The Story of the Bible, Part 2

After Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden, they began to have children, who had children, and so forth, until there were multitudes of people on the earth. Some of them are described in Genesis 4-5: Cain, who killed his brother Abel; and a genealogy which connects Adam to Noah. As time went on [the genealogies cover a period of over 1600 years] mankind grew increasingly wicked, until God came to Noah, one of the few remaining righteous people, in Genesis 6:

"13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
14 Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

17 And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.
18 But with thee will I establish my covenant; and thou shalt come into the ark, thou, and thy sons, and thy wife, and thy sons’ wives with thee.
19 And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.
20 Of fowls after their kind, and of cattle after their kind, of every creeping thing of the earth after his kind, two of every sort shall come unto thee, to keep them alive.
21 And take thou unto thee of all food that is eaten, and thou shalt gather it to thee; and it shall be for food for thee, and for them.
22 Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he.

Another 120 years would pass before the Flood, during which Noah preached—unsuccessfully—to the wicked people of his day and built the ark. After no one repented, Noah, his three sons, and their four wives entered the ark and God closed the door. The waters of the Flood covered the entire earth and wiped out every living thing upon the earth. Noah and his family would be in the ark for about a year until the waters receded sufficiently for them to exit the ark and begin a new life. God gave the rainbow as a symbol of His promise that He would not again destroy the earth with a flood (Gen. 9:12-17).

Wickedness, however, would again be seen. Ham shamed his father Noah, who had become drunk, and Ham was cursed (Gen. 9:20-27). The multiplied generations of Noah gathered together, despite God's command to overspread the earth (Gen. 8:17), and built—or rather, began to build—a tower (Gen. 11:1-4). At this time, God "confounded" (Gen. 11:7, KJV) the one language that they spoke, and the race of mankind split up into groups by language, and consequently scattered across the earth.

The Flood is a controversial subject to some. There is, however, bountiful evidence nearly everywhere that water covered the planet at one time, depositing the strata that we study in geology today. The Bible itself makes it clear (Gen. 7:19, 2 Pet. 2:5, and elsewhere) that the Flood was worldwide. Large quantities of useful information written by people more expert than me can be found at icr.org and answersingenesis.org. A particularly excellent article about the extent of the Flood can be found here.

The Story of the Bible, Part 7
The Story of the Bible, Part 6
The Story of the Bible, Part 5
The Story of the Bible, Part 4
The Story of the Bible, Part 3
The Story of the Bible, Part 1