UN-CURSABLE (audio)

The conclusion of the HEALING WOUNDED FAMILIES sermon series.  The title of this message is:  UN-CURSABLE.

Listen well and leave a comment.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/   

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 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar. 

Visit the ministry’s website at baileytabernaclecme.org

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Bailey Tabernacle CME Church

P.O. Box 3145 

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35403

THE "CURSE" OF HAM

Blogging Genesis. Part 2 of 2 reblogs for Genesis 10.

I don't present this image as historically accurate.  Frankly it doesn't make biological sense, but it illustrates the traditional perspective.

One of the most diabolical lies read into history and Christianity is the  “Curse of Ham.”

Based on willfully deceptive readings of Genesis chapters 9 & 10, slave traders created a doctrine in which it was God’s will for Africans and their descendants to be enslaved.   

Outside of and inside of the Black community the “Curse of Ham” doctrine still persists.  White preachers still whisper it as a call to save the pitiful Africans. Based on it Black activists try to rewrite our national genealogies.

So let’s just all take a deep breath, and let the Bible speak.

Genesis 9: 20-25, says that after the Great Flood, Noah got drunk and passed out---naked.  (In Noah’s defense, given the stress of watching everybody on the planet die from drowning while being solely responsible for the survival of the human race in the midst of catastrophic climate conditions never before seen on the planet---- getting sloppy drunk once is a little understandable.)

Ham, Noah’s middle child, made fun of his dad to his two brothers.  When Noah woke up and heard about it, he was pissed!  Then he said: “Cursed be Canaan.  A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren.” (Genesis 9: 25)

That’s the curse part.

But do you notice a problem?

An identity problem?

Noah didn’t curse Ham.  Noah cursed CANAAN.

It could have been that Canaan was Ham’s other name, a nickname his dad used when particularly mad--- except that the author of Genesis went out of his way to call Noah’s middle son, Ham, the father of Canaan  (Genesis 9: 22).  Kinda like God wanted to make sure we didn’t confuse Noah’s middle son with Noah’s grandson.

Biblically-speaking, there is no “Curse of Ham.” There is a Curse of Canaan.

Genesis 10:6 says that Ham had 4 sons: Cush, Mizraim [also known as Egypt], Put, and Canaan.

The patriarchs were cousins, and as humanity multiplied and spread, they intermarried and interconnected even more. Nobody today is just one ethnic thing.  But, there are some clear political lines of descent.

Canaan became the patriarch of the Canaanite nations.  You know, all the –ites that Israel displaced when they came into the Promised Land (Genesis 10: 15-19).   The descendants of Cush founded Babylon, Assyria, and the empires of the African interior  (Genesis 10: 7-12).   The African nations most exploited by the Trans-Atlantic slave trade are linked to the line of Cush.  Black Americans are (mainly) descendants of Cush.

So, class, let’s review.

Who made Noah mad?  Ham.

Whom did Noah curse?  Canaan, Ham’s son.

Are African-Americans genealogically linked to Ham? Yes.  Yes, we are.

Are African-Americans from the line of Canaanite nations,  the cursed son of Ham?  NOPE.

God never cursed Black people. Everybody who ever said the enslavement and oppression of Africans and Blacks was God’s will was A LYING LIAR TELLING LIES.

Why would Noah curse the grandson instead of the son who shamed him?  

Noah couldn’t curse Ham.  He didn’t have the authority.

After the Flood waters subsided, God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. (Genesis 9: 1)

Noah’s sons, including Ham, were direct and equal parties with Noah in God’s post-flood covenant.  

Then God spoke to Noah and to his sons with him, saying: “And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you (Genesis 9: 8, 9)

God Himself had personally blessed Ham, and what God blesses no man can curse.

Mad and hungover as Noah was, he couldn’t override God.

There is no Curse on Ham.

O.K., think about it historically.

Racists tried to make the “curse” apply to central and southern Africa, but Ham was also the forefather of Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and other great empires in the region.  There’s no Genesis curse on them.  Revelations, sure; but not Genesis.

