The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 7 – 5
Every soul will get tired and sleep eventually. At the end of a day, any day (2 Peter 3:8, as always), in some sense, you experience fatigue. At the end of a 24-hour day, we close our eyes and drift into unconsciousness; likewise, at the end of a different kind of day, our soul closes its eyes and sleeps.
This is normal. We get to live for a day (Job 14:6). But if we fall asleep after only 70 years, that’s a real waste, because it means we literally sleep the day away. Today, we live on average about 70-80 years – 1/12th, a single hour, of the day Noah lived (knowing that, you can see a new twist on Jesus’ parable in Matthew 20:1-12).
So what changed our ability to stay awake for a full thousand-year day before the Flood, to a mere hour after it? We could say something meaningless like “a curse” or “wickedness”, but we need real answers; our average lifespan is about 83 years now… is that normal?
These aren’t synonyms. Normal is what should happen to everyone, all things being equal. Average is what actually happens to everyone. And while 83 is average… it is a far cry from a normal day of 1,000 years.
NORMAL AGE
I can wax eloquent all day long, but the fact is, no one lives to be a thousand years old today. Not even close. Surely, if what I’ve said is true, someone should have made a decent stab at it; yet the oldest credible ages in the world today are around 120.
Believing that certain special men a very long time ago lived fantastic ages is one thing; but to even consider that you might live a millennium is clearly absurd, and not worth thinking about. I get it. Are we so much better than David, or Josiah, or John?
These are all good points. And I don’t think it’s important to live so long – not really. You can learn all you need to in 50 or 60 years, clearly; and yet to know what’s wrong with our lives, we have to first learn what normal is.
Everything I’ve said about soul stress shortening life spans thus far makes sense; but clearly, that can’t affect the animals whose soul is very weak; who are not aware of tomorrow, or their impending death, and deal with stress in a very simple and healthy way; killing it or running from it.
Which means that if I’m right, and the strength of our souls is indeed the source of our shortened lifespans, animals should not be affected by it, except perhaps indirectly through exposure to our domestication. They should live as long today as they did before the Flood, since God has no more reason to look at them now than before.
Children should also not be affected by it, since God doesn’t “look” at children until they’re 20. So their lifespans up to puberty should not have changed; which means we can compare our puberty age to other animals’ and then project our lifespans onto their post-puberty age to see if our lifespan is normal or not.
So we are sexually mature (defined as capable and interested in having children) at about 13. Very few of us exercise that ability, nor are we fully developed to do so properly; but it’s possible. And we live to be 70 or 80, meaning that on average 80% of our lives happens after sexual maturity. But is that normal?
A house cat reaches puberty at about 6 months, and full adulthood at about 18 months. They average about 15 years at death, occasionally up to 30 or more years – this higher number probably represents “normal”, their lifespan in an ideal environment.
This means they reach puberty at only 1/60th of their normal life span! Meaning 59/60ths or about 98.5% of their life is left, to happen after puberty!
Now let’s imagine that we had the life cycle of a cat, and lived to be 70; that means we would have to hit puberty at one year old! Because cats are already having babies when we learn to walk!
But look at this from another direction; if cats had our lifecycle, and life-to-puberty represented 20% of their total life, they would expect to have a lifespan of only 2.5 years!
If your cat lived only 2.5 years, you’d know something was wrong. So why don’t we know that about humans? Because if it took us only 1.5% of our lives to reach puberty at 13, as it does a cat, we would expect to live 866 years! Which is remarkably close to what the Bible records as “normal”!
I know this is far-fetched. I don’t really expect to live to a thousand years. But I consider that my own fault, not God’s; and due to my own soul’s failings, not a divine limit or some kind of climate change after the Flood. And something that it is totally possible to change.
Take horses; they live about 30 years, occasionally up to 60. Horses hit puberty about 1 year old; as with cats, 1/30th-1/60th of their lifespan (97-98.5%) happens after puberty… as should ours! So the idea of us living to be 1,000 years is not as out of line as you might think, compared to the life cycle of a cat or a horse.
These numbers are sloppy averages, and they’re not intended to prove our life span exactly; but they do prove that 1,000 years for us isn’t far out of line with the expected life spans after maturity for almost every other living thing.
You can do the same thing with pigs, cows, dogs, pretty much every animal. In general, the longer it takes an animal to reach puberty, the longer it will live in total. One rare exception to this rule is elephants, whose post-pubescent lifespans are about 80% of their total, like us; in addition other primates tend to be closer to us in terms of lifespan-after-puberty, but still noticeably higher than we are.
