Thru the Bible

Steve Schwetz: Do you know much about your family background? How far back can you trace your family tree? Well, welcome to *Thru the Bible*. Our teacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee, believes the Bible has a lot to say about where we come from, and as our study of Genesis continues, we see just how personal that story becomes.

You may be surprised to discover that some of our ancestors are clearly identified among the descendants of Noah, and while for others we can only wonder. And speaking of family, we've got a few minutes to hear from members of our *Thru the Bible* family. And Greg, I hear that we've got some really good ones today.

Greg: We do. And of course, it's letter month, so we want to hear from you. You don't have to write a letter; you can send an email, a text, or you could post on Facebook. We're watching and we will hear your story. But you want to start with this great letter from Chris?

Steve Schwetz: "Thank you so much," Chris begins. "My brothers and sisters who keep this wonderful Bible bus on the road. I've been listening through many iterations of the app for more than seven years. God's grace and mercy and truth reassuring me every day. I'm in a marriage with an alcoholic, and I thought I could not stay in it.

With five now grown children, I'm seeing the fruits of some very difficult times between the Lord and me. I've finally resolved not to fight a losing battle against the Creator of the universe and to trust in His provision for each day. For His mercies are new every morning. The world offers no hope for me but God.

He has given me a sweetness even in this struggle. Dr. McGee telling me what God is saying every morning as I start my day has truly taken my focus off myself and let me be prayerful for my brothers and sisters worldwide in far worse conditions. Their stories both humble and encourage me. Thank you, World Prayer Team, and again, all of you for being faithful to the Word. To God alone be the glory. I'll see you all someday."

Greg: Wow, so many wonderful things. First of all, thanks Chris for your honesty. You know, I love it when listeners share their real struggles because we all have struggles. It's not true that any of us sails through life without struggle, and so we're grateful we can be there for you, brother. Now, let's hear from a sister named Sherry in Florida who says this:

"On May 10, 2021, I committed fully to listening to the broadcast every single day and reading my Bible along with the teaching. I am very excited that I have most likely only missed three or four days." Well, a round of applause for Sherry. Well done.

She goes on, "Thank you so much for all the work you do and for letting this teaching be such a blessing. Even though Dr. McGee is not with us anymore, I cannot wait to see him in heaven someday and tell him what wonderful fruit came out of his ministry. I've joined the World Prayer Team, and I love listening to your letters every day. I also enjoy putting a little gas in the Bible bus whenever I can. You will never know how much encouragement you give me."

And we do want to encourage you. It is letter month. Please get in touch with us. You can email us at biblebus@ttb.org, you can find us on Facebook, and you can send a good old-fashioned letter as well.

Steve Schwetz: Leave us a voicemail also at 1-800-65-BIBLE. Greg, let me pray for us as we begin. Heavenly Father, we're thankful for Your faithfulness to us and to the ministry of *Thru the Bible*. We pray that You would bless the program now. In Jesus' name, amen. Now turn to Genesis 10 as we make our way through the Bible with Dr. J. Vernon McGee.

Dr. J. Vernon McGee: Today, friends, we come back to the book of Genesis and we are down to the 10th chapter. But probably I should say a word or two before we leave the ninth chapter because the question always comes up: Why is this recorded about Noah and the sin of Noah?

Well, may I say that if man had written a book, he would have done one of two things. He would have covered it up and made Noah a hero, or else he would have made it a great deal more sordid than it is. But the fact of the matter is that it's recorded for a purpose. It's recorded to let you and me know that God was encouraging the children of Israel in entering the land of Canaan for the very simple reason that there was a curse pronounced upon them, a judgment upon them. And all you have to do is read the rest of the scripture, the Old Testament, and secular history to discover that. Canaanites have pretty much disappeared.

And then these things, we're told, are written for our learning. It's to let you and me know something of the weakness of the flesh, that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. And the Lord Jesus said, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," and Paul made it very clear that no flesh would be justified by keeping the law at all. And Paul in Galatians 2:16 says, "For by the law shall no flesh be justified."

