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Patriarchs and Prophets
erty were respected. Whoever coveted the wives or the possessions of
his neighbor, took them by force, and men exulted in their deeds of
violence. They delighted in destroying the life of animals; and the use
of flesh for food rendered them still more cruel and bloodthirsty, until
they came to regard human life with astonishing indifference.
The world was in its infancy; yet iniquity had become so deep
and widespread that God could no longer bear with it; and He said, “I
will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth.” He
declared that His Spirit should not always strive with the guilty race.
If they did not cease to pollute with their sins the world and its rich
treasures, He would blot them from His creation, and would destroy
the things with which He had delighted to bless them; He would sweep
away the beasts of the field, and the vegetation which furnished such
an abundant supply of food, and would transform the fair earth into
one vast scene of desolation and ruin.
Amid the prevailing corruption, Methuselah, Noah, and many
others labored to keep alive the knowledge of the true God and to
stay the tide of moral evil. A hundred and twenty years before the
Flood, the Lord by a holy angel declared to Noah His purpose, and
directed him to build an ark. While building the ark he was to preach
that God would bring a flood of water upon the earth to destroy the
wicked. Those who would believe the message, and would prepare for
that event by repentance and reformation, should find pardon and be
saved. Enoch had repeated to his children what God had shown him in
regard to the Flood, and Methuselah and his sons, who lived to hear
the preaching of Noah, assisted in building the ark.
God gave Noah the exact dimensions of the ark and explicit direc-
tions in regard to its construction in every particular. Human wisdom
could not have devised a structure of so great strength and durability.
God was the designer, and Noah the master builder. It was constructed
like the hull of a ship, that it might float upon the water, but in some
respects it more nearly resembled a house. It was three stories high,
with but one door, which was in the side. The light was admitted at
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the top, and the different apartments were so arranged that all were
lighted. The material employed in the construction of the ark was
the cypress, or gopher wood, which would be untouched by decay
for hundreds of years. The building of this immense structure was a
slow and laborious process. On account of the great size of the trees