The prophet Noah is an intriguing man and an interesting study.  He is the ancestor of every person on earth.  There are many irreligious people who would say that he didn't exist, and that the great flood of his day didn't happen, but the whole world will come to know that he and the Flood are realities.

Noah is a man in authority with God.  He is Gabriel (HC 3:386), the angel who came to Mary and announced that she would become the mother of the Savior.  He is presumably the same angel who watched over the circumstances of the Savior's birth, and who instructed Joseph in how to care for and to protect the Holy Child and His mother.  Joseph and Mary and Jesus were Noah's own descendants, and he was given a special assignment from God to care for them.  Noah was not yet resurrected when serving as this messenger.

Gabriel, or Noah, is also the angel who came to Zacharias and informed him that his wife, Elizabeth, would bear a son in her advanced years.  Gabriel is also the angel who taught and instructed Daniel.  Gabriel stands next in authority to Adam.  (HC 3:386).  Both men are the only men who are able to say that they are the father of all living.

Chapter 8 of the book of Moses indicates that Noah was named and known about before he was born.  His grandfather, Methuselah, “took glory unto himself” with the knowledge that Noah would be of his lineage.  Methuselah did an unprecedented thing by ordaining his grandson, Noah, to the priesthood when he was only ten years old.  (D&C 107:52).

Noah, the scripture says, “was a just man and perfect in his generations; and he walked with God, as did also his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.”  (Moses 8:27).

Japheth was the oldest of the three boys.  He was born when Noah was 450 years old.  Forty-two years later Shem was born “of her who was the mother of Japheth.”  (Moses 8:12).  That statement would indicate that Noah had a different wife when Ham was born eight years later.  At Ham's birth Noah was five hundred years old.

Noah most certainly had many, many other children before the births of these three righteous sons.  Those other children, however, were not righteous, and chose to follow the ways of their wicked world rather than the preaching of their righteous father.  The children of Japheth, Shem, and Ham did the same.  “And the Lord said unto Noah, The daughters of thy sons have sold themselves, for behold mine anger is kindled against the sons of men, for they will not hearken to my voice.”  (Moses 8:15).

There were only eight righteous people on the earth!  There had been many more, but those were taken up with the City of Enoch, Enoch being Noah's great grandfather.  Enoch's son, Methuselah, was left on earth, as was Methuselah's son, Lamech, so that they could be the fathers of Noah.  Both men died before the Flood.

That left only Noah, Japheth, Shem, and Ham and their wives.  They all had children and grandchildren.  They knew the Flood was coming.  They warned their children, and probably pleaded with them to listen, but their preaching was in vain.

Think how silly their warnings sounded.  How reasonable was it that the whole earth would be covered with a flood?

I love the painting of Noah standing on a pile of logs haranguing a crowd of unbelieving mockers.  There they were building a large boat high in a hill country with no water in sight.  In the background of the picture you can see the sons of Noah skidding logs to the site and quietly, diligently carrying on their work.

An apocryphal account relates that after the door of the ark was shut and the rains began, people could be heard banging on the outside walls of the ship begging to be let inside.

Were those their children?  How tempting would it have been to open the door and let them in?  What anguish did Noah's wife feel knowing that her children and all of her precious grandchildren were about to be drowned?

Thinking of her feelings one can understand why Lot's wife looked back when Sodom and Gomorrah were being destroyed.  Those holocausts were consuming their grandchildren.  What could be more painful?

Think of all the work those men went through.  Their wives probably helped.  Four men (and four women) built a ship large enough to hold two or more of every species on earth.  They also had to prepare and store sufficient food for all of those creatures, and for themselves.  The project took years.

Where did they do it?

It wasn't done in a center of population.  It would have been in a wooded area where plenty of big cypress trees (gopher wood) were available from which to make lumber.  Nor would they have wanted the project to be one of public interest.  There were giants then who opposed their preaching, and who sought Noah's life.  (Moses 8:18).  It would be interesting to discover a skeleton of one of those big men.  Those giants were probably Goliath-sized men.  Their line was wiped out by the Flood.

The ark was 450 feet long (300 cubits), 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high.  (Genesis 6:15).  It had three stories, and was divided into rooms and stalls.  It probably had no windows, and just one door in the side.  It wouldn't have even had a deck around which one could walk.  It was probably a large, enclosed container with a roof that would shed the water.  An interesting footnote to Genesis 6:16 says of the “window” that is mentioned there that “some rabbis believed it was a precious stone that shined in the ark.”  It is theorized that this is where the Brother of Jared got his idea to ask the Lord to make stones shine in darkness to light his barges.  It would certainly have not been particularly light in the ark.  How was each floor lit?  The ark probably required more lighted stones than one.

Noah was 600 years old when he entered the ark.  His sons were 150, 108, and 100.  They all left multiple adult children behind, yet they were all apparently still of child-bearing years.  I would, therefore, think that each couple should have had minor children and babies when they boarded the ark.  I would bet that children were aboard the ark, too, but weren't mentioned.

“Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.”  (Genesis 9:28).  At one point I calculated when the Flood occurred and when each of the patriarchs was born.  I believe Abraham was born just 292 years after the Flood.  Noah and Shem were still alive.  It is quite possible that Abraham met them.  Indeed, Abraham stated that he was in possession of “the records.”  (Abraham 1:31).  The record, as begun by Adam, was undoubtedly carried through the Flood aboard the ark, and was probably personally placed in Abraham's hands by Noah or Shem or Melchizedek.  Melchizedek, some theorize, was Shem.  (See “Shem” in Bible Dictionary).

It is said of Seth, Adam's son, that he “was a perfect man.”  (D&C 107:43)).  The same is said of Noah:  “Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations.”  (Genesis 6:9).  What an incredible compliment.  These two and Job are the only men in scripture to be called perfect.

Our grandfather, Noah, was a good and a great and an obedient man.