Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #11 of Genesis, chapter 5 and we are going to read Genesis 5:27-32:

And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died. And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which JEHOVAH hath cursed. And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters: And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died. And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

I will stop reading there. To quickly acknowledge where we are in the Biblical calendar of history, we read in verse 27: “And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.” By the way, Methuselah is the oldest man recorded in the Bible. There is no one that lived longer than 969 years on the earth. He died in the year 5241 from creation, as we are counting down from creation. This is the Bible’s calendar. We started with Adam. From Adam we went to Shem and from Shem to Enos and then to Cainan to then to Mahalaleel and then to Jared and then to Enoch and then to Methuselah.

Again, after living 969 years Methuselah died 5,241 years from creation, which according to our calendar would have been 5772BC. The year Methuselah died was the year that Lamech was born. That is how God established the calendar after the earlier generations that went from Adam to Shem to Enos. From that point, when one calendar reference patriarch would die, the next calendar reference patriarch would be born the same year – it was end to end. God has continued with this pattern for a few generations now, up until the time of Lamech. Lamech was born 5241 years from the creation and then it says in Genesis 5:28:

And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son:

With 5241 years from creation, we can add 182 years and we get 5423 years from creation. If we would relate it to our current calendar it would be the year 5590BC, which was the 182nd year of Lamech. But then it says in Genesis 5:29:

This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which JEHOVAH hath cursed.

So when Lamech was 182 he begat a son, but one of the principals we have learned is that if a son is begotten and the clue phrase “qârâ – shêm” (called his name) is used then it is as though God is informing us that it is an immediate father/son relationship. Lamech was the immediate father of Noah. And that changes things – now God is going back (as He did from Adam to Shem and Shem to Enos) to immediate father/son relationships for His calendar. That will continue after the flood with Shem, the immediate son of Noah, who will be the Biblical calendar reference in his day after the flood.

God is not making it easy for us, this is for certain. He is not making it easy for someone to follow what He is doing in the Biblical calendar. He concealed it well through the use of various changes in methodology. But God permitted Mr. Camping to see the patterns when he wrote the book “Adam When?” several decades ago and we can see how it all fits together.

Lamech at age 182 had a son and he called his name Noah and this is the year 5590BC or the year 5423 from creation. We know that the flood began in Noah’s 600th year and he was born in the year 5590BC and he will become the calendar reference patriarch from the point of his birth and Lamech, at age 182, is no longer the calendar reference patriarch. So since we know that the flood occurred in Noah’s 600th year, if he was born in the year 5590BC, then what would 600 years later be? (We are just doing an early check on our Bible calendar to make sure we are on track.) So, to do that, we subtract 600 from 5590BC and we come to the year 4990BC as the date of the flood. That is the year we have been using for some time as the date of the flood and now we can see why that is because it works out when you go, verse by verse, carefully following the clue phrases and all the information God has given us. Yes, the flood occurred in the year 4990BC.

We also know the year Noah was born. It was 5590BC and it was the year 5423 from creation. If we add 600 years to that total, what number do we get? If we add 5423 and 600, it equals year 6023 from creation and it would agree with 4990BC. We have been saying this and this has been shared often that the flood occurred in 4990BC, 6023 years from the creation. Do you see why we say this? It is because that is the math. That is the calculation as you follow the Bible from the creation of Adam to his 130th year; then we follow Seth’s period of 105 years and in the year 235 Enos began to be the calendar reference patriarch, and so forth. And we go all the way, generation by generation, and remember that Jude said that Enoch was the seventh from Adam. Following Enoch was Methuselah, the eighth generation; then Lamech and his 182 years was the 9th generation.