And let’s put the last 500 years of African degradation in perspective. That’s 5 centuries out of 10,000 years, or more.  Depending on whose archaeology you believe, human civilization might be 200,000 years old or 3.4 million years old.  Over the vast majority of that span, Africa and the Middle East where the pinnacle of human achievement.  Ham’s kids did pretty darn well for themselves.

Granddaddy Noah’s curse on Canaan was played out when Israel invaded the Promised Land. 

You shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you (Deuteronomy 20: 17)

But even then, while honoring a patriarch’s promise, God exercised His sovereign mercy.

Remember Rahab.  (Joshua chapter 2)

Jesus, the greatest of all Noah’s descendants, was descended from Rahab, a Canaanite hooker.  (Matthew 1: 5-16)

Yes, I just said that Jesus is also a descendant of Ham.

What God blesses no man can curse.

Perhaps the saddest legacy of the so-called curse of Ham is the self-hate it generated.    Generations of African descendants subconsciously absorbed the lie of Ham’s curse.  Some responded with their own lies in self-defense.  They tried to rewrite Africa into an ethnically Hebrew continent.  The tried to cast off Ham as an ancestor and reframe our history as that of Israelites. 

You don’t have to do all of that.

We don’t have to be someone other than who we are.  The descendants of Africans are the descendants of Ham.  We are not cursed.  As far as Noah was concerned, we were un-cursable.

Anyway, that’s what the Bible says.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

DANGER IN THE DESCENT

Blogging Genesis, 1st of 2 reblogs for Genesis chapter 10.

In 2008, a research team from Massachusetts General Hospital performed a comprehensive investigation into specifically why so many climbers die on Mt. Everest. They found that most people who lose their lives on the highest mountain in the world do not actually die climbing up to the peak. They die coming back down.

The Biblical patriarch Noah built the ark. In one of the greatest acts of faith in history, Noah constructed a great wooden ship and saved humanity and the genetic ancestors of all land animals. All this is recorded in Genesis chapters 6-8.

In Genesis 9:21, Noah got drunk.

Sloppy drunk.

Sloppy-took-all-his-clothes-off-and-passed-out-naked drunk.

The hero of humanity shamed himself before his family. Noah’s youngest son Ham made fun of him, and in anger (and no doubt embarrassment) Noah took out his frustration on Ham’s son.  Noah cursed Canaan, providing for Canaan’s descendants to eventually form the pagan nations that rejected God and fought the Israelites (Genesis 10: 15-18).  Noah’s shame led to the generational animosity between Israelites and Canaanites that plagued the Middle East for centuries. 

All because Noah got sloppy drunk.

How could a noble, holy man like Noah let himself fall into such a situation?

He was coming down from a peak.

The high point of Noah’s life was the ark. Comparing Genesis 7: 11 and 8: 14, we realize that Noah and his family were inside the ark for over a year. That year is added to the time it took Noah to build the thing.

Think about the intense focus, planning, and constant effort all of this took. Once the Flood came and the ark was afloat, Noah literally became the head of humanity, the patriarch of the planet. Inside the ark he had to attend to the animals, see to the distribution of provisions, settle disputes, make decisions. There was constant activity.

Until the waters receded.

Then, Noah found himself again on dry land, but it was not land he recognized. The face of the world had changed. Sure, he named his landing site Mt. Ararat, but he couldn’t know relative to the pre-Flood world how far he’d actually floated. On dry land, the animals disbursed and started doing what animals do---without Noah’s direction. On dry land, his sons would have begun talking about building their own houses and going off with their wives to lead their own families. On dry land, without the constant work of the ark Noah would have had time to stop and reflect on the fact that every old friend, relative, and acquaintance he had known was dead.

During the crisis of the flood Noah had been strong. Doing the work of the ark Noah had been steadfast. But when the adrenaline ebbed the strain of the regular routine of just living was too much.

Noah couldn’t handle coming down from the peak.