Macaque monkeys hit puberty about 3 years of age, and live to be 25-40 in captivity; if we lived a similar lifespan, we would expect to live to 173; for gorillas, puberty is 6 and lifespan is 40-60 years; if we lived like gorillas, we’d expect to live to be 130.
With primates in particular, these numbers are hard to nail down. Wild populations rarely die of old age, and when they do we often don’t know how old they were at the time, and zoo-kept animals are, by definition, not in a “normal” environment, and have no “purpose” to their life (Proverbs 29:18).
Yet even with these limitations, primates still live longer than we do, relative to puberty. And far more common in the world are animals like parrots and rats (95% of their life is after puberty, give or take). There is a considerable variation in this among species, of course; but across almost all types of animals, childhood represents a much smaller portion of their overall lifespan than it does for humans.
So taking 20% of your life just to get to puberty is the rare exception in nature, not the rule. It should take 3% of your lifespan, or even less.
JACOB’S AGE
No one can argue that, since the Flood, we’re lucky to pass 100 years old. Abraham certainly knew that being 100 years old was “old” (Genesis 17:17), despite going on to father even more children much later in life. This is something that Sarah knew other people would find unusual (Genesis 21:7).
Abraham’s age of 175 was triply-emphasized “a good old age, an old man, full of years” (Genesis 25:8). The same was said of Isaac when he died at 180 (Genesis 35:29). The Bible must have stressed this because it was not normal for the time – just as it is not normal for our time.
Contemporary histories of 4,000 years ago (really, mythologies) are pretty vague, and there seems to be a sharp line between fantastic lifespans of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, and what we would consider the normal lifespan of 70-100 years old.
In other words, their mythologies record pre-Flood “gods” (Adam, Enoch, etc.) and post-Flood “men”. Because after the Flood, as now, the average person generally lived an average life. With that in mind, consider the first words out of Pharaoh’s mouth in Genesis 47:8.
Why that question out of the blue? Age is not something that was mentioned much in the Bible. In fact, I can’t think of a single example where anyone was ever asked their age, and if it was mentioned at all, it was in ways like John 8:57.
So first, why did Pharaoh care; and second, why did Jacob then make excuses for “only” being twice as old as Pharaoh would ever get? Genesis 47:9. Reading that, we naturally assume Jacob meant his father and grandfather. But GWV translates it: “the years of my life have been few and difficult, fewer than my ancestors’ years”.
Abraham (175) and Isaac (180) didn’t live much longer than he himself would go on to live (147). So why did Jacob say this? At the time, Abraham and his family were called Hebrews (Genesis 14:13, 40:15), as was the land they dwelt in. They were well enough known in Egypt that the Egyptians had prejudices against them (Genesis 43:32).
Looking at this chart of Jacob’s immediate ancestors, you can see that while Jacob himself might not live an absurdly long time, Jacob’s ancestors had; in particular, his ancestor Eber, who had only just died 50 years or so before, at 464 years old!
Jacob’s days were at least roughly comparable to the days of his father and grandfather; but no, they didn’t hold a candle to the days of Eber! So it was to Eber and others that Jacob compared his “few and evil years”.
Now if Pharaoh knew of the Eber-ites (Hebrews), it’s highly unlikely he didn’t also know of their namesake Eber! That’s why Pharaoh’s first question was “how old are you?” Because Pharaoh must have heard of Hebrews with impossibly long ages – from Joseph, if nothing else – and he wanted to know just how old this old man really was.
And that in turn is why Jacob said “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m only a little bit older than normal, not absurdly old like my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Eber!” For although Jacob was already far older than Pharaoh could ever hope to be, he knew better than to compare himself to Pharaoh and the other “average” people (2 Corinthians 10:12).
At 130 (Genesis 41:46), Jacob would have set a new world record for longevity if he were alive today. Yet he considered his days far fewer than they should have been. Because he knew the “average” was far below “normal”!
And he told us why: because his days were evil. He knew his lifespan would be nothing compared to what it would have been if he hadn’t been a liar, deceiver, and thief who insisted on learning everything the hard way.
Did Jacob follow the things you learned in the previous lessons? Genesis 31:38-42, 42:36-38, 30:15-16, 34:30, 27:11-12, 35-36, 41, and so on. And what was the net result of this? Genesis 45:26-28.
