Chapter 8 to 9: God's covenant with Noah
Noah and his family spent about a year in the ark. It was only after 1 year and 10 days that Lord told Noah he can come out. Noah immediately acknowledged the salvation of God.
God then made a covenant with Noah.
"I will never again curse the ground because of man, neither will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done; even though the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. This is a covenant between me and all flesh that is upon the earth."
God even told Noah that the rainbow should remind humankind of this everlasting covenant. So if you want to know whether God is real, watch out for the rainbow.
God blessed Noah; "Be fruitful and multiply, and all living things shall fear you. Every thing that moves shall be food for you, only you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood."
God did not ask for much in return. Not like you must worship me every hour of the day, and give me everything you have, since I saved your life. God only asked that we do not kill each other. He established blood as a symbol of life to all humankind. So blood is an out-of-bound (OB) marker, as food. We must respect it to remind ourselves that you cannot take another person's life.
QUESTION: Why did God had to exterminate the entire humankind and start again from Noah and his family?
I will ask God for the answer when I see Him. As for now I can think of one. Basically humankind will always suffer from eating the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Humankind will always believe that they can reach God by being able to be good by themselves. Even today all the religions of the world, other than Christianity, proclaimed that God will judge a person on how perfect the person is.
Some believed that If you were not perfect your karma will return to try again. The wheel of life will spin for you once again. To this I can only say that no matter how many times you are spun in the wheel of life, you can never attain perfection. More over my Bible says, "Every one was born only once, and must then die, after that comes the judgment". No one can ever come back to have another go.
Any way no one can prove or disprove the truth about karma, so it would be wiser to err on the side of caution. I do not believe that those who taught karma, are against believing in God and His salvation.
Others believed that God will weigh your goodness against your evil and admit you into His presence accordingly. To these people my Bible says that heaven is perfect and it will not want to import pettish squabbles from this earth to spoil it. Normally those who believed that they were more civilized as compared to the rascals around them, are the most troublesome people to have around. Wars fought in the name of good over evil, were often the most destructive.
The God of the Bible says that you can only be admitted into the presence of God if you were perfect, not just good. In heaven every one happily and willingly submit to the rule of the just and merciful God. Justice and mercy are incompatible until it comes with the love of God. For those who have love for God and of God; the character of give and take is a joy of life.
So God has set out to give humankind all the opportunities needed to find out whether they can achieve perfection by themselves. If the world was so evil, it would not be fair for those who wanted to try. So God wept the slate clean for humankind to have a fresh start. To me that was why God destroyed the world in the days of Noah.
But hold on a minute. What about those who died?
I believed that for those who wanted to trust God, they would have joined Noah to build the ark. He took more than 120 years. Since they chose not to do so, they were just marking time with more evil. So God's action did not deprive them of any thing.
