Madelyn Rose Craig - Names, Nations, and the New Testament

Preface: Letter from the Author

D ear reader,

From the time I was young, I had a passion for apologetics. I would read just about every book on the subject that I could get my hands on. I studied writings from geology to biology, paleontology to astronomy, history to current events, and so much more. Yet in all of that reading, I rarely found information or research on the people after Babel, and especially on Noahs immediate descendants. If I did find such a book, it was often incomplete, outdated, or lacking substance.

In 2015, I was reading through the book of Ezekiel when I came across the names Gog and Magog, among others, and noticed they looked familiar. So, I went back to Genesis and the Table of Nations, read through the list, and noticed it was similar to the account in Acts about the day of Pentecost. Though many have made the connection before, Pentecost is a sort of reversal of what happened at Babel. Where the nations were divided by language at the Tower because of mankinds rebellion, all people were united in Christ through His obedience and forgiveness and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. After reading these passages, I began to wonder about their application in history, and I faced some significant questions. What happened at Babel? How did the Table of Nations become the nations of the world? Does Gods plan of Salvation for all people connect to these things? What does that mean for us? Thus, I began writing this book.

I wrote this book not solely for the sake of knowing where these nations went, but so that others who want to know how to defend their faith can have such a resource. This is more than a commentary on Genesis chapter 10. This is an apologetics handbook of where mankind came from, where they went, and what that means for us. A lot of preparation went into this. I read chronicles, annals, chronologies, histories, summaries, whole books, original texts, those long sections of Scripture we often skip over...you get the picture. Basically, I read all the boring stuff so you did not have to. Whole books have been written on some of these places, people, nations, and even some cities and their names!