Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #1 of Genesis, chapter 5 and we will read Genesis 5:1-2:

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him; Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.

I will stop reading there. We have already talked about this back in Genesis, chapter 1 of God’s creation of mankind and how man was created in the likeness and image of God. Of course, this is a tremendous thing. It is a wonderful fact of this creation that God has created a creature in His own likeness, which is unique from everything we can know in the Bible. God had not done this before. Man stands alone as the only creature in this world and, in all likelihood, in all the other creations of God as being made in the very image and likeness of God.

To begin with, in Genesis, chapter 5 this is a statement we would almost expect to have seen in chapter 1, as it says in Genesis 5:1:

This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him;

However, we are already in Genesis, chapter 5. God has already recorded the creation itself in Genesis, chapter 1 and in chapter 2. He told us about the fall of mankind in chapter 3. We do not know exactly how long it has been, but already several decades have passed as Cain and Abel grew into adulthood and became men and then Cain rose up and slew his brother. At the end of chapter 4 God appointed another seed (Seth) instead of Abel whom Cain slew. We will read in Genesis 5, verse 3 that Adam was 130 years old when he begat Seth, so this is well into history now by 130 years and, yet, at this particular point in Genesis, chapter 5, God makes this statement: “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” We wonder why God would make that kind of statement. The answer is because God is now going to begin to reveal the timeline of history; He is going to give us the calendar of the Bible, so in this statement it says, _“This is the book of the generations of Adam,” and notice that the word “generations” is a plural word. The name Adam also means “man,” so this is the book of the generations of man and as we continue to look at Genesis 5 and Genesis 10 and 11 we will find that the Biblical calendar of history was attached to various men or various calendar reference patriarchs. At this point from the beginning of creation Adam’s age is key because we know he was created in the first week of creation. As Adam aged, his age became a record of the age of the earth. You could know how old the earth and the universe is based on Adam’s age.

By the way, keeping track of time from the beginning is the same as it is today. Remember what it said back in Genesis about the sun, moon and stars in Genesis 1:14:

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:

This is referring to the sun, the moon and the stars. When God created them and placed them in the heavens above, God attached the light to the sun, but the movement of these celestial bodies govern the movement of time from the point of their creation. These movements are very precise. Today, as well as then, we know that a lunar month is 29.530 days and we know that a year is 365.2422 days. They are very accurate and very precise, year after year because it was very important to God that there be an accurate method of timekeeping and the creation of the celestial clock means that time is in the hands of God. It is not in the hands of men or in the hands of historians or individuals that make up calendars, but time is in the hands of God. He created time with the creation of the world and His creation of the sun, moon and stars.

Adam was formed in the first week of creation in the first year. And now God has said, “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.” Adam is the first calendar reference patriarch and then others would follow. For instance, in the New Testament, it says in Jude 1:14:

And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam…

So Adam was the first and Enoch was the seventh generation from Adam. We find that God assigned a year in which Enoch would be born. Of course, Enoch never died, but he was taken up and God will give us the year he was taken. Lord willing, as we continue to study the Book of Genesis we will find that Noah becomes the calendar reference patriarch and the flood is keyed to his birth and his days. That is why God tells us that it was in the 600th year of Noah that the flood came and then we read that Noah lived 350 years after the flood and then he died and another calendar patriarch would take over, because this is the “book of the generations of Adam” or of the “generations of man.” Each calendar referenced patriarchs is one of those generations of man and God is keeping a record.

You know, this language where it says, “This is the book of the generations of Adam,” is not found anywhere else in the Old Testament. The only similar statement is found at the beginning of the New Testament in Matthew 1:1:

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Here, as God is opening up the New Testament and He says this in chapter 1, verse 1 of the first book you see in the New Testament. We were a little surprised that the verse in Genesis 5, verse 1 was given there and not in Genesis 1, verse 1, but the verse in Genesis 5:1 applies to the entire Old Testament. It applies to all the Biblical calendar patriarchs in the time before Christ because time in the Old Testament was kept according to the timeline of various men.

It is a blessing that today we still have this timeline as we live in this most evil age at the time of the end of the world. It is the most evil time imaginable. It is a time when man does not want prayer in schools. They do not want statements like, “In God we trust,” and they would like to do away with any reference to God or His Bible or the Ten Commandments and, yet, here we are and it is the year 2016AD and “AD” are the initials for the Latin phrase anno domini, which means “in the year of our Lord,” even though our calendar is not accurate because it is saying that our Lord was born 2,016 years ago, but He was actually born in 7BC, so it is actually 2,022 years since the birth of Christ. And, yet, we are still living in the generation of Jesus Christ from the time He was born – that is what our calendar implies. We have been keeping track of century, after century, after century according to the life of Jesus Christ. With the calendar referenced patriarchs we used their timeline until they died, but since Jesus is eternal God and He lives, it is appropriate that we use the timeline tied to Him. Sadly, maybe that will change as man goes along and desperately tries to rid himself of all things related to God and the Bible. Maybe they will convince their fellow man to change the way we keep track of history and no longer refer to “the year of our Lord,” and there have been attempts to do so, but they have been resisted thus far. Even if man was successful in doing so, it would not change that we are living in the generations of Christ because this is the way God has chosen to keep track of time.

