GENESIS AT A GLANCE

Creation to Tower of Babel

Genesis means beginnings. Genesis lays the foundation for the entire Bible.

• Creation. Many believe Genesis was written by Moses. 
• Genesis starts with in the beginning.....
• Creation of the heavens and earth.  God spoke and it happened. God created the universe within a week. 
• God created mankind, male and female.
• Everything that God made was very good.
• God rested on the seventh day. The seventh day becomes the sabbath, a day of rest, Saturday was the day of rest in the Old Testament, however Jesus ressurrection was on the first day of the week, Sunday. 
• Sin. The first human sin by Adam and Even, the fall of mankind. Adam's sin, the first man's sin spread to all men. 'All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.' (Romans 3:23)
• Satan who seeks to spoil God's creation, deceived Eve first. When God questioned Adam, Adam blamed the woman and the woman in turned blamed the serpent, she explained she was tricked. 
• The First prophecy of the cross. Curse of God to the serpent, God prophesied in Genesis 3:15 one day Christ will crush the head of the serpent but the serpent will strike his heel, here we see the crucifixion where Satan and his enemies triumphed but Satan was defeated at the cross as Christ took the punishment for our sin in our behalf. 
• Cain and Abel. (Genesis 4:1-26) Adam's first son was a murderer as he killed his brother Abel because of jealousy. Abel brought the best offering to God as Able sacrificed an animal Cain did not bring the best as he brought some grain.
• The spread of sin and God destroyed mankind with a flood, yet Noah and family found grace in a very wicked world. Noah's ark was huge, about one and a half football fields, approximately 510 feet long and three storeys high, the ark was waterproof with tar, ark was a refuge for Noah and family during God's judgment on mankind. God told Noah to bring animals in pairs.Some Bible scholars believe it took around 120 years for Noah and family to build the Ark, Noah was 600 years old when the flood waters came. The ark was on the waters for 5 months until the waters began to subside. When dry land appeared Noah made a sacrificed to God, this will be a new life for mankind.  Noah died at the age of 950 years. The ark is a picture of the true church, it's a place of refuge and delieverance from God's judgment against a wicked world. 
• Spread of the nations. (Gen 10:1-32)Noah had three sons, Japheth, Ham and Shem. Japheth descendents spread through the territories of Europe. Ham's descendents spread through the territories of Africa and Arabia and it was Shem who received the blessing from Noah, Shem's ancesoster was Abraham, they became the chosen race of God the Israelites. 
• The Tower of Babel. (Gen 11:1-32) The whole world had only one language and sin began to mulitply. Communication is the key to knowledge, successful relationships or if you take the wrong way it can ruin relationships through gossip and slander, when there is sin it will spread like a wild fire. Now sin began to grow at this time, people realized what happened during the flood, so this time to avoid a flood they began to build a huge tower. The Lord saw the danger and confused them with different languages and suddenly people were confused and the Lord scattered them all over the world. The word Babel means confusion, the tower was half built. The word Babylon became a symbolic to anti God and opposite to Jerusalem, the city of God. The last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation shows at the end God destroys Babylon and gives his believers a new Jerusalem.