Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. Tonight, is study #7 of Genesis, chapter 11 and we are going to read Genesis 11:10-19:

These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters. And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years, and begat Salah: And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. And Salah lived thirty years, and begat Eber: And Salah lived after he begat Eber four hundred and three years, and begat sons and daughters. And Eber lived four and thirty years, and begat Peleg: And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. And Peleg lived thirty years, and begat Reu: And Peleg lived after he begat Reu two hundred and nine years, and begat sons and daughters.

I will stop reading there. We are familiar with the genealogy because we already encountered it in the Book of Genesis. Remember, in chapter 5 God began with Adam and worked His way down with Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalaleel, and so forth, and all the way down. Yes, it is a genealogical record of the generations, but the Lord had another purpose in addition to telling us the family line. He gave very specific ages to individuals. For instance, it says in Genesis 5:12-14:

And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel: And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died.

The Lord had the Biblical timeline of history in view when He said, “And Cainan lived seventy years, and begat Mahalaleel,” but the way God hid this calendar “threw off” people – not just natural-minded people, but it “threw off” God’s elect throughout most of history, causing them to go in a different direction in thinking that God was referring to the year Mahalaleel was born, but that is not so. That was the year a progenitor was born that would bring forth Mahalaleel. So, when it says, “And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died,” it was at the year of Cainan’s death that Mahalaleel was actually born, making him the next Biblical calendar reference patriarch. We saw that the calendar is “end to end.” The references to “begetting” an individual at some midpoint or dividing point in the life of the previous calendar reference patriarch was an intentional act by God to mislead. It was a “sleight of hand” to hide the true information and, therefore, the Biblical timeline of history is a parable. What is the definition of a parable? And this definition qualifies to describe the entire Bible.

By the way, we used to describe a parable this way: “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” Well, that definition worked fine for the (obvious) parables that Christ spoke or for the Book of Proverbs or when Job said, “And Job continued his parable.” However, it was not an all-encompassing definition to cover verses like John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” We would tell people that the whole Bible is a parable and they would respond by pointing out what appears to be plain statements like John 3:16 and say, “Is that a parable?” We got into trouble because our definition was not completely sufficient, so we have learned to have a better definition of a parable. It is a Biblical definition: it is that which serves to hide truth. Jesus spoke a parable when He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” The Book of Proverbs is a parable. Jesus’ parables and the Book of Proverbs hide truth. The Book of Ezekiel said, “Doth he not speak parables?” All the historical parables are just as much parables as are the seemingly plain statements like John 3:16. Many that thought they understood that verse did not understand it. A seemingly simple statement like 2Peter 3:9 where it says that God is “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” is another parabolic statement because it has hidden truth. People quickly try to come to a natural conclusion about what the word “all” means and they apply it to all people, but they are wrong and they miss the hidden truth. It is the “elect” that God is not willing should perish and it is “all” the elect that should be saved. So, this definition of a parable as “that which serves to hide truth” covers the entire Bible. In Genesis, chapter 5 when God is recording the Biblical calendar of history, this, too, is the Bible and God is not laying it out “plainly.” I do not know where you can go in the Bible to find something that is really plainly stated and where it is all laid out on the surface. The churches and seminary teach, “If there is a plain surface meaning, seek no deeper spiritual meaning.” They teach this and that is like “fool’s gold,” and you find fool’s gold on the surface; it seems to look like gold and you do not have to really dig for it. Inexperienced prospectors in old time would think they had really found something, but it was worthless. Typically, for the valuable gold you would have to pan the waters and work hard because it is hidden.

That is the way it is with the Word of God. It is always hidden: “Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself.” Christ spoke in parables to teach us the truth that if you want to come to the knowledge of truth, you have need to “study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” You must dig into the Bible.

God hid the calendar of history through this method of delivering the genealogy and He hid it very, very well – so well that it confounded individuals like Bishop Usher. When God said that someone “begat” someone, Usher would go off on that “rabbit chase” and go down a wrong trail. Usher’s calendar is the most widely accepted calendar in the corporate churches and it is printed in some Bibles. Creation ministries make reference to it.

Usher’s calendar shows creation as about six thousand years ago. There is an Old Testament side that consists of about four thousand years and a (accurate) New Testament side of about two thousand years, for a total of only six thousand years. Therefore, following God’s intentional misdirection, Usher managed to “lose” about seven thousand years of Biblical history. That is not a small thing. He has lost more history than what he found. It would indicate the world is only six thousand years old and seven thousand years just disappeared because God hid it from him. As a result, when an individual from a creation ministry debates and discuss a young earth with an atheist or evolutionist, invariably the creationist gets in trouble because he believes in an extremely short Old Testament history that can be shown to be an insufficient time to work out the Biblical history, as well as secular history. When you take into account the flood and its destruction of the earth and then the time needed to recover from that and the time needed for ancient Egyptian history to have worked out the way archeologists have discovered it to have worked out (as they find the pyramids and the dates in the secular realm), it points back to dates that go well beyond the permissible dates allowed by Usher’s calendar and its 4000-year period. The supporters of Usher’s calendar think they are holding to the Bible, but they are not. They are holding to a calendar devised by a man. It has some things correct in recognizing creation and a “young earth” and in recognizing that there is a Biblical calendar, but they managed to lose about seven thousand years of history.

