Bible Summary for Catholics

By Michael Kotch

Bible for Catholics gives its reader a detailed overview of the major events and teachings of all the books in the Catholic Bible. God's interaction with man is unveiled chapter by chapter as every book in the Catholic Bible is presented in a summary fashion for the reader. Starting with creation in the book of Genesis, Bible for Catholics takes its reader through the whole biblical history of the relationship of God and mankind, right up to God establishing a new heaven and a new earth in the future in the book of Revelation. At the completion of Bible for Catholics, the reader will have a great understanding of all the major points of the Bible and how all the events/Bible books are connected in God's grand plan for mankind. Codeveloped with a Catholic priest, Bible for Catholics has received Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur status, stating that it is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error by the Catholic Church. Bible for Catholics is written in a clear and easy-to-understand manner. This makes it an excellent resource to teach an overview of the Bible to readers ranging from eighth grade through adulthood.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781098043834

Book preview

Chapter 1

Introduction and Overview of the Bible

Brief Summary of the Bible, God’s Plans for Us, and Why Jesus Is the Most Important Person in the Bible

God is our Father. One of the ways he chooses to talk with us, his children, is to send an extensive series of personal messages to us from him. This is the Bible. In the Bible, God explains who he is, who we are as his children, how he wants us to live our lives, and the things he will do for us. In this first chapter, I will give you an overview of what the Bible is about and why we need to read it.

God created human beings because he wanted a family to love and be with him. He created the first man and woman to begin this family, who was Adam and Eve. God created man and woman as sinless. God used to appear to this first man and woman (Adam and Eve) and speak with them regularly. He put them in charge over all the plants and animals that he created, and he allowed Adam to name all the animals. Adam and Eve were without sin, and they had a close relationship with God (Genesis chapters 1 and 2).

God wants all human beings to go to heaven and be with him when they die. However, heaven is a sinless place. Heaven is where God lives, and sin is not allowed there. If a person committed a sin, he or she is not allowed into God’s presence in his home—heaven. God gave man and woman free will (they can choose if they wanted to follow God’s commands or not). God did not want them to be like robots or slaves who could not choose what they wanted to do. He wanted man and woman to love him because they chose to, not because they had to because they were programmed to and had no other option.

When God spoke with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, one of the things that he told them was that they were not allowed to eat fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. He warned them that if they ate from the tree, they would surely die (Genesis 2:16–17). One day, the devil appeared disguised as a serpent and told Adam and Eve that they would not die if they ate from the tree. He told them that God was lying to them and that God was actually afraid if they ate from the tree that they would become all-powerful just like he was. Adam and Eve had a choice to make: follow what God told them or follow what the devil told them. They chose to follow what the devil told them. They went against God’s word to them, and they ate from the tree (Genesis 3:1–19). This was a sin, and they broke their fellowship with God. They now had sin on them. Because of this, now when they died, they would not be allowed into heaven, because heaven does not allow sin to enter into it.

Sin is like a virus that infected their souls and was passed on to the souls of all their children, including us. For example, Adam and Eve’s first children were Cain and Able. Cain became angry at God over a small matter, and he killed his brother Able in his sinful anger (Genesis 4:1–17). Sin was already horribly affecting mankind right from the start with Adam and Eve and their children, Cain and Able. There was no hope for mankind to be right with God and get to heaven and be with him without God’s help.

God loves people, and he wanted all of us to love and follow him while we are on earth and to be with him in heaven as his children after we die. God also wanted us to know him, know about him, and live our lives the way he wanted us to. Therefore, God gave us the first part of his plan to help us. It taught us right from wrong, and it partially taught us about him, what he wants from us, and how he wants us to live. He gave us the law (books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy in the Bible). The Old Testament in the Bible is filled with laws, or rules, from God that let the people know how God wanted them to live. They taught us right from wrong. If the people followed them perfectly, they would not commit any sins, and they would get to heaven. One of the examples of these laws are the Ten Commandments (Genesis 20:1–21). Before God gave us the law, people did not know right from wrong. The world was very sinful and evil, and it needed to be shown by God that much of the things that people were doing were very wrong. Their hearts needed to change from loving what was evil to loving what was good. The first step in this is that they had to be informed about what God said was good and bad.