So that what we have here is the story of a man that fell, and it's a story of the weakness of the flesh. Now, we offered an excuse for Noah last time, but frankly, this is the bare facts, getting right down to the nitty-gritty. Noah got drunk. And that raises for us today the real problem. And it may be that you as a Christian do not get drunk, but may I say, maybe you and I are living in the flesh to the extent we're just as displeasing to God as Noah was.

We today have, I think, a wrong conception of life and this universe that we are in. For instance, our nation has spent billions of dollars to put men on the moon, and it's just not a good place to live, it looks like. But nothing is spent on how to live on the earth. And you know that's what God is concerned about, is to train you and me how to live on earth. And so you have this tremendous statement, and there's no curse pronounced upon Ham. The curse is upon Canaan, his son.

And I do not know how much Canaan was involved in this. All we are given is just the record here, and we recognize that Canaan is mentioned for a very definite purpose. But it hasn't anything to do with a curse of color that's put upon any part of the human race. I think that has been one of the sad things that have been said about the black man that is not fair to him at all, and it's not fair to God because He never said that. After all, the first great civilizations were Hamitic civilizations—the Egyptian and the Babylonian.

And we need, I think, to make it very clear. Certainly Noah didn't lose his salvation. I trust that you understand that, that it was an awful thing, and frankly, I see no excuse for it. Now we come to chapter 10, and when we come to chapter 10, we are in this area here where we see the genealogies—actually the families, the origin of the nations of the world.

Now, this chapter 10 is far more important than the attention I'm going to give to it today. Now, I regret that I can't give more attention to it, but we do have to cut corners in certain places. And very frankly, this is a chapter that will only interest certain folks who are interested in ethnology or anthropology and the story of man on the earth.

And I have before me a chart made by a man with his master's degree, who has majored in ethnology, H.S. Miller. And it's a very complicated chart. It shows where all of the races of the world, the different nations, came from. You can find out here where you came from, and you may be sure that the sons of Japheth never are part of the lost tribes of Israel. They just don't get that way, and ethnology would never bear out that type of thing.

That makes this a very interesting chapter. And by the way, this man who got his master's in this field used the 10th chapter of being basic to any study that there is a threefold division of the human family today, three major divisions in ethnology, and revealed in these three sons of Noah: Ham, Shem, and Japheth.

Now we have given to us here in this 10th chapter the genealogies of all three of them. You have Japheth in verses 2 and 5, and then we have those that are given of Ham, verses 6 through 20. And they were the ones outstanding at the very beginning, by the way. And then you have the sons of Shem, verses 21 to 33.

And you find that the same pattern that we've had so far is being followed and it'll be followed right through the Bible for that matter. God gives the rejected line first and a word concerning it, then He drops that subject not to be brought up again, by the way, and then He gives the accepted line, the line that's leading to Christ.

So you have here these threefold division of the human family. Let me read again. "Now these are the generations of the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, Japheth, and unto them were sons born after the flood." The three sons of Noah. And now the sons of Japheth. We have Gomer, Magog, Madai, and all of that.

Now, in this chart that I have before me, if you wanted to follow through in that, you'd find out that the Scythians, the Slavs, Russians, Bulgarians, Bohemians, Polish, Slovaks, Croatians all came from Magog. And then from Madai, the Indians came from that, and the Iranian races: Medes, Persians, Afghans, Kurds.

And then from Javan, why, we have the Greeks, Romans, and the Romance nations: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and so on. Then you have coming from Tiras, the Thracians, the Teutons, the Germans. And from them you have the East Germanic and the European races, the North Germanic or the Scandinavian, and the West Germanic. And from them the High German, the Low German, the Angles and the Saxons and the Jutes, the Anglo-Saxon race, the English people.

May I say to you, this is a tremendously interesting chart, and I wish that it was possible for us to send it out, but we have no supervision over that chart at all and I'd get in trouble if I attempted to send it out. But it is extremely interesting.