Then Lamech had a son and “called his name” Noah and that was the 10th generation from Adam and the 10th individual to whom God attached the tracking of time through in His Biblical calendar. Noah is the 10th man that God has done this with and he will be the last man for the pre-flood period. The number “10” in the Bible points to completeness because he will fill up the time prior to the flood for the first world. God gave space for the first world to develop and then He saw the sinfulness of mankind and He came in judgment and that was done as an illustration for us today and the almost 7.5 billion people currently living on the earth at the end of history. God demonstrated His power, might and ability to destroy everything with the breath of life and to do it according to a timetable, a very specific and certain timetable that was the 10th generation. Noah’s 600th year was the year 6023 from creation and he would be the one God would use as the deliverer of his family of eight souls, including himself. He would be the one to carry on the generations of man after the flood. Life would continue and mankind that was created in the image of God would repopulate the earth after the flood. But God brought all the generations of men that were then upon the earth to complete fulfilment and then destroyed the earth.

The Bible does speak of the tenth generation in the sense of a complete destruction. It says in Deuteronomy 23:2-3:

A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of JEHOVAH; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of JEHOVAH. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of JEHOVAH; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of JEHOVAH for ever:

It points to the completeness of God’s wrath and the completeness of punishment. Of course, the bastard, the Ammonite and the Moabite are just figures that God uses as rebels against God that He has decreed shall die in their sins and be destroyed forever. They will never enter into the kingdom of heaven. To illustrate this, God speaks of these people not being able to enter into the congregation of JEHOVAH to their tenth generation. So, the tenth generation points to the completeness of whatever is in view and in the case of Noah’s day, it was the “first earth.”

It says in 2Peter 2:5:

And spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly;

God “spared not the old world.” By making this statement, He is indicating that the world after the flood is as if it is a “new world.” We also read in 2Peter 3:5-6:

For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:

The world that then was perished. That world “died,” as far as God is concerned, when He brought the flood upon it. Man had an opportunity to live his life, but we will soon read about how God looked down from heaven and saw that man’s heart was only evil continually and He determined to destroy that world with a flood. Again, it is a picture or historical illustration designed to teach us. When we read in the Bible how God destroyed the whole world with a flood we have to realize that the entire population of that time was no more than a handful of millions of people, just like when God destroyed the four cities of the plain – Sodom, Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboim – with a population, perhaps, nor more than about 10,000 people. And, yet, God records it and it became a major Biblical event because it is an example to us today.

God permitted that world to develop and populate to some degree and there were just a handful of millions of people at the time of the flood. We wonder why He would allow the world to progress to that point and then destroy it with a flood and start the world anew. Then Noah, his wife and sons and their wives became like the new Adam and Eve and God, once again, had to populate the earth. But God did it to teach a lesson and to illustrate that man can live for a time (even a long time) and be in rebellion against God. You can think that maybe God will not do anything about your sinfulness. You could think that it is your world and you can live your life the way you want. You can have that mindset, but God is demonstrating what the result will be. This is what must happen when mankind sins against Him. God’s justice requires judgment, so the wrath of God was kindled against man for his sin and God poured out His wrath in the form of a cataclysmic flood that destroyed the whole earth.

God used thousands of years of history and events to make that point at the time of the flood. Here we are in this present world and we see the constant evil that is going on everywhere. There is no question about it. The degree of iniquity in this world is unparalleled in all history and, certainly, there is no comparison to the time before the flood. God will talk about the sin of man and the evil that was going on at that time, but as we look back at those days from our vantage point of living in the most evil generation that has ever walked upon the face of the earth, we would think that it does not seem that they were all that bad. Some of us might want to go back and live in those days just for a little relief from what is going on in our day. But, again, man’s sin at any time in history is terrible and ugly, so God illustrated what will happen. We can be sure that if God destroyed the first world because of their sins, then what is He going to do with our present world and this generation? The answer is obvious. He will, likewise, destroy it. There is no other answer. It is what will happen and it is certain to happen. If you doubt it, read what God did to the world of Noah’s day when He brought the flood and the reason for bringing the flood. Just look and compare and you will see that God will act. We will also see that He acts very precisely in His own time and according to His own season. He does not act on His wrath unless it agrees and fits with His timeline. Once the time comes, then He will pour out His wrath.