There were many laws and rules in the Old Testament of the Bible (the Old Testament is before Jesus came; the New Testament starts when Jesus came to earth, and it is all about him). Mankind tried to follow God’s laws for us, but people were weak, and they kept messing up and breaking the rules (they kept sinning).

The Old Testament is the story of God letting the people of Israel know right from wrong through his laws and rules and the people of Israel trying to follow God’s laws and rules. People were (and still are) of a sin nature as a result of Adam and Eve’s sinning against God. In the Old Testament, the people would routinely be in a lot of trouble as a result of the sins they committed. They would cry out to God for help, and he would save them. They would be good for a while but would start to turn away from God and sin again. Their sins would get worse and worse until eventually, they would experience the disastrous consequences of their sins. They would cry out to God, and he would save them again. Then they would start to sin, their sinning would get progressively worse, and on and on. This pattern happened over and over again throughout the Old Testament. The first part of God’s plan to both save and transform people taught them right from wrong by God giving them the law. If the people followed God’s laws and rules perfectly, they would not sin. The problem was, the people were too weak and sinful to follow them perfectly, and they (we) sinned over and over again.

The people all sinned and needed more than the law to save them. God’s law cannot save anyone once they have sinned. The law can warn people against sinning to let the people know it was wrong and to not do it, but once a person sinned, the law could not save them from that sin. If anything, it condemned them. It told them what God’s rule was, and if the person broke it, he could not say, I did not know I was sinning, because God informed them it was a sin in the law.

Both God and man were in a bind, and the fate of mankind depended on how God dealt with this bind. God is a completely holy and sinless God. He will not allow sin to be in his presence, in his home. When a person sins, the person has that sin on them. We all sinned. We all sinned many times in our lives and have countless sins on us by the time that we die. If God just forgave us for our sins, he would not be holy. He would say, I know that all of you committed countless sins in your lives. That’s okay, I will let it pass. You can enter heaven, all of you, with all of your sins on you. God would be surrounded by an infinity of sin in his presence, in his home. God is completely holy, and that cannot happen. Here is the bind. God could condemn the sin, as he should, because he is all holy. Now none of us get into heaven because we are all covered in sin. The only other eternal place for beings to go besides heaven is hell. God created us because he wanted children and to have a family with him. If God straight-out condemned us for our sins, we would completely fail God’s plan for his family and all his children (us) would be in hell. That is not good at all either. So the bind for God is this: How does the sinning of the people get the judgment that a holy God requires, yet save his children who did the sinning from the wrath of his judgment, clean them from their sins, and have them enter heaven as completely sinless to be children in God’s family? Mankind’s fate hangs in the balance depending on what God would do with this problem. This is where Jesus comes in.

God implemented the second part of his plan to save and redeem us from our sins so that we can have a relationship with him while we are on earth and go to heaven and be with him when we die. God the father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit decided that Jesus, who was God in heaven, would come to earth and also be a human like all of us. While on earth, Jesus led a completely sinless life in deed, word, and thought. He was and will always remain the only person to never sin in any way throughout their life. He was in complete obedience to the will of God the Father—obedience to the point of accepting his Father’s will that he should die as a sacrifice for the sins of all mankind. Only a perfect, sinless sacrifice would be acceptable to God the Father to pay for the sin of the entire world, and Jesus was that by leading a life of perfect, sinless obedience to God the Father. He was the perfect, sinless obedience to God the Father that the rest of mankind was too weak to be. All the sins that people committed in our lifetimes (including us) were taken off of us and placed on Jesus. Jesus was then punished to death with all our sins placed on him. He was punished in our place, with our sins on him. Because of him doing this, whoever accepts and follows Jesus as their God can now be forgiven of their sins by God, because Jesus paid for all of them, and God the Father accepted his death as a sacrifice and payment for all of our sins. Jesus, flawless in following the will of God the Father for his entire life, was punished for our sake. None of us were strong enough to avoid sinning for our entire lives, so he did it for us. By following him, we are now able to be forgiven of our sins by God. By accepting Jesus and what he did for us, and following him as our God, this now enables us to go to heaven when we die.

