Genesis 12
Every day the people grew worse. They left God, the Creator and bowed down, and worshipped idols made by men’s hands of wood, stone, brass and iron. These are not God at all: their eyes cannot see; their mouths cannot speak; their limbs cannot move. How foolish and bad! As they were not willing to change and be sorry, God let them go their own way. Even today, men, women and children go to temples to burn incense to idols instead of to worship the living God. But God is not yet punishing them. He waits long for them to turn to Him.
The Lord called one man, Abram, (whose father worshipped idols), to leave his father’s home, his family, and his country, to serve the true God alone, and to go to a place that the Lord would choose for him. He would give this land to him and to his children as a gift. Abram believed God, obeyed, and started for the place not knowing where he was going.
His father, Terah, took Abram and his wife, and nephew Lot, to go to Canaan, but they stopped in Haran till Terah’s death. Then Abram remembered how the God of glory had appeared to him; so he left Haran and went to Canaan as God had said.
Let us think. From the time of Adam to Abram is about two thousand years. Methuselah could possibly have listened to Adam telling these wonderful stories for 243 years, and later told them to Shem for 98 years, and Shem lived at the same time as Abram for 150 years. In Ur of the Chaldees, where Abram and his father lived, many things such as books and libraries from Abram’s time have been found.