PART FIVE OF "I AM: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY"

Noah was the tenth generation of mankind. Just as God knew before creation began that Adam would sin, He knew that man would progressively grow more evil until He had to "put the fear of God in them" (Revelation 13:8). In the first six chapters of Genesis, we see God's image and likeness in man change and become continually evil (Genesis 1:26; 6:5). This pattern repeats itself again and again. God instructs man, man disobeys, God judges man, and God blesses man with new instructions. Man was created innocent of sin, but fell. By the tenth generation, man had fallen so far in sin that God eradicated all but a remnant. He instructed Noah's family to disperse and replenish the earth, but he and his descendants decided to build a huge city to keep from spreading out; so God scattered them (Genesis 9:1; 11:4, 9).

The pattern continued. Ten generations after Noah, when humanity was divided by language groups into nations, God chose Abraham's family to be His people, His nation (Genesis 12:1-3). All Abraham had to do was to dwell in the land that God gave him, but of course true to the nature of man, Abraham and his descendants trusted in Egypt rather than God. Five generations later, his family became slaves to the very people in whom they had trusted (Exodus 1:7-14:30). Four hundred years later, God fed, instructed, and guided Israel in the wilderness of Arabia for the next forty years, a period that would have been much shorter if God didn't wait until all but two who left Egyptian bondage had died (Numbers 26:65).

Moses had also died, but before he did, God inspired him to write the Torah (aka. the Pentateuch, or the Law of Moses). The nation, in its own land at last, was under the Law which was given to reveal man's need for a savior (Galatians 3:19-24). Israel, failing to understand the purpose of the Law, sought to save themselves through legalism rather than admit their need. Over the next fourteen hundred years, Israel repeatedly disobeyed God and was conquered by nation after nation. Again, God judged Israel and took the land from them. Beginning with the Babylonian captivity until this very day, the land God gave Israel has been "shared" with Gentiles.

The Babylonian captivity (c. 600 B.C.) ended with Israel almost immediately becoming the subjects of Medo-Persia, then Greece, then Rome. After rejecting their Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Rome put an end to Israel as a nation with the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in A.D. 70. God's people had repeated the cycle once too many times, with the final straw being the crucifixion of His Son. But that is not the end of the His autobiography, (which will actually never end) because His plan to reveal Himself to his creation is to be continued.