If we do not accept Jesus and what he did for us, out of our free will to choose this, our sins cannot be forgiven. If we follow Jesus as our God (along with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit), our sins can be forgiven in confession. If we reject following Jesus, no forgiveness of our sins is possible. His act of dying on the cross for us, punished with our sins taken off of us and placed onto him, is the only method accepted by God the Father to pay for our sins. We rejected the plan God made for us to be forgiven of our sins. We are then declared guilty of our sins by God when we die. We now cannot be with God and get into heaven because sin is not allowed there. Instead, we go to a place where people who reject Jesus and what he did for us go: hell.

The Old Testament shows why we need a savior (we are too weak to follow God’s laws that were designed to prevent us from sinning). The New Testament is about the Savior (Jesus). Completely obedient to the will of God the Father, Jesus led a sinless life and took all our sins on him and got put to death with our sins on him. Now we can be forgiven of sin by God, so we can be friends with him while we are on earth and go to heaven when we die. God fixed the bind that he and we were in: What does an all-holy God do with the people who all committed countless sins against him, who yet want to be part of God’s family, which God wants too?

In addition to informing people about the fall of man, God’s salvation plan to redeem man, and how to enter into this salvation plan, the Bible has a second major purpose. It informs us about how we are supposed to live our lives while on earth. Both the Old and New Testaments are full of information about how God wants us to live our lives. Information is given to us about this in two major ways. The first is by God directly telling us how we are to live our lives. He speaks to the people directly and through prophets all throughout the Bible about this. Additionally, the Bible is a collection about the lives of numerous people involved in God’s grand plan for mankind. By reading about the circumstances these people were in, and the blessings and consequences they received based on their actions in these circumstances, we learn so much from them that we can apply to our own lives.

The Bible mainly focuses on events that took place in the country of Israel. God said that he made all the countries of the world, yet he wanted a country that would be his own special one. He chose Israel to be this country just because he wanted to, not because they were better than anyone else. He also chose Israel as his own personal country because of a promise he made to Abraham, who was willing to make a very big sacrifice to God because God asked him to (Genesis 22:1–19). We will read about this series of events soon. The Bible states that God used Israel as an example for all the world to follow based on what God did with the Israelite people.

Chapter 2

The Beginning of the Old Testament: Creation

The Bible is divided into two sections. The first section is the Old Testament. This is before Jesus was born. The New Testament begins with the birth of Jesus, proceeds through his life, death, resurrection, and the apostles spreading the Gospel after Jesus returned to heaven. We will now start at the beginning of the Bible. This is the book of Genesis, the first book in the Bible in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament

The Book of Genesis

Before the Flood

The Bible starts with the Old Testament, which takes place before Jesus came to earth to save us from being lost due to our sins. The first book of the Bible is the book of Genesis. In the beginning, there was God and the angels that lived with him in heaven. However, he did not make the universe in which we live in yet. At one point, he decided he wanted to make our universe and make us to live in it on earth. He made the universe in six God days. We do not know how long a God day is.

On the first day, the universe did not exist yet, and everything outside of heaven was dark. Then God said, Let there be light (Genesis 1:3). God’s light then filled everything. On the second day, God made a separation between heaven and the universe. Then God made the earth, and he separated the oceans from the dry land. On the third day, God made all the plants, trees, flowers, fruits, and vegetables on the earth. On the fourth day, God made the sun to light the day and the moon and the stars to light the night. Before the sun, moon, and stars, it was light from God that lit up everything. On the fifth day, God made all the birds in the sky and all the fish and sea creatures. On the sixth day, God made all the rest of the animals on the earth (Genesis 1:1–25).

Additionally, on the sixth day, God made man in his own image. The first man that God made was named Adam. He made him out of the dust from the ground, and he breathed the breath of life into his nostrils, and he became alive. God planted a garden named Eden, and this was where he placed Adam. Adam worked in the garden of Eden and kept it. God decided that it was not good for Adam to be alone, so he made a helper fit for him. God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep. While he was sleeping, God took one of Adam’s ribs and closed up the spot where he took it from with flesh. God made a woman from the rib that he took from Adam, and he brought the woman to him. Adam was pleased with the woman and said,

This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman because she was taken out of man. (Genesis 2:23)

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Genesis 2:25).

