Read Just Because: The Story of Salvation for Children Online
Authors: Steve Copland
Tags: #Children's Books, #Religions, #Christianity, #Inspirational, #Children's eBooks, #Early Readers
and his sons died, people again forgot about the Lord
and the flood. And, yes, old Satan was working hard
again. These people decided to build a big tower up to
the sky so they could try to see into the future and do
magic. They wanted to start doing evil things again,
worshipping Satan and not the Lord. This would lead
them into terrible trouble again, so the Lord decided
to stop this before it became a big problem.
Everybody spoke the same language at this
time, so the Lord gave them different ways to speak.
He gave them languages like French, German and
Russian, and of course when they tried to speak to
each other they couldn’t understand. Only people
in the same family understood each other. So when
they were trying to build the tower there was a lot of
confusion. Someone would ask for a brick, and the
other person might have thought he was saying his
cow was fat and ugly. In the end people left that place
and spread around the whole world. The tower was
called the Tower of Babel because “babel” means
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to talk like a babbling baby. The tower was never
finished.
Now there was a man called Abram living in a
land called Ur. Yep, in those days there was a real
place called Ur, but it isn’t called Ur now because
someone decided to change it. Now the Lord had
decided long before this exactly how He was going
to teach people to know Him and get to heaven, and
Abram was a big part of His plan. Abram loved the
Lord, unlike most people who did not believe in
God. The Lord told Abram to leave the land of Ur
and travel to a new place He was going to give him
to live in. That place was called Canaan. Abram was
about seventy-five years old when the Lord called
him to go to Canaan, so he was no young fella. His
wife, Sarah, was also getting old, but she was still
very beautiful. Sarah had no children, and everyone
thought she was too old to be a mother now.
One night the Lord woke up Abram and told him
to look up at the stars in the sky. “How many stars do
you see, Abram?” asked the Lord.
“Thousands,” replied Abram.
“Soon you will have a son,” the Lord told him,
“and one day your descendants will be thousands
like the stars in the sky.”
Abram knew Sarah was past the time when a lady
can have a baby, but he believed the Lord because
he knew the Lord always kept His promises. Then
the Lord told him he was to have a new name and
changed his name to Abraham, which means the
father of nations. So Abraham moved to Canaan, and
he also took with him his brother-in-law Lot. He had
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a name which was good for him because Lot was a
greedy man who always wanted a lot. When they got
to Canaan Lot said he wanted the nice flat land near
the two cities and a nice river, so Abraham took the
rocky land which was not so nice. Lot became a lot
of trouble for Abraham later as we shall see.
One day Abraham decided to go on a journey
because there was no food left in Canaan. He and
Sarah and their friends went down to live in Egypt for
a while. Abraham was worried about going to Egypt
because he had heard the Egyptian king liked pretty
ladies; he thought the king of Egypt might want to
take Sarah from him.
So he said to Sarah, “When we get to Egypt tell
them you are my sister, because if they know you are
my wife they might kill me and take you.”
“But, Abraham,” Sarah replied, “that would be
telling a lie.”
“But you are my half-sister, Sarah,” said Abraham.
“So it is not really a big lie.”
When they got to Egypt the king, called Pharaoh,
saw Sarah and wanted her to live at his house, and
Abraham lied and told him she was his sister. He
did not tell the king that Sarah was his wife. Then
Pharaoh gave Abraham lots of sheep and cattle and
gold and stuff because he liked Sarah and thought
she was Abraham’s brother and not his wife. But the
Lord was angry about this so he sent a disease to the
king and all the people in his house except Sarah.
The Lord did this because Pharaoh was going to
marry Sarah, but she was already Abraham’s wife.
The Lord stopped the marriage.
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Then Pharaoh knew the Lord had done this to
him, and he was angry with Abraham for telling him
a lie. So he told Abraham to take his wife and every-
thing and get away from Egypt. The king did not kill
Abraham because he was afraid of the Lord. Abraham,
Sarah, Lot and their family helpers all moved back to
Canaan and settled there again. Lot took the land in
the valley near the lovely Jordan River, and Abraham
took the land in the hills. In the valley were two
terrible cities called Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot
went to live there. But that is another story.
Sarah and Abraham made many mistakes. Sarah
decided it would be a good idea if Abraham had
another wife, so she gave him her maid to be his wife.
Abraham agreed, and he married Hagar. They had a
baby boy and called him Ishmael, but he was not the
boy God had promised them. The Lord still blessed
Ishmael, and from him came many of the people who
live in the Middle East countries.
Satan was wondering if the child God had prom-
ised Abraham might be the kid who was gonna fight
and beat him. But he was too busy in the cities of
Sodom and Gomorrah to worry too much about it.
Meanwhile, Abraham had learned a good lesson in
Egypt, and that was this: Always tell the truth, even
if you are worried about what might happen, because
the Lord will always help you. The Lord helped Sarah
because she obeyed Him, and Abraham was rescued
by the Lord because Sarah did not disobey the Lord.
The Lord always forgives us when we make mistakes
and ask for His forgiveness, Just Because He is
wonderful, and He wants the best for us always.
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One day in the valley where Lot was living, there
was a big fight called a war. Some kings who
were living there started to fight against each other,
and Lot was right in the middle of it. Now Abraham
had some good fighting men who lived with him and
looked after his sheep and cattle, so they all went
down to the valley and rescued Lot and his family.