Jacob, far more than most in the Bible, bore an enormous amount of soul stress – largely self-inflicted, as it usually is (Genesis 32:24-32). All he had to do was let go; but no. He always had to do it the hard way. Anyone who lives a life full of that many problems, that poorly handled, is going to fulfill Psalms 88:3-4.
He would die young because his life had exhausted his soul; his days were evil because Jacob always had to learn things the hard way. His days were a struggle even before he first saw the light of day! (Genesis 25:22-26).
God liked the plucky underdog (Romans 9:13), but couldn’t ignore his amoral behavior. And so God “looked” at Jacob more than most; which made Jacob wilt more than he might have had to, had God simply ignored him as he does most of the deceivers in the world (Psalms 73:1-5, 16-21).
Yet Jacob was a “pet project” from the womb, which meant Jacob had to go through a lot more than the average person to become who God needed him to be. Jacob was more of a challenge to save than most (1 Corinthians 1:26-29), not unlike Paul (1 Corinthians 15:9), who likewise took more “looking” than most (2 Corinthians 11:22-29).
So it is a testament to the power of what you’re learning here, that despite all of these truly foolish choices, when Jacob finally learned his lessons he STILL lived double the years Moses predicted for the Israelites!
THE NEW NORMAL
The Biblical lifespans are distant and almost mythical to us; even if we believe them, they are clearly beyond our reach. But are they really? Few have ever surpassed a hundred years; yet that proves merely the average; what is normal, for those who don’t act so much like Jacob?
Consider Moses, he died at 120 years; but did he die of old age? (Deuteronomy 34:7). We see this and think of a withered old man who merely wasn’t blind and who could still walk. But try to see this with fresh eyes, without the movies and paintings you’ve seen clouding your vision; how old did Moses actually appear?
Scientists today distinguish between chronological age (the years you’ve lived), and biological age (the age your body appears to be, and functions as if it were). This means, in a scientifically-real sense, we can be younger or older than “average” based on the choices we make in our lives.
We all know that the biological age of, say, a meth addict is much older than, say, a yoga instructor. Generally, we are only 1-5 years older or younger, biologically, than the average; in extreme cases perhaps 10. But what would the biological age be… of someone who has lived only 120 out of their 1,000 years?
How old do you suppose Noah looked at 120? Surely he wouldn’t look 120; what’s the point of living a thousand years as a walking corpse? So did his body rush him to the appearance of 80 years, then keep him there for another 900? Or did he simply age slower?
Wouldn’t it make more sense for him to mature to adulthood at 20 or 30, as we do… but then to live for 800 years in the prime of life? Looking 30 at 30, 40 at 150, 45 at 300, 50 at 600, and so on? If you were God, would you design man to spend 900 years feeling 30, or 900 years feeling 80? Then consider yourself #goldenruled!
Now let’s look at Moses differently. He clearly had the energy of a young man, since his “natural force was not abated”, and in our world, who above 50 can say that? His eye was not dim, and few today above 60 can say that. Moses had the strength to conquer the Promised Land, and desperately wanted to do so (Deuteronomy 3:23-27).
So what if Moses actually looked and felt about 40 years old? Moses didn’t die “an old man, in a good old age, full of years” like Abraham did (Deuteronomy 32:48-51). He died full of life, with clear sight.
Which means, all things being equal, he should have lived much longer – perhaps even a full day. And if God specifically has to tell you it’s time to die, then clearly, “all things are not equal” (Deuteronomy 32:48-52).
God tells you right there why Moses died; not of old age, but because no one who treated the Rock that way could lead His people into the Promised Land (Numbers 20:7-13). So Moses’ death at a mere 120 years was not normal.
Job 4:19-21 (GWV) …Those houses [our bodies] can be crushed quicker than a moth! From morning to evening, they are shattered. They will disappear forever without anyone paying attention. Haven’t the ropes of their tent been loosened? Won’t they die without wisdom?
Moses was, as we all are, cut off in his youth (Isaiah 38:10-12). The stakes of our tent are pulled up, and without wisdom we will die. But why does that happen to us… and more importantly, why didn’t it happen to Lamech and Cain before the Flood?
SONS OF ADAM
Before the Flood, every age we’re given (except Enoch, who doesn’t count) is close to 1,000 years. So it’s reasonable to assume that everyone who didn’t meet a violent death lived close to 1,000 years. Yet after the Flood, life spans take a sharp downturn.
