Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #8 of Genesis, chapter 5 and we are looking at Genesis 5:15-17:

And Mahalaleel lived sixty and five years, and begat Jared: And Mahalaleel lived after he begat Jared eight hundred and thirty years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.

I will stop reading there. At this point we are becoming familiar with the pattern God has established for the timeline of history.

At this time Mahalaleel has lived 65 years and that breaks down to “5 x 13,” with the number “5” identifying with the atonement and the number “13” identifying with the end of the world. Mahalaleel was the Bible calendar patriarch of his generation, which means that the timeline of history was attached to his lifespan. When he was 65, he begat Jared and after he begat Jared he lived 830 years and begat sons and daughters.

And what have we already learned from the previous two individuals, Enos and Cainan? We learned that the word “begat” does not mean that Mahalaleel had an immediate son named Jared when he was 65 years old, but it means that when he was 65, Mahalaleel had a son who would later have a descendant named Jared. The line that Jared would come forth from was through the son that Mahalaleel had when he was 65 and that particular son is unnamed, but this unnamed son was born when Mahalaleel was 65 and 830 years later a grandson, great grandson or great-great grandson would come forth from him. That is all that it means; it has no other relationship to the calendar of history. The calendar for that 65 years was tied to Mahalaleel’s life and the calendar years after he begat the son that Jared would come through were still tied to Mahalaleel, so the 65 years and the 830 years are combined. The reference to the numbers 65 and 830 have no relationship to the timeline by themselves, but we add the two together and they equal 895, as it says in Genesis 5:17:

And all the days of Mahalaleel were eight hundred ninety and five years: and he died.

The important number insofar as the timeline of history is concerned is the number “895” and then Mahalaleel died and his time on earth came to an end. So since he was born in the year 2050 from creation, we add the 895 and 2050 and we come up with the year 2945 since God created the world. In the year that Mahalaleel died the next Bible calendar reference patriarch was born in the year that was 2945 years from creation. That is when Jared was born. He was born when Mahalaleel died in his 895th year and sometime in that year Jared was born. Do you see how it all fits, end to end?

Again, the mistake the churches made was to accept Bishop Ussher’s calendar, which was not accurate because God had sealed the Scriptures and they were not aware of the method God used to hide truth in order to keep the calendar secret so on one could know the actual timeline until God wanted it known. When it became necessary at the time of the end, then God opened the information and then when the believers looked at 1988 they correctly understood it to be the 13,000th year of earth’s history. Then the true believers were able to see the actual number of years that had transpired since creation.

In past generations God’s Word was sealed because it was not the time of the end and people did not have access to the actual numbers and they worked with incorrect information. Their numbers were off by thousands of years because Bishop Ussher thought that creation was 4004BC and it was actually 11,013BC, so he was off by more than seven thousand years! When the entire history of the world is only 13,000+ years, but you are off by seven thousand years, you are off an enormous number of years so, of course, they could not come to truth regarding the timeline for the Great Tribulation or the timeline for Judgment Day or the timeline for the entire end stage of earth’s history. They were so far off course and it was largely because they misunderstood the word “begat” and the clue phrase “qârâ – shêm” and they wrongly assumed that whenever God used the word “begat” it meant an immediate son. As we were just reading, they thought that when Mahalaleel was 65 years old Jared was born at that time, but, in truth, Jared would not be born until 830 years after Mahalaleel was 65.

And this is the third Bible calendar patriarch that God has done this with and in each case it involves mistakes of hundreds of years. We correctly understand that “begat” can mean a later descendant that refers to an individual that will come through the line of the Biblical calendar reference patriarch Mahalaleel and that upon Mahalaleel’s death, Jared was born. That is the case when Mahalaleel died 2945 years from creation. Then it says in Genesis 5:18-20:

And Jared lived an hundred sixty and two years, and he begat Enoch: And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.

This is the fourth time we see this. Jared is the sixth generation from Adam. According to the Epistle of Jude, we know that Enoch was the “seventh from Adam,” so God is now focusing on Jared, the sixth from Adam and it is following the same pattern or formula. Jared was born the year Mahalaleel died in the year 2945 and he lived 162 years. When we break down the number 162 it is “2 x 3 x 3 x 3 x 3,” or 2 x 3 to the 4th power. Again, it is something we take note of because those numbers might have more significance to us later.

So, Jared was 162 when he begat Enoch and by now you know the pattern. You are probably saying to yourself right now, “Okay, I get it. Get on with it.” But there could be someone listening for the first time or someone that is not picking up on it as quickly as someone else, so we want to go over it slowly. After all, God is repeating Himself as He lays this out, so it does no harm for us to go over it again.

