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A man by the name of Nimrod was a
mighty hunter, and he lived his life in defiance of God. He was a very
powerful leader among the people, and through his influence, the
people began to to build a tower that would be so high it would reach
up into the heavens. In that way, they could run into it and find
safety in case God changed His mind and decided to send another flood
upon the earth ... they did NOT believe God's promise to Noah!
 The
people all spoke the same language, and they found a large section of
flat land in Babylonia on which they decided to build their tower.
They said to one another, "Why don't we
build a city right here that will make us famous, and let us erect a
tower that will reach heaven. We can hide ourselves inside the tower
and the Lord will not be able to scatter us all over the face of the
earth!"
However, the Lord had His own plans for
the people. He did NOT want them all to be together in one place, and
He did not want them all to speak the same language, so He caused
confusion among the men who were working on the tower by making them
speak many different languages. The result was that they couldn't
understand each other. They had to stop building, and they scattered
in many different directions.
They named the tower BABEL, which
means confusion, and, just as they were afraid would happen, the Lord
did scatter them all over the world.
 He
placed them in individual nations and gave each nation its own
language.
Nationalism is God's purpose for
mankind! Although people have been separated by great oceans, high
mountains and hot deserts, they still try to gather together against
the will of God. When people do that, they cause a lot of trouble for
themselves, and God is NOT pleased.
One day, the Lord spoke to a man who
lived in the city of Ur, in the nation of Chaldea, and said to him,
"Abraham, I want you to leave your country and your family, and go to
a land that I will show you. There I will bless you and make a great
nation of you. You will be a blessing to all families in the earth."
The Saviour that was promised to Adam
and Eve would be born in Abraham's family 4,200 years after Abraham
learned to believe God's promise to him, and that is how Abraham would
be a blessing to all families in the earth.
Abraham faced many very difficult tests
for twenty-five years before he truly believed that the Lord would
give him a son from his wife Sarah. By that time, Abraham was 99 years
old and Sarah was 90, and the only way they could have a son would be
by a miracle from the Lord.
The Lord gave a son to them and called
him Isaac. When Isaac was grown, he married a woman by the name of
Rebekah. Twin sons were born to them, and their names were Esau and
Jacob. Only one of the twins was chosen to carry on Abraham's line,
and the Lord chose Jacob.
Jacob had twelve sons, and through
those twelve, the nation of Israel was formed.
There are many interesting stories in
the Bible about each one of those sons, but just one of them stands
out from the rest ... that one was Judah.
From the family of Judah, more than
4,000 years later, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was born in a stable
in the city of Bethlehem. He would live for thirty-three years on the
earth and then die as the only substitute for our sins. God the Father
did not leave him in the grave, but raised Him from the dead and took
Him into heaven.
Jesus is in heaven now, but one day He
will return to this earth in a body that can never die, and He will
rule as King for 1,000 years.
If you have believed that Jesus died
for your sins, you also will go to heaven when you die, and you will
come back to this earth with Him and you will rule with Him when He
returns to rule as King over the whole universe.
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In
our STORY TIME adventure today we will learn that the Lord had His own
plans for all people. We see that hundreds of years passed by
after the flood in Noah's day, and there was a great increase in
population on the earth.