For some of us, crises are easy. We’re ready to put in extraordinary effort, to rise to tough challenges, to deliver excellence under pressure. We like to push ourselves to conquer new summits of performance. Satan won’t trip us in the middle of a crisis because we are at our spiritual and personal best in tough times.

We, however, are at our weakest after the peak. When extraordinary demands give way to ordinary days we have to be extra careful of our spiritual lives.

Satan will come at us then. He’ll assault our peace and tempt us to escape into whatever is our favorite or habitual distraction. For Noah it was the wine bottle. For others it may be food or sex or conflict or whatever.

If we let Satan trip us after the peak, we may find ourselves doing things that put us to shame before our families and cause problems that linger for years.

Guard yourself after the peaks. Remind your support team to continue & even to intensify prayer for you after the big event is over.

Don’t let yourself be destroyed on the descent from the mountain.

2 Corinthians 2: 11 …for we are not ignorant of [Satan’s] devices.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

EVERYTHING UNDER THE RAINBOW

The most mixed up gospel song ever sung, “Mary Don’t You Weep,” includes the verse:

God gave Noah the rainbow sign
It won’t be water, but fire next time

The lyric refers to the covenant that God re-established with mankind after the Great Flood. In Genesis 9:11-17, God declared that the refraction of light into its component wavelengths of visible colors following atmospheric precipitation, i.e. rainbows, would be the sign for perpetual generations (Genesis 9:12) that God wouldn’t send another globally fatal flood.

The details of the deal are called the Noahic covenant, but that name is a little misleading.  Noah and his descendants  weren’t the only parties to the contract. 

“And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that is with you . . . (Genesis 9:9-10)

The next clause of the covenant  specifically identifies living creature as the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark: every beast of the earth. (Genesis 9:10)

The rainbows that recall God’s promise to mankind also reaffirm Nature’s status in the covenant.  

I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth. (Genesis 9:13)

In the Noahic covenant, Nature is an equal partner with humanity.   In God’s eyes, the Earth isn’t just where humans beings get our food and stuff.   Nature, Earth’s animals and ecosystems, i.e. “the environment,” matters to God (which makes sense, considering God invested 5 ½ of 6 Creation days building it). 

The earth is the Lord’s, and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell therein. (Psalm 24:1)

Don’t forget that the God’s plan of salvation isn’t just a plan to save the souls of people; it is also God’s plan to save the planet --- from us.

From our physically destructive conflicts.

In that day I will make a covenant for them with the beasts of the field, with the birds of the air, and with the creeping things of the ground.

Bow and sword of battle I will shatter from the earth, to make them lie down safely. (Hosea 2:18)

From our general sinfulness.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. . . because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.  (Romans 8: 19-21)

Under a 3-way agreement like the Noahic covenant, each party is responsible to the other two.  God gives us the privilege of dominion as the alpha predators of the planet, but we are uniquely predators who also act as stewards of that which we dominate.

We get that right only SOME of the time.  We consume vegetation, but we cultivate more than we eat.  We don’t just hunt meat; we also raise and multiply herds of meat animals.  So also, we shouldn’t just drink and breathe and extract natural resources for our needs and desires.  We have a covenantal duty to preserve, return, and replenish what we remove from the Earth.

It is all ours to use and it is equally all ours to manage.  The Noahic covenant of Genesis 9 declares that in the end, God expects a increased return on His people and on His planet.  I mean, if He’d wanted the place wrecked and desolate, He would’ve left it like that Himself after the Flood.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

JUSTICE FROM PREDATORS

Blogging the Bible.  Genesis 9:1-7

Noah and his family where he Adams and Eves of the post-Flood world.  God even commissioned them with the same blessing and purpose He’d bestowed on the original pair in Eden. 

