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Genesis for Children
A Simple look at Genesis chapters 1 to 11
Where did God come from?
The God of the Bible did not have a beginning.
He has always been alive, and always will be alive.
God does not get old, and He has never been young.
He just is.
God created the world, and the whole universe.
God is very clever.
He does not have to learn anything.
He gets things right first time.
God decided to make the world in six days.
Each day was 24 hours, just like the days we have now.
Each day had a morning and an evening.
In the first day God made the world out of water.
It was just a huge ball of water, floating in space.
God's light shone on the ball of water,
then the first day ended.
There was no sun or moon or stars yet, there was only God's light.
In the second day God made the sky.
He did this by making some of the water rise.
The gap between the watery world and the water above was the sky.
In the third day God changed some of the world's water into land.
Half the world became land, and the other half stayed water.
God created the first life.
He made vegetation grow all over the land.
In the fourth day God created the sun, the moon and the stars.
He made the sun to give us day and night.
He made the stars to mark special events.
For example, a star appeared when Jesus was born.
In the fifth day God created animals which can fly,
like birds and bats and pterodactyls.
He also created animals which live in water,
like fish and whales and great sea monsters.
God designed every living thing to produce offspring just like itself.
Cats made cats, dogs made dogs, ants made ants, cows made cows.
This is a rule no living thing has ever broken.
One kind of animal can never change into another kind.
In the sixth day God created animals for the land.
In this day God created dinosaurs and other huge creatures,
like elephants and crocodiles.
He also made all the very small animals,
like mice, and rabbits, and cats.
When God was finished making all the animals,
on the sixth day, He decided to make something very special.
He created the first humans.
This is how He did it.
First God made a human body out of earth.
Then He breathed into the model and it became a living man.
This was the first man to ever live.
God called the man Adam.
As soon as the man was finished, God made the man fall asleep.
He took a rib from the man and turned it into a woman.
God called the woman Eve.
Adam and Eve were made just like the God who made them.
They could speak, and think, and imagine,
they could create music and art and invent things.
They were not animals.
They had a conscience, so they could tell the difference between right and wrong.
Adam and Eve were perfect in every way.
They had pure hearts.
They also had no clothes on because they had no bad thoughts.
They were not like us - they were perfect.
God made a special place for the first humans to live.
It was an orchard full of fruit trees.
He called it the Garden of Eden.
In those days there was no rain.
A morning mist watered everything gently.
When Adam and Eve were created, their world was happy.
There were no diseases, and no wild animals.
Nothing stung them, or bit them.
No plants had spines or sharp leaves to cut them.
The sun was good for them and they never burned.
They were safe all the time.
In the garden God had made there were two important trees.
One tree was called the Tree of Life.
The other tree was called The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Adam and Eve were allowed to eat from the Tree of Life.
This tree made them live for ever.
As long as they ate from the Tree of Life they would never die.
But God told them NOT to eat from the other tree.
God said, if they ate from the other tree, they would DIE.
While God was creating the world, He also created angels.
Most of the angels were good and obedient,
but some of them became proud and evil.
One of the bad angels was called Satan.
Satan wanted to have the Earth instead of Adam and Eve.
When Satan heard God say the humans would die
if they ate from the second tree,
he thought up a plan to trick the humans into disobeying God.
Satan sneaked into the garden of Eden and spoke to Eve.
He told lies to Eve and tricked her into eating from the forbidden tree.
Adam was standing close by, but he didn't tell Eve to stop listening to Satan.
Eve ate from the forbidden fruit, then she passed it to Adam.
As soon as Adam ate it, he realized he had disobeyed God.
Oh no! He knew this meant he was going to die!
Adam knew God could not break His word.
Adam and Eve ran away and hid themselves.
They tried to cover their naked bodies with fig leaves sewn together.
But God came looking for them.
He asked Adam why he was hiding.
“Its the woman's fault” said Adam,
“You made her for me and she caused me to sin!”
God asked Eve why she had disobeyed.
“Its all Satan's fault!” said Eve, “He tricked me!”
God punished Satan.
He promised that one day someone born of a woman
would destroy him.
That someone was Jesus, who was born of a woman called Mary,
about 4000 years later.
God punished Adam and Eve.
He made them start to die.
He made the safe world become less safe.
Animals started to turn wild.
Insects learned how to sting and bite.
Instead of safe plants, thistles and thorns began to grow.
God told Adam and Eve to leave the garden of Eden.
He put guards at the entrance,
and made a flaming sword, which flew about,
ready to slice any human who dared to come too near.
