Three-headed predecessors

A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that more than 10 percent of Americans think Noah's wife was Joan of Arc. Imagine if the same bunch had been asked about Noah’s sons Shem, Ham and Japheth. They might easily confuse them with The Three Stooges!

Shem is the progenitor of the nation Israel and Abraham is a descendant of Shem.

Jordan explains, “Who did God belong to? He said, ‘I’m the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; I’m the God of Israel,’ and Shem and his lineage were given the responsibility to look after the spiritual issues of life. God’s Word is committed to Shem. God’s Son, when He comes, comes through the line of Shem.

“Anytime Japheth or Ham get to messing with religion they make a mess of things. Just check it out. But when Shem does it—all of the great world religions come from the descendants of Shem. It’s fascinating.

“Genesis 9:27 says, ‘God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan (Ham’s son) shall be his servant.’

“There are the three needs man has—spiritual, physical and intellectual. Shem is charged with meeting the spiritual needs; inner spiritual strength. Ham is charged with meeting the physical needs and skills to carry out the purposes. His focus is on technology. Japheth meets the intellectual needs.

“Descendants of Ham have been the great influencers of human history through invention and technology. In fact, the first great world civilizations were brought about in Egypt and Babylon and those are Ham’s descendants. Nimrod, one of Ham’s boys, establishes Babylon and Egypt; the great cradles of civilization.

“Japheth's the one who gives direction and purpose to things. He comes along and sort of takes from the other two and brings them together because Japheth is the facilitator. He’s the expander. He takes religion and develops it into a system of coordinated thinking. He develops theology."

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I didn’t own my first car (a used red Dodge Omni hatchback) until I was a junior at Ohio State and so I relied on my bicycle. I remember cycling to the state fairgrounds one Saturday morning for an outdoor press event called by Ohio’s U.S. Sen. John Glenn, the famous astronaut.

I was wearing a pantsuit and dress shoes, representing Ohio State’s student newspaper The Lantern as one of its fledgling reporters. It was a hot day and sweat was rolling down my forehead as I pedaled right up to where the press conference was already under way and proceeded to lock my bike up to a nearby tree.

About a half-dozen professional journalists surrounded me and soon after Glenn began taking questions from the crowd, he singled me out, saying with a friendly smile, “How about you, miss? Do you have a question for me?”

I was taken totally off-guard. Suddenly, all eyes were upon me as I somehow managed to spit out a question I had memorized from the night before in prepping for the story. While I no longer remember the subject matter, I do remember how kind Glenn was toward me. Of course, he was a fellow Buckeye, having graduated from Ohio State.