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According to the Biblical account, some time after creation God looked at the earth that he had made and was not pleased. Violence and corruption plagued the earth and people were following their own evil inclinations. God was greatly distressed.
He therefore decided to blot out every man and beast by sending a cataclysm of waters. However, there was one man, Noah, who remained faithful to him.
God told Noah of his plans to destroy the earth and instructed him to build an ark, a water-tight chest the size of a ship, in which to keep safe the seeds for a new creation. Noah did as he was told. On the day he and his family finished the ark the earth began to split apart. Water gushed from the deep below, the windows of heaven opened, and rain fell from above. The waters increased for 40 days, so rapidly that the entire earth was flooded, right up to the highest mountains.
After six months adrift, the ark ran aground. Anxious for some sign of land above water, Noah sent out a raven, but it kept on flying. Seven days later he sent out a dove, but it too was unable to find land and returned. Seven days later he sent the dove out again. This time it returned with an olive leaf in its beak. Noah knew that the waters were subsiding, and when, seven days later, he sent out the dove once more, it did not return. More than a year after entering the ark, he, his family and all the other animals stepped out.
God made a promise never again to destroy the earth and all its inhabitants by a cataclysm. As a reminder of his promise, he set a rainbow in the sky and said, "Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth." He gave man a new start and encouraged him to believe that in some important way his relationship with his Creator would now be different.
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