If it was the Flood that changed things, then the first few centuries after the Flood should have seen a swift change from the “impossible” pre-Flood lifespans to the average lifespans of 80 or so years we see today.
But remember that word “average”. Normal is what should happen to everyone, all things being equal. Average is what actually happens to everyone. The normal lifespan before the Flood was 1,000 years. The average lifespan before the Flood was about 900, to judge by the ages in Genesis 5.
After the Flood the average lifespan dropped to about 100 years over the course of 800 years or so, around the time of the Exodus, based solely on the ages given in the Bible. Why? Most would point to Genesis 6:3 and the statement “yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years”.
If that were a new limit on man’s lifespan, it might make some sense, yet to whom was this applied? Not Shem (600), Abraham (175), or Aaron (123), to name a few. So if this didn’t really happen, then it wasn’t a rule… and we must be looking at it wrong!
Given that the Flood happened soon after, it makes much more sense that God was giving mankind as a whole 120 years before He wiped them out; not unlike what He did for the Amorites (Genesis 15:16). This was a warning, spread through Noah, that they had only 120 years left to repent before the Flood (2 Peter 2:5).
There is only one hard-and-fast rule God ever placed on man’s lifespan: Genesis 2:17, Job 14:6, etc. Did that ever change? John 9:4. Man was given a day, 1,000 years, in which to live and work – not guaranteed a full day, but offered up to one whole day.
Nothing has ever been said to modify that. We should live for one day before we fall asleep, and that is possible even today (Ecclesiastes 6:6). Yet we typically fall asleep after a single hour. Why? Skeptics will immediately point to Psalms 90:10.
But here again… if 70/80 years were the new rule, how could we still have the occasional 120 year old person even today? And as always, get the context: Psalms 90:2-9. This was not written by David, who did indeed live to be 70; in fact, this was written by Moses ( Psalms 90:1), who lived to be 120 – and didn’t die of natural causes even then.
Wouldn’t it be very hypocritical of him to limit everyone else to 70 years? Again, it’s not like, even today, many people don’t reach 100 years or more. So clearly 70 or 80 isn’t the limit; so what does this verse even mean? Why say it at all?
Psalms 90:3-4 (GWV) “You turn mortals back into dust and say, ‘Return, descendants of Adam.’ Indeed, in your sight a thousand years are like a single day, like yesterday…”
Remember, Moses was writing down stories about the thousand-year lifespans of people only a handful of generations before. The Israelites certainly would have wanted to know why they weren’t seeing that in their time… wouldn’t you? Don’t you?
This Psalms is Moses’ answer. As descendants of Adam, we should live as long as he did, one full day. We are, after all, made in his image, and after his likeness (Genesis 5:3). There is no real difference between us and him! But we don’t live as long as he did, obviously. And this is why: Psalms 90:5-6.
God drowned Adam’s sons in a flood. They slept the sleep of death, but after the flood new grass grew up. New grass sprouted – think about that. What does grass represent in the Bible? 1 Peter 1:24. So the post-Flood population is pictured by this new grass.
But even this grass should last a full day, from morning until evening – 1,000 years of life! So what’s our problem? James 1:11. “As soon as the sun rises” we wither and die. In the real world, this takes about an hour after dawn; precisely the 70-80 years Moses led us to expect!
DRY GRASS
Think about what causes grass to burn up; remember, in general, the sun is good for grass. For the sun to burn the grass requires that the grass already be low on water! Amos 8:11. So does warm weather kill every blade of grass? Jeremiah 17:5-8. So why do we burn up? Jeremiah 17:9-10.
Now that’s basically what Moses said in Psalms 90:7-9. The Israelites weren’t living only 70 years because the lifespans magically shortened; but because God was actually paying attention to their sins, and trying them to prove their mettle. It was their failure in those trials that angered God; which in turn caused more trials. Our sins were set in the light of His face! Compare that to James 1:11-12.
When God is ignoring you, as He pointedly was ignoring Sodom (Genesis 18:21), you can get away with evil and live a soul-stress-free life for an entire day (Psalms 7:11). But when God decides to actively notice you, it puts you in the hot seat, so to speak (Jude 1:7). And the closer God looks, the more flaws He sees, and the more the wickedness is burned away – hence Exodus 33:20.