So God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. (Genesis 9:1)

But God went ever farther.  Prior to the Flood people had been just one of many species trying to gather and grow enough vegetation to survive.  An intelligent and spiritually conscious species made in the image of God.  But just one of many.  In fact, if you look at the story of the Fall from a slightly different perspective and consider that scripture called the Edenic serpent

“more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God” (Gen. 3:1),  and factor in the implications that the snake was smarter than the people, well then, even allegorically speaking, though humans were NOT at the top of the food chain. Uniquely made in the image of God, yes.  But not the species to be voted most likely to succeed in the nearly prehistoric landscape.

After the Flood, that changed.  Mankind became an apex predator.

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, on every bird of the air, on all that move on the earth, and on all the fish of the sea.  They are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs. (Genesis 9:2,3)

Mankind became THE apex predator.  The tippy top of the global food chain.

But with great power comes great responsibility.

Look at how sin and crime were addressed before the Flood.  Adam and Eve didn’t judge Cain.  God did.  Lamech wasn’t worried about the community punishing for killing a young man.  He expected the same treatment as Cain.  In the antecedent sins the Flood nobody seemed to do anything about everybody doing the worst possible things they could do. If these instances were typical, then God had been the direct and only administrator of justice.  Post-Flood, the Lord delegated that task.

Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed; for in the image of God He made man. (Genesis 9:6)

People must carry out justice among people.  The blessing of dominion over the natural world comes with the responsibility to maintain justice in human society.

And justice isn’t optional.  In verse 5, God requires justice for and from every man.

Genesis 9 declares the death penalty for murder.  The passage doesn’t talk explicitly discuss any other crimes.  Does that mean that it's O.K. to lie, or to steal, or to violate someone's civil rights?  Of course it doesn’t.    The call to justice for the worst crime necessarily assumes righteous adjudication of all “lesser” offenses.  It takes more than executions to create a just community.  But whatever it takes, as the species God placed at the top of the food chain, it is our responsibility to make sure that justice --- actual justice --- is done.

Whether we like it or not.

As Jesus said:  For everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required; and to whom much has been committed, of him they will ask the more. --- Luke 12: 48

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

DOES THAT MAKE SENSE? THE GREAT FLOOD.

 Blogging Genesis.  Chapters 7 & 8

⁴ For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.” (Genesis 7:4)

The Bible says that a long time ago, God made it rain so much that every man, woman, child, bird, and land-based animal who wasn’t inside Noah’s ark drowned.

Does that make sense?

There are over 7 billon people on this people.  How could one rain storm, even one that lasted almost a month and a half,  drown everybody? Wait. In Noah’s time, humans weren’t a global population.  We were a tiny emerging species, just a few generations old.  The descendants of Adam and Eve were only a few thousand people all concentrated in a small geographical area near Eden and Nod, the city Cain founded.    

The 1931 floods of the Yellow River in China killed at least 145,000 people.  Some estimates put the death toll between 3.7 million and 4 million.  A single series of localized flooding could kill millions of people.  In Noah’s time there were only thousands, maybe tens of thousands.

Does that make sense?

The Bible says that the waters rose so high that the mountains were covered  (Genesis 7:20).  But come on. Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world (above sea level) is 60 million years old and 5 ½ miles high.  That’s 5 ½ miles of water  above normal sea level.  Seriously?

Does that make sense?

Noah and his children passed down the story of the Great Flood.  They described what they saw through stories and song, according to the great human oral tradition.  When Moses compiled Genesis into a single book he wrote what Noah and his family had seen.  From the deck of the Ark, they saw the rain fall.  They saw the waters rise and stretch to every horizon.  They saw trees and hills and mountains disappear so far below the waters that the ark could drift for year without running aground. Nothing beyond the ark moved except fish and water.  From the honest perspective of Noah, The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth. (Genesis 7:20, 21). 

Fifteen cubits is something like 7 ½ yards or about two stories.  Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the 2016 flooding of the Mississippi River both provided images of people standing in water waving for helicopters to rescue them from the tippy top of the roof of two and three story homes.

Does that make sense?