Jared is 162 and a son is born and, again, it is an unnamed son. Let us say that this particular son was Jared’s sixth son and this sixth son will have a son, who will have another son, who will have another son named Enoch. Enoch will not come through the lines of Jared’s first five sons, but he comes through the sixth unnamed son and that is when Enoch was “begat” because he will later descend from this sixth son. He is not a later descendant of any of Jared’s earlier sons and that is why God emphasizes that Enoch was “begat” when Jared was 162 and he will come forth from that line as a grandson or great grandson or great-great grandson. Enoch was not born when Jared was 162 and we want to avoid that mistake.

Then it says in Genesis 5:19:

And Jared lived after he begat Enoch eight hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

The number “800” is a significant number. It can be broken down to “2 x 10 x 40,” with the number “2” identifying with the caretakers of the Word of God; the number “10” identifying with completeness; and the number “40” identifying with testing.

We now have two numbers: 1) 162; and 2) 800. Individually, neither of these numbers is to be added to our calendar and we wait for God to add them up and He does so in Genesis 5:20:

And all the days of Jared were nine hundred sixty and two years: and he died.

God took the 162 years, which was the point that he was begat by his ancestor Jared and all the years of Jared were 962 years old and that is the number we use. That is the lifespan of this patriarch that the calendar was attached to in his lifetime, so for 962 years Jared was the calendar reference patriarch. If something happened in the year 300 of Jared, like some catastrophe, you could know it happened in Jared’s 300th year, just like it was noted that the flood occurred in Noah’s 600th year. Events were tied to the particular year of the individual that served as the calendar patriarch for his generation and Jared was that person for his 962 years.

Now we are at year 2945 when Mahalaleel died and Jared was born, so we take the year 2945 and we add our 962 and it brings us to the year 3907 and Jared died. That is 3907 years from the creation. To review, God created the world and when Adam was 130 Eve gave birth to Seth. Seth lived 105 years and the world at that point was 235 years old and then Enos was born. Enos’ lifespan is added to that, followed by Cainan, followed by Mahalaleel and followed by Jared. We are adding their entire lifespans. After we get to Enos, we take the entire lifespan of that individual and we are in the sixth generation from Adam with Jared.

We are at the year 3907 years from creation and, again, that is a very long time. Even the last 2,000 years seems long to us, but imagine if we had gone almost twice as many years. We can see that God was patiently allowing history to unfold. He was allowing man to multiply upon the earth for His own purposes and He had his timeline for all things. Even at this point at year 3907 from creation it is still going to be over 2,000 years before the flood would occur, so God is not doing anything hastily. He is allowing man to live on the earth, but the time man is allowed to live on the earth is according to the timeline established by God for His own purposes and it was God’s purpose not to destroy the “first earth” until we get to the time of Noah after over six thousand years from creation. Lord willing, we will talk about this when we get to the part of the Bible concerning Noah and his day.

But, now, we are looking at the early stages of the world and Jared, the sixth generation from Adam, has lived out his life. He lived a full life. Just think what people would do today to live for 962 years; they would do everything they could to watch their health and keep their bodies going in order just to live to be 100 years old. Today we think it is a great thing if we live to be 100, but these men of ancient times before the flood lived 895 years or 962 years, in the case of Jared. He was just 38 years away from living a thousand years and, yet, he died. He died because the wages of sin is death and it was necessary that man lived longer at first in order to fulfill God’s purposes for mankind, but sin was still at work in the physical bodies of men. These men aged, but at a much slower rate than we do today.

We have to realize that it does not matter how long you live on the earth if you die unsaved and just cease to exist. Once you die, it is not like you can take all the joy and love and good things you experienced with you and enjoy them. Nothing you have ever done or thought or said or felt is ever remembered again when you cease to exist and you perish like a beast, so whether it is 962 years or even 2,000 years it does not matter because death comes at the end of your time on the earth, no matter how prolonged your life may have been. Once death comes, you are just dead, if you die unsaved.

That is the big difference for a child of God. With the salvation God worked out for His people and freely given to us, He has granted us eternal life, so it does not matter how short our life is and if we die at age 30 or even as a newborn, like the son of David that was born to Bathsheba. He died as an infant just a few days old and, yet, according to the Scriptures he was saved because David said under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.”

Every child of God receives the wonderful gift of eternal life. We live forever, so we should never envy these men of old that lived such long lives in a corrupt world and in a corrupt body until they finally died. We should never envy them at all. What is enviable is eternal life and to have the promise of God that you will live forever. It is the guarantee of God that you will never die and you will continue living on forever with God in a glorious new heaven and new earth. We then have everything. We have a billions times a billion times more than any length of life in this world that any individual could ever have lived. It just does not matter. We have the greatest of treasures and an unspeakable gift.