After the Flood humans “sprouted backup” and God was determined not to let things get out of hand again. He seems to have taken a laissez-faire approach to judging sins in the antediluvian world; consider Cain (Genesis 4:8-15). This is the opposite of His approach in Genesis 9:6.
By that later law, Cain deserved to die, life for a life; yet not only did God not execute him, God specifically forbade anyone else to do it. Why such mercy, for such an obvious and unrepentant sinner? Lamech seemed to think he was worthy of similar, even greater protection (Genesis 4:23-24).
For some reason, the death penalty seems to have been off the table. God must have been allowing man to live a full life without capital punishment, in the hopes he would learn from his own mistakes, and repent of his sins on his own. So how did this liberal utopia work out? Genesis 6:1-7.
Guaranteeing everyone a full day without external judgment, leading by example and hoping rebellious sinners picked up the habit and got their act in a pile by themselves was clearly not working. Why would it?
Like modern liberalism (judge not, don’t spank children, gold stars for participation, God loves everyone, etc.), it sounded like a good idea to people at first; and God had to try it if for no other reason than to prove that it didn’t work (Psalms 51:4).
…but like modern liberalism it didn’t and that’s why there was a flood (Genesis 6:11-13). I can’t let a comment like that go without a reference to Matthew 24:37-39 to show there is a very real connection between the liberal attitudes which led to the flood and those which lead to His second coming.
Back to Genesis, God had promised not to destroy the world with a flood again, and to keep that promise He had to prevent it from getting out of hand like this again (Genesis 9:9-17). So rather than letting everyone live to 1,000 years, and then judging them after the day was over (Hebrews 9:27), God raised the pressure. He shined light on their grass.
What does light represent? John 3:19-21. Light can come from the sun, moon, fire, or stars (1 Peter 4:12, Genesis 1:16-17). Light also comes from God’s face, which is like the sun (Revelation 1:16). So this light that burns up the grass is God looking at mankind.
Obviously, God shines light on the Earth with His eyes (Matthew 6:22), which are of course angels (Revelation 5:6)… Angels whose job it was to bring light to man and to try man (Psalms 11:4, 78:49). And think about it… which will weary your eyes more? No light at all… or too much bright light?
THE LIGHT OF GOD
God has done nothing in secret (Isaiah 48:16). Everything I just said is clearly stated in your Bible, and you already know the verse that says it. You’ve read it dozens of times, but because you didn’t see it, you didn’t understand it. In fact, I just had you read it again: Genesis 9:13.
In order to prevent man from building up a thousand years’ worth of reasons for God to kill him, God set a rainbow in the cloud to JUDGE man. What is that rainbow? Ezekiel 1:28, Revelation 10:1, Revelation 4:2-3. So clearly, a rainbow surrounds God’s throne. But what is that rainbow?
Use Romans 1:20; what is a real rainbow? It is white light that has passed through a prism and been broken up into seven pieces – colors. Now if God is blinding white light (1 Timothy 6:16), then what would seven lesser lights be? Revelation 4:5. It was to these seven archangels, the “seven eyes of God” (Zechariah 3:9), symbolized as the seven colors of the rainbow, that God delegated the job of trying man after the Flood.
Before the Flood, that wasn’t their role, apparently. Stars are a distant, dim source of light, which pale in the light of the sun or even the moon. But now He had set them as a bow in the cloud; a much closer, brighter source of light on our side of a veil which hides the sun and moon!
The cloud shades man from the light of God’s face (Job 22:12-14), because by not seeing us, He doesn’t have to judge mankind. That’s why God’s face looking at the Earth in Genesis 6:5 killed the pre-Flood world (Job 22:15-17), and Sodom (Genesis 18:21), and is an example of final judgment (Jude 1:7).
So God surrounds Himself with a cloud for our protection (Psalms 97:1-4). But the cloud that protects us from light also imprisons us in darkness (Lamentations 3:44, Isaiah 44:22). Which is why God put lightning in the cloud to give us SOME light!
None of us were capable of taking the full light of God’s face so God hid behind the cloud, even in pre-Flood times, revealing Himself only once a day to judge each man’s works (Genesis 3:8). (Remember, this is true in some way for every type of day – hence the need for daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly sacrifices in the OC).
The problem was, if God waited for a full day to finally peer around the cloud at Earth, there was no one who could survive except Noah. So God decided instead to reveal Himself, through the angels, a little bit at a time so we could change before we spend a full day walking in the wrong direction! (Job 42:5-6).