The first woman that God made was named Eve. God told them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. He gave them dominion over every living animal on earth. After God made man and woman, his work of creating everything in the universe and on earth was finished, so God rested on the seventh day, blessed it, and made it holy (Genesis chapters 1 and 2).

Adam and Eve’s Sin against God (The Fall)

God placed Adam and Eve as rulers over all the animals on earth. God allowed Adam to name all the animals that existed. God would walk and talk with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. There were all kinds of plants, fruit, and vegetables in the Garden of Eden for Adam and Eve to eat. In the middle of the Garden of Eden was a tree called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. God said to Adam and Eve,

Y ou may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it, you shall surely die. (Genesis 2:16–17)

One day the devil, who is an enemy of God, came to Eve as a serpent. In case there is any doubt that the serpent in the garden of Eden in Genesis is actually the devil, the Bible later clears this up:

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:9)

The book of Revelation informs us that Satan is also called the devil, the ancient serpent, and the dragon. He lied to Eve to tempt her to sin against God and destroy both her and Adam’s relationship with God and God’s plan for mankind. The Bible later informs us that the devil did this out of envy:

For God formed us to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made us. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are allied with him experience it. (Wisdom 2:23–24)

The serpent said to Eve (summary), Did God actually tell you not to eat from any tree in the garden?

Eve responded, God said that we shall not eat from the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, or we will die.

The serpent said, You will not die. God told you that because he knows that if you eat from it, ‘your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ (Genesis 3:5).

Eve went against what God told her, and she ate from the tree. She then gave fruit from this tree to Adam, and he ate from it too.

Adam and Eve’s eyes were opened, and they knew that they were naked. They made themselves loincloths out of fig leaves to hide their nakedness. They heard the sound of God walking in the garden, and they hid themselves from him.

God called out to them, Where are you, Adam and Eve?

Adam said (summary), I heard you coming in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid from you.

God responded (summary), How did you know that you were naked? Did you eat from the tree that I forbade you to eat?

Adam blamed Eve and God for this, saying (summary), "It was the woman that you gave me to be with that gave me the fruit to eat, so I ate it."

God said to Eve, What have you done?

Eve blamed the serpent, claiming that it tricked her into eating the forbidden fruit (Genesis 3:7–13).

Who is Satan, or the devil, and what exactly did he tempt Adam and Eve to do? A great thing about the Bible is that it often gives more information about a topic that is in one part of the Bible in another part of the Bible. The prophetic books in the Old Testament reveal who Satan is a bit more. In the book of Ezekiel, God calls Satan the King of Tyre and says this about him:

You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day you were created they were prepared. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. (Ezekiel 28:12–17)

I highlighted important points in the above Bible verse. Satan was an anointed guardian cherub who was created and placed by God. He was in the garden of Eden. He became full of self-pride over the beauty and splendor that God gave to him. It was not inherently his, and he did not earn it; God created it for him. Because of his self-pride he became corrupted. What exactly did Satan do that caused him to fall? This is detailed in the book of Isaiah in the Bible:

How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High. But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12–15).

Satan was cast down because he wanted to be like God and take over as God. What did Satan say to Eve when she told him that God said to her that if she or Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would surely die? Satan said,

You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:4–5)

Out of envy that God made man imperishable and in the image of God’s own nature (Wisdom 2:23–24), Satan tempted Eve with the desire that caused him to fall: wanting to be like God. The temptation worked.

The Bible further details what will eventually happen to Satan. Although for us, it is an event in the future, God is outside of time. It is detailed in the Bible in the past tense, an event that has already happened for God. Continuing from the above passage in the book of Ezekiel:

Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I [God] cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you. By the multitude of your iniquities, in the unrighteousness of your trade you profaned your sanctuaries; so I brought fire out from your midst; it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth in the sight of all who saw you. All who know you among the peoples area appalled at you; you have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever. (Ezekiel 28:17–19)

Returning to the events with Adam and Eve… God then cursed the serpent (the devil) for tempting Adam and Eve to sin, which caused them to fall. He also gave a prophecy of a Savior, who will be a man, that will go to war with the serpent, which is the devil, saying,

