You are right in saying “the flood carried away the whole world except Noah and his family.” God told Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; behold, I will destroy them with the earth” (Genesis 6:13). God then had Noah build an ark which would hold him and his family (verse 18) and two of every living thing (verses 19-20) along with seven of every clean animal and birds (7:2-3). After the flood came and destroyed all flesh outside of the ark (7:4-24), the waters eventually abated (8:1-3) and God told Noah, “Go out of the ark, you and your family, and your sons and your sons’ wives with you. Bring out with you every living thing of all flesh that is with you: birds and cattle and every creeping thing that creeps on the earth, so that THEY MAY ABOUND ON THE EARTH, AND BE FRUITFUL AND MULTIPLY ON THE EARTH” (verses 15-17). God also told Noah, “Be fruitful and MULTIPLY, and FILL THE EARTH.” If we read through the rest of the Bible, we learn that the human race did indeed multiply over the whole earth, and that all men are descendants of Noah and his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth (see Genesis chapter 10). There is not a word in all of Scripture that would imply that God created “another set of people.” Instead, God chose to replenish the earth by using Noah and his family.

It should be noted that Noah’s sons and their descendants failed to replenish the whole earth and thus we read in chapter 11 that they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, LEST WE BE SCATTERED ABROAD OVER THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH” (verse 4). So, God, according to His purpose to fill the earth, decided to “confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech” (verse 7). Then we read, “So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth” (verse 8). This was the beginning of every language and no doubt resulted in the various nations that make up the world today. It may also have been the beginning of all the races with their ethnic and racial differences. Yet even though there are differences in language and race, all men ARE RELATED through Noah and his three sons. The Apostle Paul spoke these words in Athens, Greece: “And He (God) has made from ONE BLOOD every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings” (Acts 17:26). This simply means that all men and all nations come from a common ancestor. We have traced our origin back to Noah, but in truth we all came from Adam.

Before we close this meditation, it is important to see that ALL MEN ARE ALSO RELATED TO GOD by virtue of Him creating us. Paul went on to say in Acts 17:28, “for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also His offspring.’” This does NOT mean we are all “children of God,” for because we were “born in sin” (Psalm 51:5) we need a spiritual birth for God to be our Father and for us to be His children (please read John 3:1-8 with John 1:12). Therefore Paul also preached to the Athenians “that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him” (verse 27). He went on to say that God “now commands ALL MEN EVERYWHERE TO REPENT, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained.” Dear friend, if you have never repented of your sins and believed on the Lord Jesus Christ (John 3:16), you can do so right now. The Bible says, “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, not is the day of salvation” (Acts 6:2). If you put your trust in Jesus Christ for salvation, you will be saved (Acts 16:31) and you will be born again into God’s family (John 1:12-13; 1st John 3:1). As blessed as we are to be in the “human family,” it is infinitely better to be in the “family of God.”  (DO)  (563.5)