Inside the garden of Eden was the Tree of Life,
but no human could get to it now.
Adam and Eve went away and tried to live
in a world which was no longer perfect.
But before they left the garden, God offered them something amazing and wonderful.
He killed a sheep and made clothes for them out of its skin.
Adam and Eve put the skin clothes on.
Adam and Eve understood that the sheep had died in their place.
By putting the skins on,
they showed they accepted God's offer of forgiveness.
Soon Adam and Eve started to have children.
Their first child was called Cain.
Their second child was called Abel.
Abel was a good boy.
He loved God and decided to become a shepherd.
Cain was not a good boy.
He did not love God.
He became a farmer of crops.
God required humans to bring a sacrifice to Him.
The sacrifice had to be a lamb as an offering for sin.
Abel brought a lamb and this pleased God.
But Cain brought some of his crops.
This did not please God.
Cain was very angry that Abel's offering had pleased God
while his offering had not.
Cain became so angry he attacked and killed his brother.
When God saw what had happened he came to talk with Cain.
“I know you have killed your brother” said God,
“I will have to punish you for this.”
God punished Cain this way:
When Cain tried to grow food his crops always failed,
And he became a wanderer in the world.
Cain went away from his parents and lived in another place.
There he had many children.
Some of his children invented new skills.
They invented animal husbandry,
and musical instruments,
and building with brick and stone and wood,
and mining, and smelting, and metalwork.
In those days the world looked very different compared to now.
There were no huge mountains.
There were no deserts, no glaciers, no huge oceans.
There were no polar caps, no snow storms, and no seasons.
No earthquakes, no hurricanes, tornados or earthquakes.
In those days the creatures which God had created
were much bigger, and stronger, and healthier.
Most living things lived much longer than today.
Even people were bigger and taller.
There was plenty of good food about too.
Even insects grew larger.
Trees were as high as skyscrapers!
Some dinosaurs were as big as half a rugby field!
But while the world was still so good,
people were becoming badder and badder.
They started to make idols to worship, instead of God.
They worshipped the stars too.
They made up all sorts of horrible religions,
and turned away from what God wanted.
Eventually God decided to wash the world clean of all the bad people.
He had one good man He could rely on, called Noah.
So God told Noah to build a huge boat.
Noah obeyed God and started work right away.
“The world has 120 years before my judgement falls” said God.
Noah and his three sons worked for many years.
Finally the boat, called an Ark, was finished.
The Ark was ENORMOUS!
It was longer than two rugby fields, and three stories high.
God brought animals to Noah.
Noah watched as the animals went by.
Two of every land animal came to the Ark,
one male and one female.
From these pairs come all the varieties we have today.
Two camels, two dogs, two cats,
Two horses, two tigers, two dinosaurs.
Every species was saved.
Then Noah and his family went into the Ark and waited.
The door stayed open for seven more days.
Anyone outside could have come into the Ark while the door was open.
After seven days God shut the door.
BANG!
As soon as the door shut, the rain began to fall.
This was no ordinary rain.
The ocean of water around the world collapsed downwards,
and from under the ground more oceans of water came bursting upwards!
The whole world was soon covered by water, and all the land was washed clean.
Water rolled this way and that,
but Noah and his wife, and their three sons and their wives, were safe.
The water washing around the world stirred up mud and silt.
This buried millions and millions of living things.
As the mud settled it formed layers.
Later, these layers hardened into rock.
This is where most of the layered rocks we see today came from.
The water also swept trees off the land.
Some of these forests floated about, stuck together like huge islands.
Many of these masses of wood were buried too.
They turned into the coal mines we use today.
For nearly a year the flood covered the world,
Then it started to recede.
To help the waters go away God lifted the land and tilted it.
Up it came, out of the ocean, and in other places the land went down.
God also pushed up mountain ranges.
The water formed enormous rivers and drained away.
One of these rivers left the Grand Canyon behind.
You can see the layers formed by the worldwide flood in the sides of the canyon.
The river that cut through those walls is now just a trickle, called the Colorado.
Noah could not see out of the Ark,
so he sent a raven through a small window in the roof.
Ravens like to eat meat, but there was none,
so it came back to Noah for food.
Noah waited a few more days, and sent a dove (or pigeon) out.
Doves like seeds and fruit,
but it couldn't find anything to eat so it flew back to Noah.
The second time Noah sent the dove away
it came back with a little leaf in its beak,
which it had picked from an olive plant.
This showed Noah that the world was starting to green up again.
Noah went up through the roof and removed the covering.
He saw the new sky and the new world for the first time.