Some bad kings had come to Sodom and taken the
people captive along with lots of their gold and stuff.
So Abraham and 318 of his men chased them, had a
fight with them and beat them. Then those guys ran
away and went back to their own lands.
So Abraham took the people back to Sodom.
The king of Sodom told him to keep all the gold and
stuff because he and his men had rescued the people,
but Abraham didn’t take anything. He did not want
to take anything from such an evil city. That night
Abraham had a dream, and the Lord told him again
that he would have a son. Abraham believed the
Lord, and this pleased the Lord. Lot was a man who
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liked to live in the city so he went back to his house
in the city of Sodom. Sodom was a very bad place,
and in this city people did very evil things. Now the
Lord did not want the rest of the world to start doing
the same things people did in the cities of Sodom and
Gomorrah, so He decided to destroy the cities. The
people knew they were doing bad things, but they
didn’t want to stop.
One day when Abraham was at home he had
three special visitors: two angels and the Lord. All
three looked like normal people to Abraham. He
asked Sarah to prepare a meal for them, and then
the Lord told Abraham again that in one year Sarah
would have a son. Now Sarah heard the Lord say
this, and she thought, “How can I have a baby when
I am so old?” So she laughed to herself, and the Lord
heard her. When he asked why she laughed, Sarah
lied to him.
Then the Lord sent his two angels down to Sodom
and Gomorrah to check it out and to get Lot and his
family to leave. And the Lord told Abraham that the
evil in those cities was so bad that He must destroy
them forever. Abraham was upset about this, and he
asked the Lord, “Will you destroy the good people
and the bad as well, all of them together?”
Then he asked, “If there are fifty good people
in the cities, will you save the cities, for surely the
judge of all the earth will do what is right?”
So the Lord answered Abraham, “Yes, if there
are fifty good people in the cities I will not destroy
them.”
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Abraham asked the Lord, “If there are forty good
and righteous people in the cities, will you save the
cities?”
And the Lord answered him, “Yes, Abraham,
for the sake of forty righteous people I will save the
cities.”
“What about thirty?” Abraham was getting braver
to ask his questions.
“Yes, for only thirty,” said the Lord.
“And what about for twenty good people, Lord?”
asked Abraham.
“Of course, Abraham,” said the Lord.
Abraham wondered if he should ask for only ten.
He decided the Lord was always fair and right so he
asked Him, “If there are ten good people, will you
save the cities, Lord?” The Lord agreed.
Meanwhile, the two angels arrived at Lot’s house,
and he let them in. They told Lot and his family that
they must leave the city with them right then because
the Lord was going to destroy the cities. Yes, the Lord
knew there were not even ten good people living in
those two cities—only Lot and his family. And the
angels warned Lot and his family to run for their
lives and not look back. They told them that if they
stopped to look back at the cities they would die.
Now Lot’s wife enjoyed living in Sodom, and
she didn’t believe the angels of the Lord. Silly lady,
huh? The angels took them to the gates of the city and
told them to run. A storm had started. They started
running, but Lot’s wife was sad to be leaving. She
stopped and turned to look at the evil city she loved.
Immediately she became covered in salt. She died as
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she was standing there just as she had been warned.
She must have looked like the biggest salt shaker
ever. Some people just never listen.
Then there was an earthquake and fire, and tar
erupted from the ground and was thrown into the sky.
It started to rain down burning tar and fire onto the
cities, and everything began to burn and be destroyed.
All the people who were living there and doing evil
things were also destroyed.
Satan was angry! He had tried to spread the evil
from Sodom and Gomorrah throughout the world as
before the big flood, but the Lord had stopped his
plan. The beautiful valley of Sodom and Gomorrah
had become a burning, smelly hell. They had smoke
and fire and ashes, but when the smoke cleared the
evil had been burned up and was no more.
Just goes to show it pays to use your brains, which
Lot’s wife didn’t do, and it doesn’t pay to be greedy
as Lot was. Guess he had a name that suited him
well, because he always wanted a lot. And because
he wanted a lot, Abraham gave him a lot. But the lot
he got, got burned up, and that didn’t do Lot a lot of
good, did it? No way!
But Lot still had his daughters and his life, and
God loved him even if he had been greedy and
wanted to live in those cities. But his wife didn’t do
too well because she thought, “How can God burn up
two big cities?” So she didn’t believe.
God did burn the cities, and she turned into a
giant salt shaker Just Because she looked back at the
cities of evil instead of loving the Lord. Told you she
had no brains.
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One year after the Lord had promised, Sarah
had a son. You can imagine how happy she
and Abraham were. This baby was a miracle baby
because Sarah was an old lady when she had him.
Sarah laughed again, but this time she was laughing
because she was so happy to have a little baby boy.
They were both kind of old people, but now they had
a beautiful son of their own because the Lord always
keeps His promises. They decided to call him Isaac,
and he grew up to learn about God from his father.
Satan was also very busy, and the other people in
this place were worshipping him in a new way. Satan
had people listening to him and serving him, and
these people had told everyone that Satan was the true
God. He was very cunning though because he didn’t
tell them his real name. Perhaps this was because, if
you remember, his name means the “father of liars.”