And then you have the sons of Ham given here, and we begin in the sons of Ham: Cush, Mizraim, and Phut and Canaan. Now, you see, there were other sons of Ham, but the curse only went upon Canaan. Why didn't it go upon the others? I'm not prepared to say. I recognize there are others that can give you the whole thing. Now from Cush there came the Ethiopians.

And may I say that actually from the Canaanites, you get the Phoenicians and the Hittites and the Jebusites and the Amorites, the Girgashites, Hivites, and all the other electric lights, too, by the way. But frankly, you find that the Africans came from Cush and the Ethiopians, Mizraim the Egyptians, and the Libyans, you see.

So that all of these races, they were Hamitic if you please. This is a tremendous division. And then we have the story here of Cush begat Nimrod. He became a mighty one in the earth. And mighty actually what this man wanted, he wanted to become, if you please, the ruler of a great world empire. That's exactly what the man was interested in. He wanted to become a great world ruler.

And we find that he attempted to do it. We are told here he was a mighty hunter before the Lord. Wherefore it said, "Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord." And he's not a wild game hunter. Sometimes they give a boy a little air gun, he goes out and shoots a sparrow, and when he comes in, why, they say, "My, look, he's a little Nimrod. He hit a sparrow."

But actually, Nimrod wasn't shooting sparrows or hunting wild game in Africa. He was a hunter of men's souls. That's the thought here. "Wherefore it said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord." And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel and Erech and Accad and Calneh in the land of Shinar. Those great cities that were there. He's the founder of them.

Now, he has quite a story that you pick up in secular history. Hislop in his book *The Two Babylons* gives the background, which I'm not going to enter into today at all, but it's a very fascinating story of how Nimrod actually is responsible, I think, for the Tower of Babel, for he attempted to bring together the human race after the flood in an effort to get them united in a race or in a nation where he could become a great world ruler.

He was the founder of Babel. He's a rebel, hunter of the souls of men. He's the lawless one, and he's a shadow and a type of the last world ruler, Antichrist, who is to come. And this is the man that is before us here. I don't care to enter into more detail concerning him. The first great civilization came, therefore, out from the sons of Ham.

We need to recognize that. It's so easy today to fall into the old pattern. We were taught that in school, let's face it, a few years ago. Now, the black man today is wanting more study given of his race. I don't blame him. I don't think probably he's been given an opportunity in the past couple hundred years. But if you want to know the story of the black man, the story of his beginning, he just happened to head up the two great civilizations, the first two that appeared on this earth. They were sons of Ham.

And that's important to see. Nimrod was a son of Ham. And then we're told as we go on down in this, and I'm not going to attempt to develop that line at all, but in verse 21, we are told unto Shem. Now we are given the line that's going to lead to Abraham and then to the nation Israel and to the coming of Christ into the world. This is the pattern of the Holy Spirit. He gives the rejected line first, he drops it, then he picks up the other.

Now we're going to follow this line, which is a very important thing to note. And God is bidding goodbye to the rest of humanity for the time being because He's coming back after them later on. Saphir in his book—and I want to quote him now—this is one of the most remarkable statements concerning the 10th chapter of Genesis.

Let me read it. "The 10th chapter of Genesis is a very remarkable chapter. Before God leaves, as it were, the nations to themselves and begins to deal with Israel, His chosen people, from Abraham downward, He takes a loving farewell of all the nations of the earth. As much as to say, 'I'm leaving you for a while, but I love you. I have created you. I have ordered all your future,' and their different genealogies are traced.

That is the picture we have before us. Now in this chapter, 70 nations are listed. 14 of them from Japheth. 30 of them came from Ham. Don't forget that. I'd give you a different conception today of the black man at his beginning. Now I do want to say this, and I should add, I think that 26 nations from Shem. So you have 70 nations that are listed here.

It would seem to me that God has done this. Why has the white man in our day been so prominent? Well, I'll tell you why. Because at the beginning it was the black man, the colored races. Then you have the sons of Shem during the time of David; they made a tremendous impact upon this world. And you'll notice that from Shem, there came others—actually the Syrians, not the Chaldeans, I disagree with that, but there came the Lydians and not the Assyrians, but Syrians.