It was very different from the sky and world he had been used to.
God told Noah to leave the Ark,
so Noah opened the door and let all the animals out,
then he gathered some stones and built an altar.
He offered sacrifices to God for his sins.
God was pleased with Noah.
He promised to never destroy the earth with a flood ever again.
God also promised to cause seasons to come and go.
Summer, winter, spring and autumn have come and gone ever since.
In the sky God formed a rainbow.
“This bow” said God, “Is a token of my faithfulness.
When you see it, you can be assured
I will keep my promise to never destroy the world again with a flood.”
But the world was very different now.
There were earthquakes, and storms,
and the sun was sometimes so hot it could burn people's skin.
Animals began to spread around the world,
and they travelled to every part because most land was joined by land bridges.
Some animals travelled on huge floating rafts of trees, which had not yet broken up.
The oceans were warmer, and this caused more clouds to form.
These clouds dropped more rain than we have today, and also lots more snow.
The snow came down hard and fast, and turned into ice,
which covered a lot of the world.
This was the time of the Ice Age.
It lasted about 300 years.
Great ice sheets spread from the north and south,
and some nearly reached the equator,
but gradually the oceans cooled and the ice melted back.
The north and south poles are all that is left of these huge ice sheets.
As the ice formed, the water from the oceans went down.
This made it easier for animals to reach land,
but when the ice melted, the oceans went up again
and the animals were cut off from the lands they had come from.
The garden of Eden was gone forever.
It was buried somewhere under the mud and stones.
The tree of Life was impossible to reach.
The only way people could be saved now
was through faith in the sacrifice of an animal.
Noah and his family built houses and started to grow food,
and after a few years they had quite a busy town.
The children from Noah's family grew up and had children,
and soon there were thousands of people in the world.
God told these new people to spread out and raise families all over the world,
but they people refused to obey.
Instead they stayed in one place, and started to build a tower.
The tower was designed to have the signs of the Zodiac on it.
The people had turned from God and were now worshiping the stars.
God was sad and angry, but He kept His promise not to destroy the world,
so instead He did an amazing thing.
He created many different languages,
and put these languages into people's heads.
Suddenly the builders could not understand each other!
The people who could speak the same language
got together and moved away to live somewhere else.
This was what God had wanted them to do.
They lived far away in the north and east,
the west and the south.
Some of the people moved to Egypt.
They built huge temples and the pyramids.
In those days Egypt was a wet and green land,
and not dry and sandy as it is today.
Other people went down to South America,
others went north and became the Inuit, or Eskimos.
Some became Indians, or Aztecs, Incans or Chinese,
Africans, Polynesians or Russians, Japanese or Europeans.
All the people in the world today come from Noah and his family.
From Adam and Eve all the world has now filled with people.
As these people have married and had children they have changed slightly.
Some have developed black skin, others have developed white or brown.
Some have developed black hair, or brown, or blond.
Some have developed blue eyes, some have green or hazel.
After the great flood the world was cooler and wetter,
then came the Ice Age, and the world changed again.
It started to dry out.
Huge inland lakes began to disappear.
You can still see where these lakes used to be.
Australia, for example, used to be wet and watery all over,
but now it is dry and covered in hot deserts.
Before the flood people lived a long time.
The oldest man was called Methuselah,
he lived 969 years.
Methuselah died in the same year that Noah went into the Ark.
Adam lived 930 years before he finally died.
But after the flood the world was different.
Most people died before they reached a hundred years old.
They also had children when they were a lot younger.
Before the flood people had children when they were
about one hundred years old, but today even a 14 year old can have a child.
Now we have come to the end of Genesis chapter 11.
Chapter 12 starts with the story of one particular person,
a man called Abram.
Here are some things to think about, now that we have come this far:
God loves the whole world including you,
But God is holy, so he will always punish sin, including yours.
God does not want any sinner to be punished,
so He has made a way for all people to be forgiven their sins.
At the start God killed a sheep in the place of the sinner.
Adam and Eve accepted this sacrifice and were forgiven.
4000 years later God sent an even better sacrifice for sin.
God sent Jesus, His perfect and sinless Son!
Jesus gave His life for all sinners.
This means that all we have to do to avoid
being punished for our sins is accept Jesus as our sacrifice.
Here is God's promise to you:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son,
that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life”
John 3:16
Just as the door of the Ark stood open for a week,
providing an opportunity for anyone who wanted to, to walk in and be saved,
God's offer of salvation is open to everyone in the world right now.
But you'd better decide soon, because the door will not remain open for ever!