HOPE FOR THE FUTURE

One day Seth was born. He seemed to be special in some way, maybe because his parents’ hearts knew true love and forgiveness. What joy Adam and Eve had as they watched this little one grow and learn how to walk! How carefully they taught him from his early years that God loved them all and would provide a sacrifice for their sins. They finally comprehended that all their children would be sinful even as they were themselves.

Sometimes Seth was naughty and disobedient, but he had a soft heart. He usually listened to his parents, and they could tell he believed what they told him about their creator. He understood that someone must die to pay for their sin. Disobedience was sin, and sin was a terrible thing. There could be no fellowship with God if their hearts were stubborn and proud. So Seth always brought a tender, innocent lamb when he came to worship God.

But some people did not listen. Adam had other children, and many of their descendants became careless about worshiping God. Some refused to believe in God. Anger and hatred filled the earth, not just from the children of Cain who lived far away, but some of Seth’s grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren rejected God. People hurt one another and even killed one another. Evil and violence began to spread across the desert, over the mountains, into faraway lands.

During the nine hundred and sixty years that Adam live continued to live, he passed on to his descendants the message of God’s love and holiness. Each child told the story to their children. Many grandchildren came back with their families to the home farm to meet Adam personally. People knew that Adam and Eve had disobeyed God in the garden of Eden. Some people tried to find the garden again, but it was lost forever.

From Adam’s teaching they realized that all people were sinners. But Adam assured them that someday God would provide a perfect, innocent sacrifice for their sin. They didn’t understand how this could happen or when, but the lamb was a picture of Someone who would come and pay for their sins.

God had explained to Adam and Eve that from the seed of the woman a Savior would come and crush the power of the disobedient angel Lucifer who had deceived them in the garden. Until then, they had to carefully teach their children how to worship God, the Creator of all.

Hundreds of years later, one of Adam’s descendants preached that judgment was coming upon unbelievers. Enoch was a man of faith, and he knew sin had to be punished. The world had become so wicked that life itself was in jeopardy. Enoch’s teaching was later recorded in the book of Jude. Enoch walked so closely with God that the Lord took him from the earth in a miraculous way, without dying.

God’s people knew that God was merciful. A man of faith would come first to deliver the early believers who had remained faithful to the Lord. That man was Noah. Whatever his name may have meant to people the day he was named, after many years passed his name became synonymous with the word "rest."

Noah was a man of rest, never striving against others but often reminding them gently that God loved them and would provide a way of deliverance from the world of violence and sin that was around them. He didn’t know at first how that deliverance would come, but he believed his Creator and he was ready to listen when God spoke to him.

Now that is another story. But first, what happened to Cain and his family? How did the world become so evil? Wait for the continued story!

-- Rosemary Watson