Welcome Dear Readers to this Sunday’s edition of Gregory’s Bible Stories.

Today in Sunday School Gregory learned about Noah’s Ark  and couldn’t help imagining what it must have been like stepping out on dry land after being stuck on the ark for so long.

 When The Ark Disembarked

 

When Noah and his wife and his three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth and their wives and two of every animal on earth had been stuck on the ark together so long  no amount of Febreeze could have helped, Ham looked out the window and saw that all the water was gone, and the ark was  high-centered on Mount Ararat.

The date was January 1, قبل يسوع– wouldn’t you know!  The one day everybody was hung over.

Noah looked outside and saw that even though the sun was so bright it was giving him an even worse headache, the land was still pretty muddy so he made everybody stay inside the ark until the mud was complete gone on February 27, قبل يسوع   because no one had remembered to bring their galoshes.

When Noah was 601 years old. God told Noah  to go ahead and let everybody out of the ark so that they could get started on reproducing and populating the earth again.

Noah decided to keep it to himself that the male and female rats already had 473 kids. Why let the cat (both  male and female) out of the bag?  Noah figured it would just put God in another one of His Destroy-Every-Living-Thing funks.

So to keep God in a good mood, the first thing Noah did when he got outside was build an altar to the Lord using an old boot, some broken pottery and other debris he found on the ground from the Destroying-Every- Living-Thing rubble that was strewn up one side of Mt. Ararat and down the other.

Noah gathered one of each kind of ritually-cleaned animal and bird and burned them whole as a sacrifice to the altar.  Then he took out a bottle of  Noah’s Judgment Day Barbecue Sauce, he managed to smuggle in his robe — and poured it over the top.

The odor of the sacrifice made the Lord’s almighty mouth water!  Then the Lord said to himself (apparently out loud while only the bible was listening): 

“Never again will  I put the earth under a curse because of what man does; I know that from the time he is young his thoughts are evil. Never again will I destroy all living beings as I have done this time  . . . as long as the world exists there will be a time for . . .  etc . . .  etc . . . ” (right about here is where the bible quit listening).

Then God gave Noah a Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down list  for mankind’s behavior since nobody remembered to pack the Ten Commandments.

God’s Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down List for Post-Flood Mankind’s Behavior

Thumbs up to having all the children you can possibly stand! 🙂

Thumbs up to man being the boss of animals! 🙂

Thumbs up to  All You Can Eat Meat and Green Plant buffets. 🙂

Thumbs down to eating meat that still has blood in it. 😦

Thumbs down to killing anybody or everybody like God just did. 😦

Then God promised not to destroy the earth with a flood ever ever again. He didn’t come right out and say He was sorry, but everyone suspected it.

God went on to promise  that  every time a rainbow appeared in the sky, it would mean that God was keeping his promise to never wipe out mankind ever again with a flood so help Him Him.

The bible tells us that Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth were the ancestors of all the people on earth.  Of course, the bible probably would have listed their wives as ancestors too — but they were girls.

After that, everything was going swell in a hand basket for our little group of mankind, that is until Noah had to go and get the bright idea to plant a vineyard . . . and you don’t even want to know what happened next — but Gregory is going to tell you anyway — so check back next week, Dear Readers!

Until next time . . . I love you