God asked Noah to make a large boat by which his family could be preserved from the flood. God also told him to take in pairs of animals and birds so that their species could continue. As Noah started building this ark he faced a lot of ridicule from other people because no one had ever seen a flood till then and it had never rained. God's mechanism at that time was to water the earth with a mist, and it was beyond their imagination to accept what Noah told them. However, Noah believed in God and what He had told him, and during the next 120 years when the ark was being built, Noah stood as a witness to the people, warning them about the flood and inviting them to turn to God.

Finally, when the ark was ready and Noah's family (his wife, three sons and their wives) and the animals had entered the ark, it rained till the water covered even the tallest mountain peaks. All people, animals and birds, except the ones in the ark. Then God made the water recede, and everything from the ark came out, and life on earth started again.

God made a promise that He would never again destroy the world through a flood. He created a rainbow, telling Noah that whenever it started raining He would see the rainbow as a reminder of this promise. The Bible tells us that God would finally destroy this earth with fire, after which He would create a new heaven and a new earth. We also read that similar conditions would prevail on earth as in Noah's days, with immorality and violence, before the day Jesus would come to judge the world.

Cultivation started again, and one of the things Noah did was to grow a vineyard. He made wine from the grapes and drank so much that he became drunk and lay partly exposed in his tent. His son Ham happened to see him, and he went and gossiped about it to his brothers Shem and Japheth. These two went backwards into the tent and covered their father. When Noah woke up and realised what had happened he cursed Ham's son Canaan who later became the father of the nations known as the Canaanites.