theology that every believer needs to know and practice. Question three: What does the passage mean to the original listeners or readers? The ancient Near East and the Roman Empire were radically different from our rapidly-changing world today, although human nature was pretty much the same. We can’t read very far into the Bible before we encounter envy, murder, lying, drunkenness, and indecency. Things were so bad that the Lord had to send a flood that wiped out everybody except Noah and his family.