Because lightning, like the rainbow, is another symbol for angels (Ezekiel 1:13-14, 28). And after the Flood, God placed a rainbow/lightning/angels in the cloud to provide some light, but not the full beating glare of the sun (1 Corinthians 13:12).
So that even a Gentile whom God ordinarily ignores for his own good, if he sufficiently impresses an angel, can be heard by God eventually (Acts 10:2-4). Because that is the foremost job of these eyes of God: 2 Chronicles 16:9.
After the Flood God ceased hoping for man to get it right on his own; ceased leaving him alone for a thousand years to dig his own grave. Instead, He was actively setting traps for him to fall into (1 Timothy 6:9).
Lamech would never have survived 777 years of life after the Flood; God wouldn’t have waited for him to die to judge him; instead, He sent angels to judge man a little at a time so that He wouldn’t have to do it all at once.
Eyes that put men’s sins in the spotlight as soon as they’re committed (Amos 9:8), and actively challenge them with new tests – and naturally, few men survive this for very long (Ezekiel 22:31). Yet the same trap which would consume the wicked grass… would make the righteous grass thrive (Psalms 80:14-18, see also 1 Peter 2:7-8).
God’s gaze caused the hills to melt like wax (Psalms 97:5), yet the same gaze that destroyed the pre-Flood world saved Noah Psalms 97:10-11). Just as the same beating sun that will shrivel and burn thirsty grass will make healthy, well-watered grass grow rapidly and flourish!
Likewise, God’s light burns up the wicked, yet benefits the righteous – just as it did in Exodus 14:19-20. To the righteous He’s a precious cornerstone, to the wicked something to trip over; thus, the same angels who revealed God to the righteous… hid Him from the unrighteous (Isaiah 8:13-14).
The righteous looked at the cloud and the bow and the lightning and learned about God’s government from it, as you just did (Job 12:7-10). Yet the same cloud and its rainbow hid God from the wicked, who worshiped the angels in the cloud, instead of the Light which made the rainbow possible (Psalms 97:6-10, Romans 1:20, 25). I mean, think about it… what rainbow exists without the sun? Romans 1:25.
THE NUMBERING OF ISRAEL
One of David’s greatest sins was in counting the people of Israel (2 Samuel 24:1, 10). Taking a census, basically. To be honest, I’ve never been quite sure why that was a sin, so for now we’ll just take God’s word for it that it was. What I’m interested is in comparing that story to the other version in 1 Chronicles 21:1-8.
Notice a major difference? One version blames God’s desire to punish Israel. One version blames Satan. Which is true? Both, of course. David would have lived a thousand years easily, under pre-Flood rules.
Yet God shined a light on him, and God’s eyes tempted him. And David failed; and David’s grass wilted under that gaze. That’s why David prayed prayers like Psalms 143, particularly Psalms 143:2,7,11. If we invite God to notice us, and gaze at our hearts under a microscope with His candle (Proverbs 20:27), none of us will survive for long.
We need some of that scrutiny, to be sure; Jeremiah 10:23-24. We want some of that; but no one of us can look God in the eye and live; not even Moses… But we might be able to look God in the leg, or the arm, and live. Remember, Exodus 19:21-25 would not have killed all the Israelites; just “many” of them (Exodus 24:9-11).
So we want God to see our greatest problems, one at a time if possible, and give us the correction we need to find them. And we’d like God to pretend not to see the rest until we can handle them (Hebrews 4:11-16, Ephesians 2:1-10).
We want God to use grace to give us a chance to confront our many flaws one at a time without stressing our souls by confronting them all at once! (Psalms 6:1-5). Notice it is the vexing of his soul that is bringing him to the grave! Soul-stress caused by God’s anger! Isaiah 40:7-8.
And as long as God doesn’t get impatient with our lack of progress and overwhelm our souls with problems… why shouldn’t we live as long as Noah?
PROLONG YOUR DAYS
As I’ve said many times, our “day” is much shorter than it should be (Proverbs 10:27). Notice the connection there between days and years. When it says our days are shortened (Psalms 89:45), we naturally assume that means fewer of them.
And it does mean we have fewer 24-hour days… but it also means the 1,000 year day we should be living was “shortened”. How? Psalms 102:23. Notice that phrase “strength in the way” – soul-strength! If that is weakened, what happens? Psalms 102:24. But does that apply to everyone? Psalms 102:28.