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

This Savior will also bear the sins of man on himself to save man. God told Adam that because he listened to Eve and ate from the tree that God forbade him to eat from, the ground would be cursed because of him. He shall eat of it in pain for the rest of his life, and it will produce thistles and thorns for him. What was placed on and pushed into Jesus’s head during the crucifixion events? A crown of thorns. Jesus would have the curse of the sins of man placed on him during his crucifixion (in more ways than just this). God also told Adam that he will work in sweat to make bread to eat until he returns to the ground as dust, from where he came from. God told the Eve that because of what she did, she will have painful childbirth, and she will desire her husband and he will rule over her.

They were both cast out of the Garden of Eden. God still cared for them however. He made them clothes out of animal skins, and he looked out for them (Genesis chapter 3).

Cain and Abel

Adam and Eve were husband and wife, and they had a son and named him Cain. They then had a second son and named him Abel. Cain became a farmer, and Abel became a shepherd of sheep. Since God loved them and took care of them, Cain and Abel brought offerings to God. Abel brought the firstborn of his flock to God as an offering, while Cain brought an offering of things that he grew. For an unspecified reason, God liked Abel’s gift, but he did not like the gift Cain presented to him. Cain became very angry about this. God said to Cain,

Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. It’s desire is for you, but you must rule over it. (Genesis 4:6–7)

Cain then spoke with his brother Abel. When they were in the field, Cain killed his brother Abel. This was the first murder in history (Genesis 4:1–8).

God said to Cain (summary), What did you do? You killed your brother! Because of this, you will be cursed and will wander around the earth.

Cain pleaded with God for mercy. God still loved Cain even though he killed his brother, and he watched over Cain so that nothing bad would happen to him. God made a wife for Cain, and they had children. Adam and Eve, Cain’s parents, also had more children. Back then, God allowed people to live to be over nine hundred years old. People kept having children, and over time, the earth was full of people (Genesis 4:9–25 and Genesis 5:1–32).

Noah and the Ark

People multiplied greatly on the earth. Over time the people became increasingly evil. God shortened their lives to a maximum of 120 years because of this. People continued to get progressively evil however.

The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Genesis 6:5)

Mankind got so bad that God became sorry that he made people. He decided that he would destroy everything alive on earth with a flood—people, animals, and plants—because the entire world was exceedingly evil. However, there was a man named Noah who found favor with God.

Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God. (Genesis 6:9–10)

God decided he would save him from the flood and repopulate the earth from his offspring (Genesis 6:1–8).

God came to Noah and revealed to him that due to the violence that man filled the earth with, he would destroy all flesh in the world with a flood. God made his covenant with Noah, because he found Noah to be righteous before him. He told Noah to make a boat called an ark. He told him to put his family in the ark, along with one male and one female of every animal on earth, and bring food to feed everyone and every animal. It took Noah several decades to build the ark, but one day it was finally finished. God sent all the animals to Noah to put on the ark, and Noah and his family got into the ark, and God sealed the door so the water would not get in. God then sent rain to the earth for forty days and forty nights, and the world was flooded. He also caused water to spring up from inside the earth. The water was so high that it covered all the mountaintops. All the people in the world drowned because they were so evil, but God saved Noah and his family. Noah and his family floated in the ark for 150 days. Finally, the flood started to go away. The ark landed on the top of a mountain called Mount Ararat. Noah, his family, and all the animals got out of the ark. God made a promise to Noah that he would never again send a worldwide flood. He sent a rainbow to Noah and told him that every time we see a rainbow, it is God remembering that he will never again wipe out mankind with a flood. God also increased the life span of man once again from the 120-year restriction he put on it due to their evil hearts. Noah lived to be 950 years old (Genesis 6:9–22, 7:1–24, 8:1–19, 9:1–28).

The Tower of Babel

After Noah’s family came out of the ark, they had children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, etc., and became many people (Genesis 10:1–32). Everybody at this time spoke the same language. Many settled in one place in the land of Shinar. They said,

Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth. (Genesis 11:4)

When God saw the city and tower that humans built, he said,

Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. (Genesis 11:6)

God confused everyone’s language so that they could not understand each other. When they tried to speak with each other, it sounded like they were babbling. This caused them to call the tower that they built the Tower of Babel. It also caused the people to abandon the tower and the city and spread out from each other and fill the earth like God wanted them to (Genesis 11:1–9).