And the Armenians, and you find that from them came the Arabians from Joktan. And you find several of these great nations. Now they appeared next. Now we are in that period, apparently, where the white man has come to the front. I think that all three are demonstrating that regardless of whether it's a son of Ham, Shem, or Japheth, they are incapable of ruling this world. And that's what God is demonstrating, I believe. And to see this is a tremendous thing.

Now you have in the sons of Shem one that is mentioned that a great deal is made of, and that's in verse 25. and I must mention it to pass on. "And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan."

Now, when I went over this before, I received all sorts of weird interpretations of what it meant the earth was divided. And that it speaks actually that there's a physical division here in the earth, that the earth had some tremendous physical catastrophe that took place. Well, frankly, all in the world that Moses is saying here, friends, he's anticipating the next chapter in which he's going to give the Tower of Babel.

That was the time the earth was divided. And may I say that a simple interpretation just seems to be the one that a great many miss, and we ought not to. Now I drop down to pick up the last verse, verse 32 of this chapter. "These are the families of the sons of Noah, after their generations, in their nations: and by these were the nations divided in the earth after the flood."

And I want to submit to you that this is one of the great chapters of the Bible. And yet we spent less time with it than any other. But you can see what a rich study this would make for anyone who really wanted to take not a biased, but a fair appraisal of the human family. This has been a very remarkable chapter and a great many have used it.

Now we come to the 11th chapter, and we come here to what I sometimes have called the greatest tongue movement on record, and that was the Tower of Babel. And now let's move down in this because I won't get very far, but I will get a little ways. "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." Now I do not know what language they spoke at that time.

A friend of mine, a fellow Texan, a preacher in Texas, he told me, he said, "You and I probably are the only two that really know what they spoke before the Tower of Babel, and that was Texan." Well, I'll be honest with you, since then I've come to the conclusion it could have been something else. But what the language was, I don't know.

And I believe whatever that language was, will be the language that will be spoken in heaven. I think it's going to be a much better language than we have today. They'll have better nouns and verbs and adverbs and adjectives. Now will you notice. "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east."

Apparently man was moving toward the west. "That they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there." Now that is in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. "And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar."

Well, down in that area there's no stone, and so they made brick. And that in and of itself reveals something about the building. It's not, shall I say, a sort of a phony building. Well, according to that then, practically all the buildings in our cities today are that way, made of brick, and that's the type of building material I guess that's more popular than any other kind today. And yet the brick was used there because of the practicality of it. It was a necessity.

Now notice what they did. "And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth." Now you will notice that I have emphasized that business of "us." They've got a bad case of perpendicular-i-tis. "Let us make us a name."

And this is to be a rallying place for man. I think the sole purpose of this was to be a rallying place for man. And I'm going to go into a great deal more detail next time. But the Tower of Babel was a ziggurat, and the many ruins of them in the Tigris-Euphrates valley. I have a picture of the ruins of the one in Ur of the Chaldees where Abraham lived.

And it was made of brick, solid, and around it was a runway that went to the top. And apparently on top of it was an altar and which in certain instances they offered human sacrifice. Later on to children were offered up in a red-hot idol. All of this was connected with the ziggurat later on.

But at this time they make a tower, and it's to reach to heaven. Now don't get the impression that they're trying to get their feet out of water, they're trying to build above flood stage. That's not even the thought at all. The whole thought is that they're attempting to build something that is a rallying point for man against God. That's what the Tower of Babel was. It was rebellion against Almighty God. Until next time, I believe, may God richly bless you.

Steve Schwetz: To go deeper in your study of God's Word, visit ttb.org. Or for help finding something that you're looking for, just call us. 1-800-65-BIBLE. I'm Steve Schwetz, grateful for your company as together we travel through the Bible.

Our story on the Bible Bus today is just one step in a five-year journey through the entire Word of God. Come along for the ride, and you'll study both the Old Testament and New Testament, discovering God's great redemption story. Is this your story too? I hope so.