Oh, and it didn’t just rain.  Genesis 7:11 says that the along with rain so heavy that is seemed that the bottom had dropped out of the sky (the Bible more poetic says that and the windows of heaven were opened) --- along with that ---  on that day all the fountains (foundations) of the great deep were broken up.  Noah and, thousands of years later, Moses could not have known that the solid land on which they lived was actually a series of continent-sized island floating on an ocean of molten rock.  Nobody knew that until 1912 when Alfred Wegener published his theories on continental drift.  It’s not surprising that people thought Noah and Moses were making stuff up.  For 50 years, “modern” scientists that that the whole idea of continents resting on foundations that periodically shift and break apart were ridiculous.  

When the Great Flood started, rain fell, underground springs and geysers erupted, and the massive supercontinent (like Pangea) broke apart causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions.  Any poor souls not already sealed inside a giant boat under God’s personal protection were doomed.

Does that make sense?

Massive rains.  Prolonged, catastrophic flooding.  Earthquakes.  Tsunamis.  We have a term for all of that.  We call it “climate change.”  

Maybe the Earth’s magnetic poles reversed.  Maybe a natural cycle of temperature shift reached critical levels.  Something happened that altered the geographical face of the world forever.  Whatever it was so bad that every human who wasn’t prepared, died. 

A 2012 NPR article on ancient human populations states, “once in our history, the world-wide population of human beings skidded so sharply we were down to roughly a thousand reproductive adults. One study says we hit as low as 40 . . . "breeding pairs" (children not included).”

The Bible says that the actual number was 8. 

So Noah went out [of the ark], and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. (Genesis 8:18)

Does that make some sense now?

Noah and the Flood is a Bible story, but it’s not JUST a story.  It’s a collection of reasonable, logical truths warning us of the dread consequences of ignoring the weather.  

The Great Flood of Genesis is also a promise that God is aware of and ultimately in control of the climate, even when it changes in catastrophic ways.  

Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

²²          “While the earth remains,

Seedtime and harvest,

Cold and heat,

Winter and summer,

And day and night

Shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:21-22)

God warns us to prepare for the changes that are coming, and He promised to protect us from the worse of climate change.    Neither fact cancels out the other.  

To treat the Genesis Flood as a fiction with no relevance to us now is to despise on of the earliest promises of grace and to miss one of the greatest  command for stewardship of the planet.

Climatologists warn that our time has already passed the tipping point at which rapid climate change is inevitable.  The rain is coming.  God won’t let us all perish, but we all still need to prepare.  

In Noah’s time, a lot of people died because they treated the Flood as just a story made up by some guy called Noah.  In our time, if we accept the truth of the story, it doesn’t have to be quite so bad.

Does that make sense?

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE GREAT FLOOD. DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

 Blogging Genesis.  Chapters 7 & 8

⁴ For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.” (Genesis 7:4)

The Bible says that a long time ago, God made it rain so much that every man, woman, child, bird, and land-based animal who wasn’t inside Noah’s ark drowned.

Does that make sense?

There are over 7 billon people on this people.  How could one rain storm, even one that lasted almost a month and a half,  drown everybody? Wait. In Noah’s time, humans weren’t a global population.  We were a tiny emerging species, just a few generations old.  The descendants of Adam and Eve were only a few thousand people all concentrated in a small geographical area near Eden and Nod, the city Cain founded.    

The 1931 floods of the Yellow River in China killed at least 145,000 people.  Some estimates put the death toll between 3.7 million and 4 million.  A single series of localized flooding could kill millions of people.  In Noah’s time there were only thousands, maybe tens of thousands.

Does that make sense?

The Bible says that the waters rose so high that the mountains were covered  (Genesis 7:20).  But come on. Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world (above sea level) is 60 million years old and 5 ½ miles high.  That’s 5 ½ miles of water  above normal sea level.  Seriously?

Does that make sense?

Noah and his children passed down the story of the Great Flood.  They described what they saw through stories and song, according to the great human oral tradition.  When Moses compiled Genesis into a single book he wrote what Noah and his family had seen.  From the deck of the Ark, they saw the rain fall.  They saw the waters rise and stretch to every horizon.  They saw trees and hills and mountains disappear so far below the waters that the ark could drift for year without running aground. Nothing beyond the ark moved except fish and water.  From the honest perspective of Noah, The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth. (Genesis 7:20, 21). 