Chapter 3

God Starts the Jewish/Christian Faith with Abraham

After the fall of the Tower of Babel, people spread out over the earth and multiplied. There was a man named Abram in the land of Haran. God came to Abram and told him to go from his country and take his family to a land that God would show him. If he did this, God promised to bless him and make a great nation from his descendants, and his name would be great. His descendants would be as numerous as the sand grains on the seashore, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Abram went as God told him. He was seventy-five years old at the time. He took his wife, Sarai, and his nephew, Lot, with him on their journey to the land of Canaan. When they arrived at the land of Canaan, God told Abram that he would give this land to Abram’s offspring. At the time, the Canaanites were in the land. Abram built an altar there but kept moving on to the land of Negeb, where God instructed him to go (Genesis chapters 11 and 12:1–9).

There was a famine in the land that Abram was in, so Abram went down to Egypt due to the famine. Abram told his wife, Sarai, that because she was beautiful, he feared the Egyptians would kill him and take her if they found out he was her husband. So he instructed Sarai to tell them that she was Abram’s sister, which she did. News about her beauty eventually reached Pharaoh, who took her into his home and dealt well with Abram. But God afflicted Pharaoh and his house with severe plagues because he took another man’s wife. Pharaoh angrily called in Abram and asked why he told him that Sarai was his sister instead of his wife. Pharaoh then sent both Abram and Sarai away (Genesis 12:10–20). On another occasion years later, Abram did the exact same thing, telling King Abimelech that Sarai was his sister instead of telling the truth that she was his wife.

Abraham eventually went up from Egypt back to the land of Negeb with Sarai and his nephew, Lot. Both Abram and Lot were rich in possessions and livestock to the point that the land could not support the herds of both. Abram decided they needed to split up because they could no longer fit in the same land together. Abram gave Lot first choice of where he would settle. Lot settled in a city called Sodom, because it was well watered everywhere like Egypt was. Abram settled in the land of Canaan (Genesis 13:1–13). At one point, there were battles between the kings of the surrounding areas. Abram’s nephew, Lot, was captured during one of the battles. Abram gathered 301 men and rescued Lot, his people, and his possessions. When Abram returned, he was blessed by Melchizedek, the king of Salem, priest of God Most High. Melchizedek blessed Abram, saying,

Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High; who has delivered your enemies into your hand! (Genesis 14:19–20)

Abram then gave Melchizedek one tenth of everything that he owned.

God appeared to Abram and told him that he will have a son who will be his heir. He told him that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars. God then gave Abram the following prophecy:

Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. (Genesis 15:12–14 and 16)

At this time, there were two cities that did very evil things. The cities names were Sodom and Gomorrah. God told Abram that he would destroy these two cities because they were overwhelmingly evil. This made Abram sad. He asked God, if God could find just ten people who were not evil in these cities, would he not destroy them? God said that he would not destroy the cities if he could find ten good people in them. God looked as hard as he could, but he could not find ten people who were not evil, so he had to destroy the cities. God allowed Abram to save his nephew, Lot, and his family from Sodom before he destroyed it. Before God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, he sent down two angels to the cities to meet the people who lived there to make sure that they were as evil as God believed them to be. When the two angels arrived, the people were so evil that they tried to sexually assault the angels. God had seen enough. He rained fire and brimstone down on Sodom and Gomorrah, completely destroying both cities (Genesis 18:1–33, 19:1–29).

Abram and the Birth of His Two Sons

When God first appeared to Abram, he told him that he would give Abram and his wife, Sarai, children. Abram was now eighty-five, Sarai was seventy-five, and they did not have any children yet (Genesis 16:15). Sarai believed that God prevented her from having any children. Because of this, Sarai told Abram that he should take her servant, Hagar, as a second wife and have children with her. Abram did. Abram had a son with Sarah’s servant, and God told them to name him Ishmael. Having a second wife caused a lot of conflict between Hagar and Abram’s first wife, Sarai. Sarai then began to mistreat Hagar. The angel of the Lord came to Hagar, who was miserable because of this. He told her that her son, Ishmael, would have countless offspring, but he himself would be a wild, rebellious man when he grew up (Genesis chapter 16).