It is these trials which cause our souls to become weary. Notice in Psalms 90:10 it is “by reason of STRENGTH” that we might live to 80! Strength of what? The strength of a rested soul!
Remember Moses’ audience; Old Covenant people, who continually irritated God (Numbers 14:22). Their soul continually had to fight with their stiff-necked spirits. So for them, even the strongest might only live to be 80.
Yet if a strong soul could fight a stubborn spirit such as theirs and still stay awake for perhaps an extra decade… how much longer might that same strong soul stay awake, if it had the help of a meek spirit and a humble heart? Verily, that threefold cord would be downright hard to kill! (Ecclesiastes 4:8-12).
Again, Moses lived almost twice as long as he warned the Israelites their lifespan would be! And we know exactly why: Numbers 12:3. And he clearly told them their lives didn’t have to be this short; Deuteronomy 5:33.
When we read those words, we tend to think “prolong your days” means “extend your time in the Promised Land”. And in a sense, that’s certainly true; but remember: true on every level. In their most literal sense, these words mean to extend the length of your day of life.
To push your “bedtime” a few more hours back into the night (or at least, into the afternoon!). Deuteronomy 4:40. But it’s more than that; for if you keep reading, it says these things can prolong their days upon the Earth infinitely. In other words, their day need never end! 1 Peter 1:22-25.
For our flesh is only like grass because we lack faith (Matthew 6:30). Our fleshy grass will be clothed with light-resistant linens if we have faith (Revelation 19:8). Yet that, too, fails to clearly say it; because “faith” brings to mind images of piety and obedience, and that obscures the far simpler, far more practical point Jesus was making.
What was His point in Matthew 6:31-34? Clearly, Jesus’ point was not to trouble our souls with problems we don’t need to worry about. Not to weary ourselves with problems that God has already taken care of!
Which proves once again, that when we ultimately fall asleep, whether after an hour or after a thousand years twice-told, it will be for the same reason we do each night: because our soul is simply unable to keep its eyes open (Psalms 13:3).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
When you truly see what God means, and listen to what He says, He truly did “do nothing in secret” and “declared the end from the beginning”. Because when God said He put a bow in the cloud, with those few words, He said all this, and more, to those who were listening!
He put the archangels in the cloud as a way of preventing Himself from ever getting that angry with mankind again. Because the light brings truth, but truth itself is a test; the hotter the light, the greater the trial (1 Corinthians 3:13).
But, as with grass, the brighter the day, the greater the potential for growth. And which we are – watered or dry, wicked or righteous – is revealed by the day. The day – meaning, simultaneously, the thousand-year lifespan, the light of the truth, the light of God’s angels, and the light of God’s own face.
All of these test our work and make it clear exactly how good it is… or burn it up, if the works aren’t good enough. Most of us die as soon as the day begins because God, through the angels, is trying us, testing us, and if we are short on water we burn up (John 7:38-39, Acts 5:32).
And these trials, unless we knock each one out of the park, wear us out; and the more we have to face, the more likely we are to make a mistake; which is why we need grace, shade from the sun (Psalms 32:1-4). But that shade should only be needed temporarily, for mature, well watered grass has nothing to fear from the light of God (Isaiah 58:11).
We all begin our lives in darkness, swaddled in a dark cloud. But as we tenderly poke our green blades above the damp earth, God shines more and more light on our grass. Feeding us, strengthening us, ray by ray – or killing us, ray by ray, as the case may be – until we can hopefully, one day, stand naked in the full light of the sun (Proverbs 4:18), as Adam and Eve once did. And of course, you could have saved yourself the trouble of reading this lesson if you’d just heard and believed Peter:
1 Peter 3:10-12 For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue [spirit] from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: Let him eschew evil [soul], and do good; let him seek peace [heart], and ensue it. For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.
Every time you bind yourself to another piece of stress or make a decision someone else could have made, every time you tolerate backtalk from your heart or spirit, every time you hesitate or second-guess a decision you know is right, you are one decision closer to death (Proverbs 3:1-2).
God didn’t stutter; if He said long life and length of days He meant two different things; the length of ONE day, and the number of DAYS that come after it (Psalms 34:12-14). So these things also determine whether you have one more day, in the second resurrection… Or days without end (Psalms 21:4, Proverbs 9:11).
And how well you get your fractions under control, how easily you can see the path, and how many challenges you accept will determine not only whether you live forever… but whether you live as long as Noah in this day.