In the Old Testament, it is the “book of the generations of Adam,” and in the New Testament, it is the “book of the generation of Jesus Christ.” We can see how God has arranged things. This is how the Bible through God Himself keeps track of time in the history of the world. It is divided up between these two generations. The “generations of man” take us all the way to the birth of Christ and then at the time of Christ it takes us to the end of the world and it is the “book of the generation of Jesus Christ.”

So, with this statement in Genesis, chapter 5 God is introducing the way He records time, otherwise known as the Biblical calendar of history and God treats it as such by declaring, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.”

Let us go on to Genesis 5:3:

And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth:

We talked about this in our last study at the end of Genesis, chapter 4 about how God appointed another seed instead of Abel and I made reference to when that took place because this is the first calendar reference. This is the first indicator of where we were in history since the fall of man in Genesis 3. This is the first time reference where we can see events and where people are in relationship to the creation of the world, so we have the creation and now we have the first date on the calendar of history, which was the year 130 of Adam. By this time Seth is begotten in year 130 and Cain has already slain Abel and now there is another seed named Seth. Is it not interesting that this is the very first age given in all of history from the creation of the world? This is the first number or first date that God gives us and it happens to be the year or age of 130. We wonder why that particular age was noted. We will see that in the way God uses the number “130” that it relates to the end of time at the end of the world. The number “130” can be broken down to “10 x 13,” with “10” pointing to completeness and “13” is the number that identifies with super-fullness which occurs at the end of the world. Very consistently, God has used the number “13” in the Bible to point to the end of time. For example, they went 13 times around Jericho and then the walls fell down and the city was destroyed. Also, there was Joseph’s dreams about his brethren. In the first dream, the 11 stars bowed down to him and in the second dream the sun and the moon bowed down to him plus the 11 stars and that equals 13 and Joseph interpreted the dream to be his 11 brothers, plus his mother and father that would bow down to him. First there was a dream in which the 11 bow down and then there was a dream in which the 13 bow down and the two key numbers we find, again, and again, in the Bible are the number “11” and the number “13.” The number “11” points to the first coming of Christ the Messiah and the number “13” points to His second coming at the end of the world. When we search the Bible we find the number “13” in various places and it points to the time of the end.

So, the very first calendar reference we find in our calendar of history is a number that identifies with the end of the world. No wonder God said He declares “the end from the beginning.” He has already done it here in Genesis, in a figure (as the Bible is prone to do) because throughout the Bible God gives types and figures. Here, we have the man Adam and he lived to be 130 and then he has another seed instead of Abel whom Cain slew.

Concerning that, we did go into some detail last time in discussing how this related to the end of time. Remember that statement in the original Hebrew specified that it was “at the end of days” that Cain rose up and slew his brother Abel. Again, that pictured the corporate churches and the tares within the churches that drove out the true believers, the elect of God, as typified by Abel. The first age we are given after that incident is Adam’s age of “130” and then he is presented with another seed and when we look at the Biblical history as projected into our modern day we find that the calendar points to 1988, which was the 13,000th year of earth’s history and the time that God ended the church age and began the process of dividing the wheat and tares. The Holy Spirit came out of the midst of the congregations and that began the Great Tribulation. The number “13,000” is “10 x 13 x 10 x 10.” The number “10 x 13” is within that number “13,000” and that is not a coincidence. It is not just something that happened. When we have that kind of link and association it is the infinite mind of God who knows the circumstances of the end from the beginning, so He moved Moses who scribed the Book of Genesis to mention Adam’s age at the time these things occurred in order that those of us living at the time of the end can see these things concerning the calendar of history and how God’s end time program of judgment is laid out in these key dates and we can see the tie-in, once God opened the Scriptures. We say, “Oh, look, this matches and agrees with the Biblical calendar of history. Do you see how it adds strength and serves as an encouragement to us?” We had been talking for years and years about the fact that the year 1988 was key, the 13,000th year of earth’s history and we see that God gives that age and it was the very first age He recorded in the Bible – Adam was 130 years old when he received another seed. We talked about how that relates to the great multitude of elect that became saved outside of the churches, once the seed within the churches had been “lost,” in a sense, with the end of the church age.

Lord willing, in our next study we are going to look at this particular age of “130.” From what I can see, including this reference in Genesis 5, verse 3 the age “130” appears in four very significant places in the Bible and we are going to take a look at each one of these in our next Bible study.