We must follow the methodology God has set forth, with it being “end to end,” in most cases. There are exceptions and when there is an exception, there is the phrase, “qârâ – shêm” or “called his name,” which would indicate an immediate father/son relationship. Otherwise, with the word “begat,” it could indicate a later descendant like a grandson or great grandson. The Bible allows for that and when we follow this key, we end up with a perfect calendar of history from creation in 11,013BC all the way to the present time. We have dates for the exodus, dates for Solomon, dates for the foundation of the temple, dates for the correct beginning and ending for the reign of King Solomon that agree with the dates of secular archeology. The only way you can come all that way accurately from 11,013BC by following the Biblical calendar reference patriarchs is that it not be off by even one individual. If we were incorrect in one individual, we could be off by hundreds of years and we would expect that when we got down to dating the exodus, we would be way off and by the time we got to the point of the laying of the foundation of the temple, we would be even further off. If we were incorrect about the beginning stage regarding the “end to end” way of understanding the way God has hidden it, we could be off by thousands of years, like happened with Usher’s method. And, yet, you do not see that. You see key dates that are in sync and they also line up with dates used by secular archeologists to date Solomon’s reign. (There might be a difference of a year or so from 930 to 931BC when he ceased to reign). But, again, our calendar of history is “right on the money.” How could that be? Of course, the answer is that our understanding (of the Biblical calendar of history) is correct.

We do see some differences in the genealogies God gives in chapter 5 and chapter 11. For instance, in chapter 5 the Lord helps us with a summation, after telling us that Cainan lived 70 years and begat Mahalaleel, in verse 12. Then it says, “And Cainan lived after he begat Mahalaleel eight hundred and forty years, and begat sons and daughters.” Then we are given an additional verse in which God adds it up for us, in Genesis 5:14:

And all the days of Cainan were nine hundred and ten years: and he died.

You add the first reference of 70 years to the second reference of 840 and the total is 910. Obviously, he died at that point. In Genesis, chapter 11 we are not given that summation verse. Why? The Lord is not changing anything, but He showed us how to add up the two dates and to understand that at the completion of those two dates the individual died. That is what we see in Genesis 11:10-11:

These are the generations of Shem: Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood: And Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad five hundred years, and begat sons and daughters.

So, Shem was 100 when he begat Arphaxad. Following the same formula that we saw in Genesis 5, it does not mean that Arphaxad was born when Shem was 100, but it was someone in the line of Arphaxad that would be born two years after the flood. Then Shem lived after he begat Arphaxad 500 years. So, we add the two numbers together and Shem died at the age of 600.

Our only question is one that is very important because it tells us a calendar date when Shem was 100 years old and it tells us that he begat Arphaxad two years after the flood. And the question is, “Was that two years from the start of the flood in 4990BC? Or, was it two years from the time the flood ended?” Remember, there was a full-year voyage of 370 days, so they came out of the ark in 4989BC. Which point does God consider to be “after the flood”? Was it the beginning year of 4990BC? Or, did God mean it was two years after the flood event was concluded? Was it two years from 4990, which would be 4988? Or, was it two years from 4989, which would be 4987? This is an important question. As far as our calendar is concerned, if we do not answer it accurately, we could be one year off course.

The Lord graciously helps us with the answer to this question, if we go back to Genesis 9:28:

And Noah lived after the flood…

Notice the phrase “after the flood” is the same phrase used in Genesis 11:10: “Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood.” So, this is going to help us in defining the phrase “after the flood.” Again, it says in Genesis 9:28-29:

And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years. And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died.

Now we can know what God means by the phrase “after the flood.” We are told that Noah was 600 years old when the flood waters came upon the earth and now it is saying that he lived “after the flood” for 350 years. If he was 600 when the flood started, it lets us know that God is defining “after the flood” as the point of the beginning on the seventeenth day of the second month when the rain first started to fall. The time that comes after the beginning point of 4990BC is considered to be time that is after the flood. Noah’s entire 350 years was after the flood and then he died at the age of 950 years. In other words, if God were saying that the year spent on the ark was part of the flood and then he says, “after the flood,” you would have to take that year into consideration and that would mean it would have to say, “And Noah lived after the flood 349 years,” because he would have been 601 after that full year inside the ark and then after he came out of the ark he would have lived 349 years and his total lifespan is 950 years. But God did not say that. He very carefully said, “And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years.” Therefore, the entire year of the flood itself until they came out of the ark was counted as being part of the time “after the flood.” So, in Genesis 11:10, it says, “Shem was an hundred years old, and begat Arphaxad two years after the flood.” Therefore, in the year 4988BC, Shem was 100 years old and that was the point two years “after the flood.” He then loved 500 years more and he died in the year 4488BC. Again, God is not assisting us by adding up the two numbers “100” and “500” and God is not assisting us by telling us that he died. He is now expecting us to have picked up that pattern from chapter 5 and factored it in as we go through the rest of the genealogy. Shem is the new Biblical calendar reference patriarch from the point in 4988 to the point of 4488 when he died and in the year 4488 Arphaxad was born. It is following the same methodology we saw in Genesis, chapter 5.

I would just like to point out one thing about the year 4988BC that is interesting. When you add 4988BC and 2033AD (the date we are finding evidence as being the possible end of the world), it is 7,021 years. Then you must subtract “1” because there is no “year zero” and you get the number “7020.” The number “7020” breaks down to “10 x 2 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 13,” so we can see the purpose of God tripled, to place even greater emphasis upon it. The number “10” represents completeness and the number “13” identifies with the end of the world and the number “2” represents the caretakers of the Gospel. So, this is an interesting number to find as a date that identifies with “after the flood.” Spiritually, the flood date ties into May 21, 2011 and the year 2033 would be a date after the judgment that began on that date which identified with the flood.

Lord willing, in our next study, we will go through the genealogy that is found here in Genesis, chapter 11 and we will see God’s precision as He gives us these dates. Again, any particular date may not be so important in itself, but they all come together to form this wonderful and glorious and perfectly accurate calendar of history that the Lord has used to instruct His people at the time of the end. First, it lets us know that we are at the time of the end. It has been a tremendous help to the people of God to see where we are in time. We are very close. We are “on the edge” of the end of the world.