God appeared to Abram when he was ninety-nine years old. He told him again that if he followed God, he would make a great nation of his descendants. Kings would be his offspring, and God would give them the land of Canaan as their everlasting possession. God made a covenant with Abram on this promise. For Abram’s part, every male offspring would be circumcised throughout generations. God then changed Abram’s name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah. God told Abraham that he would have a son with his wife, Sarah, who was ninety. This is the son that God would establish his covenant through of making a great nation. Next year, Sarah had Abraham’s son. They named their son Isaac. Abraham was one hundred years old, and Sarah was ninety years old at this time (Genesis 17, 18, 21).

Isaac grew as a young child. Hagar, Abraham’s second wife, remained living with them along with her son, Ishmael. Sarah became jealous and commanded Abraham to cast out Hagar and Ishmael, because Sarah did not want Ishmael to be an heir along with Isaac. Abraham did not want to do this to his son Ishmael. God appeared to Abraham and told him it was okay to tell Hagar and Ishmael to go. God promised that he would also make a great nation out of Ishmael, because Ishmael was Abraham’s offspring. Therefore, Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away. God looked after and took care of the both of them (Genesis 21:8–21).

God Puts Abraham to a Great Test to See If Abraham Will Trust and Follow God

Abraham’s son Isaac grew into an older boy, and Abraham and Sarah loved Isaac very much. God put Abraham to a very difficult test to see if Abraham would follow God’s instructions. God told Abraham to take his son Isaac into the mountains in the land of Moriah and, once they were there, to offer him as a sacrifice to God. Abraham was extremely sad about this. But he listened to God and trusted him that somehow God would make everything okay. He took Isaac his son, whom he loved very much, on the several-day journey to the place God instructed him to offer up Isaac as a sacrifice. When they got there, Abraham bound Isaac, laid him on the altar that he made, and pulled out a knife to kill him like God told him to do. As Abraham lifted up his knife to kill Isaac, God immediately went to Abraham and said, Abraham, Abraham! And Abraham said, Here am I.

God said,

Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your children and grandchildren as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And in your children and grandchildren shall all of the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. (Genesis 22:11–18).

Because Abraham trusted God and tried to do this most difficult task that God told him to do, which was offer up his only son to God, God would make it so that Abraham’s children and grandchildren would be the ones who would found the country of Israel. Additionally, one of Abraham’s descendants would be Jesus, who would save the world from their sins.

Isaac Has Twin Sons: Esau and Jacob

Abraham’s son Isaac grew into a man and married a woman named Rebekah. Rebekah was unable to have any children, so Isaac prayed to God that he would grant them children. God answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twin sons. The sons fought with each other inside Rebekah’s womb. She asked God why this was so. God answered Rebekah’s prayer, telling her,

Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the older shall serve the younger. (Genesis 25:23)

At the twins’ birth, the first one came out covered in red hair, and they named him Esau. The second son came out holding Esau’s heel, and they named him Jacob. As they grew up, Esau became an outdoorsman and a skilled hunter, while Jacob was a quiet man who dwelled in tents. Isaac loved Esau because of the food he hunted, but Rebecca loved Jacob.

One day, Jacob was cooking stew. Esau came in and was very hungry and asked for some stew. Jacob said he would give him stew only if Esau gave him his birthright for it. Esau said he felt like he was starving to death, so what good was a birthright to him? He therefore gave Jacob his birthright in return for some stew.

Thus, Esau despised his birthright. (Genesis 25:34)

Isaac became very old and grew blind, and he believed that he may die soon. He called in his firstborn son, Esau, and told him to go and hunt and make him a meal out of it, and afterward he would give him the blessing due to the firstborn son. Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, heard the conversation. She told Jacob what his father said to his brother, Esau, and then she gave Jacob the following instructions: She told him to go and get two young goats from their flock. She would make a meal out of them. Jacob would give them to Isaac, and since he was blind, he