Fifteen cubits is something like 7 ½ yards or about two stories.  Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the 2016 flooding of the Mississippi River both provided images of people standing in water waving for helicopters to rescue them from the tippy top of the roof of two and three story homes.

Does that make sense?

Oh, and it didn’t just rain.  Genesis 7:11 says that the along with rain so heavy that is seemed that the bottom had dropped out of the sky (the Bible more poetic says that and the windows of heaven were opened) --- along with that ---  on that day all the fountains (foundations) of the great deep were broken up.  Noah and, thousands of years later, Moses could not have known that the solid land on which they lived was actually a series of continent-sized island floating on an ocean of molten rock.  Nobody knew that until 1912 when Alfred Wegener published his theories on continental drift.  It’s not surprising that people thought Noah and Moses were making stuff up.  For 50 years, “modern” scientists that that the whole idea of continents resting on foundations that periodically shift and break apart were ridiculous.  

When the Great Flood started, rain fell, underground springs and geysers erupted, and the massive supercontinent (like Pangea) broke apart causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions.  Any poor souls not already sealed inside a giant boat under God’s personal protection were doomed.

Does that make sense?

Massive rains.  Prolonged, catastrophic flooding.  Earthquakes.  Tsunamis.  We have a term for all of that.  We call it “climate change.”  

Maybe the Earth’s magnetic poles reversed.  Maybe a natural cycle of temperature shift reached critical levels.  Something happened that altered the geographical face of the world forever.  Whatever it was so bad that every human who wasn’t prepared, died. 

A 2012 NPR article on ancient human populations states, “once in our history, the world-wide population of human beings skidded so sharply we were down to roughly a thousand reproductive adults. One study says we hit as low as 40 . . . "breeding pairs" (children not included).”

The Bible says that the actual number was 8. 

So Noah went out [of the ark], and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. (Genesis 8:18)

Does that make some sense now?

Noah and the Flood is a Bible story, but it’s not JUST a story.  It’s a collection of reasonable, logical truths warning us of the dread consequences of ignoring the weather.  

The Great Flood of Genesis is also a promise that God is aware of and ultimately in control of the climate, even when it changes in catastrophic ways.  

Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

²²          “While the earth remains,

Seedtime and harvest,

Cold and heat,

Winter and summer,

And day and night

Shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:21-22)

God warns us to prepare for the changes that are coming, and He promised to protect us from the worse of climate change.    Neither fact cancels out the other.  

To treat the Genesis Flood as a fiction with no relevance to us now is to despise on of the earliest promises of grace and to miss one of the greatest  command for stewardship of the planet.

Climatologists warn that our time has already passed the tipping point at which rapid climate change is inevitable.  The rain is coming.  God won’t let us all perish, but we all still need to prepare.  

In Noah’s time, a lot of people died because they treated the Flood as just a story made up by some guy called Noah.  In our time, if we accept the truth of the story, it doesn’t have to be quite so bad.

Does that make sense?

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE GREAT FLOOD: DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

 Blogging Genesis.  Chapters 7 & 8

⁴ For after seven more days I will cause it to rain on the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will destroy from the face of the earth all living things that I have made.” (Genesis 7:4)

The Bible says that a long time ago, God made it rain so much that every man, woman, child, bird, and land-based animal who wasn’t inside Noah’s ark drowned.

Does that make sense?

There are over 7 billon people on this people.  How could one rain storm, even one that lasted almost a month and a half,  drown everybody? Wait. In Noah’s time, humans weren’t a global population.  We were a tiny emerging species, just a few generations old.  The descendants of Adam and Eve were only a few thousand people all concentrated in a small geographical area near Eden and Nod, the city Cain founded.    

