters began to abate. Remember how Noah sent out the dove? Finally the dove didn't come back any more because it had found rest for the sole of her foot upon dry land.
30. That ark landed on top of Mt. Ararat. By the way the remains of the ark have been discovered on the top of Mt. Ararat. A number of expeditionary parties have been up there, even taken photographs. There have been five expeditionary parties gone to the top there and explored the ark. Even the ancients used to write that the remains of the were still on top of Mt. Ararat, and that the natives used to go up there and hack off pieces of the wood and use it for charms--they thought it was something lucky or charmed.
Recently the Smith Expedition from the United States wanted to go up there and the Russians objected to the Turkish State Department--so Turkey had to forbid them from going up. They said they were just going up to spy on the Russians--it's right on the Russian border. They could have had a good bird's eye view of Russia and any military activity in Russia from the top of Mt. Ararat--the highest mountain in the Near East, one of the highest mountains in Asia, about 18,000 feet high.
31. So they landed after a year and ten days on the ark and I guess they were glad to get their feet back on dry ground. I guess that's one of the longest voyages anybody ever had-- year and ten days in that ark!
32. Here they are coming out of the ark.
33. The first thing that Noah did was what? He remembered to give thanks and built an altar to the Lord and he sacrificed.
34. What did God do in return? (He sent him a promise.) He put the rainbow in the sky as a sign of His promise that He'd never let the whole world be covered by a flood of water again. Now the world will not be wiped out by water any more; what's it going to be wiped out by next time? Next time it will be a flood of fire by which He purifies the world.
35. The ark landed on top of Mt. Ararat, up here. Then evidently after the Flood the people, the descendants of Noah, drifted down the Euphrates Valley here. The next time we find them they're down here at Babel, where they built a great tower. We're going to have more about that later.
36. Here's another picture of Mt. Ararat's beautiful valley.
37. Noah began to be a husbandman and he grew a vineyard of grapes. This is a winepress where they're pressing out grapes making wine.
38. Noah made wine and he got drunk, sad to say. That was his first mistake, and as a result of this, one of his sons sinned very terribly against him, committed a very vile sin against him--the sin of sodomy. As a result of this, [EDITED: "Ham's"] son Canaan [EDITED: "was"] cursed before the Lord and He said, "A servant of servants shall he be." ... Ham and [EDITED: "most of his"] descendants went down into Egypt and Africa and they are the Africans of today.
39. Here they are making bricks and building buildings and so on--just like I built a little church in Arizona once out of mud and straw. They still do that over yonder in those ancient lands; they probably did it then.
40. Also some made out of stones that they dig up.
41. Here is the city of Zeklah.
42. Noah was buried here in this great big long tomb, over a hundred feet long! That doesn't mean that Noah was over a hundred feet long, but they just built a big beautiful tomb for him there in the city of Zeklah. It's been there thousands of years and probably one of the oldest tombs in the world.
Copyright (c) 1997 by The Family
