Week A18--history

Memory Date: Noah and the Flood: about 2344 BC

Methuselah lived even longer than Adam, 969 years! He was at the meeting Adam held in Adam-ondi-Ahman, and he was alive when the City of Zion was taken off the earth. He was 187 when one of his sons, Lamech, was born. And he was about 369 when his grandson, Lamech's son, Noah, was born.

Methuselah would have been able to tell Lamech and Noah about Adam's teachings. He would have been able to teach them the words of his father Enoch.

Noah grew up to be a very righteous man, but the rest of the people on earth were becoming so wicked that God told Noah to tell them to repent or they would be destroyed. There were many people, there were many cities, and there were kings and rulers over different parts of the people. They spent a lot of time warring with each other and doing wicked things.

The people would not listen to Noah's preaching. God told Noah to make a large ship, called an ark. Noah's sons Japheth, Shem, and Ham helped. God told them exactly how to make it (for some of the directions, see Genesis 6: 14-16).

When the ark was finished, they had to bring animals of every kind onto the ark. They brought seven of every animal that is good to eat and of all birds; they brought two of every kind that is not good to eat (see Genesis 7:2-3).

Noah and his wife and Japheth, Shem and Ham and their wives went into the ark. Noah was 600 years old at this time. Soon it began to rain, and rain, and rain. It rained for forty days and forty nights. The entire earth was covered with water. The earth was cleaned of all the wicked people, and it was baptized by water like we are (see footnote).

The ark floated for about 150 days, and then the water slowly went down. The ark got caught on the top of a mountain called Ararat, which is believed to be in today's Turkey.

Read Genesis 8:4-22.

As a sign of His promise to never flood the entire earth again, God put a rainbow in the sky (Genesis 9:13).

Noah lived 350 more years, and he watched the population grow from eight people to a small civilization as his sons and their wives had children and grandchildren.



For info. on the flood covering the entire earth, not just parts, see "The Flood and the Tower of Babel" By Donald W. Parry in Jan 1998 Ensign. This article can be accessed at www.lds.org in the gospel library.

This quote is from that article by Brother Parry (see the section "Principles and Lessons for Our Time"):
Latter-day prophets teach that the Flood or the total immersion of the earth in water represents the earth’s required baptism. Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles explained: “Latter-day Saints look upon the earth as a living organism, one which is gloriously filling ‘the measure of its creation.’ They look upon the flood as a baptism of the earth, symbolizing a cleansing of the impurities of the past, and the beginning of a new life. This has been repeatedly taught by the leaders of the Church. The deluge was an immersion of the earth in water.” He writes that the removal of earth’s wicked inhabitants in the Flood represents that which occurs in our own baptism for the remission of sins.



Activities:

Make a paper ark:
http://www.dltk-bible.com/msimpleark.html


Make an ocean in a bottle (add something plastic to be the ark): http://www.activitiesforkids.com/recipe/ocean.htm


Go to a football field and measure out the dimensions of the ark, use 18 inches as a standard for a cubit. A cubit started out meaning from a man's elbow to the tip of his longest finger. (18 inches times number of cubits divided by 12 equals how many feet)