The 1931 floods of the Yellow River in China killed at least 145,000 people.  Some estimates put the death toll between 3.7 million and 4 million.  A single series of localized flooding could kill millions of people.  In Noah’s time there were only thousands, maybe tens of thousands.

Does that make sense?

The Bible says that the waters rose so high that the mountains were covered  (Genesis 7:20).  But come on. Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world (above sea level) is 60 million years old and 5 ½ miles high.  That’s 5 ½ miles of water  above normal sea level.  Seriously?

Does that make sense?

Noah and his children passed down the story of the Great Flood.  They described what they saw through stories and song, according to the great human oral tradition.  When Moses compiled Genesis into a single book he wrote what Noah and his family had seen.  From the deck of the Ark, they saw the rain fall.  They saw the waters rise and stretch to every horizon.  They saw trees and hills and mountains disappear so far below the waters that the ark could drift for year without running aground. Nothing beyond the ark moved except fish and water.  From the honest perspective of Noah, The waters prevailed fifteen cubits upward, and the mountains were covered. And all flesh died that moved on the earth. (Genesis 7:20, 21). 

Fifteen cubits is something like 7 ½ yards or about two stories.  Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the 2016 flooding of the Mississippi River both provided images of people standing in water waving for helicopters to rescue them from the tippy top of the roof of two and three story homes.

Does that make sense?

Oh, and it didn’t just rain.  Genesis 7:11 says that the along with rain so heavy that is seemed that the bottom had dropped out of the sky (the Bible more poetic says that and the windows of heaven were opened) --- along with that ---  on that day all the fountains (foundations) of the great deep were broken up.  Noah and, thousands of years later, Moses could not have known that the solid land on which they lived was actually a series of continent-sized island floating on an ocean of molten rock.  Nobody knew that until 1912 when Alfred Wegener published his theories on continental drift.  It’s not surprising that people thought Noah and Moses were making stuff up.  For 50 years, “modern” scientists that that the whole idea of continents resting on foundations that periodically shift and break apart were ridiculous. 

When the Great Flood started, rain fell, underground springs and geysers erupted, and the massive supercontinent (like Pangea) broke apart causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and volcanic eruptions.  Any poor souls not already sealed inside a giant boat under God’s personal protection were doomed.

Does that make sense?

Massive rains.  Prolonged, catastrophic flooding.  Earthquakes.  Tsunamis.  We have a term for all of that.  We call it “climate change.”  

Maybe the Earth’s magnetic poles reversed.  Maybe a natural cycle of temperature shift reached critical levels.  Something happened that altered the geographical face of the world forever.  Whatever it was so bad that every human who wasn’t prepared, died.

A 2012 NPR article on ancient human populations states, “once in our history, the world-wide population of human beings skidded so sharply we were down to roughly a thousand reproductive adults. One study says we hit as low as 40 . . . "breeding pairs" (children not included).”

The Bible says that the actual number was 8. 

So Noah went out [of the ark], and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives with him. (Genesis 8:18)

Does that make some sense now?

Noah and the Flood is a Bible story, but it’s not JUST a story.  It’s a collection of reasonable, logical truths warning us of the dread consequences of ignoring the weather. 

The Great Flood of Genesis is also a promise that God is aware of and ultimately in control of the climate, even when it changes in catastrophic ways. 

Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done.

²²          “While the earth remains,

Seedtime and harvest,

Cold and heat,

Winter and summer,

And day and night

Shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:21-22)

God warns us to prepare for the changes that are coming, and He promised to protect us from the worse of climate change.    Neither fact cancels out the other. 

To treat the Genesis Flood as a fiction with no relevance to us now is to despise on of the earliest promises of grace and to miss one of the greatest  command for stewardship of the planet.

Climatologists warn that our time has already passed the tipping point at which rapid climate change is inevitable.  The rain is coming.  God won’t let us all perish, but we all still need to prepare. 

In Noah’s time, a lot of people died because they treated the Flood as just a story made up by some guy called Noah.  In our time, if we accept the truth of the story, it doesn’t have to be quite so bad.

Does that make sense?

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064