Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #4 of Genesis, chapter 6 and we are continuing to look at Genesis 6:1-3:

And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And JEHOVAH said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

In our last study we were discussing the “flesh” and how from the point of the fall of man the flesh was “in erring” and that is how this verse should have been translated. The beginning of the verse would have been better translated as, “My spirit shall not always plead the cause of man,” and the second part of the verse would have been better translated as, “in erring (sinning) he is flesh.” So the verse would say, “And JEHOVAH said, My spirit shall not always plead the cause with man, for in erring he is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.”

This verse indicates that there would come a time period in which He would plead the cause of His salvation plan for the world and during that time God would save people. It is really pointing to the day of salvation, a period in which God determined to send forth His Word to save His elect people, but it also indicates that it will not always be like that because the last part of the verse says, “Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” In giving this number “120,” God is doing two things: 1) He is laying out a timeline for Noah to build the ark and during that time God would still plead the cause with men. It was potentially possible (from man’s perspective) that God might save some during that 120 years. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 11:7:

By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith.

Noah was warned of God. This is also another aspect to what happens whenever God gives a timeline, just like when Jonah warned Nineveh that in 40 days they would be destroyed. In the case of Noah, he was given a warning that it would be 120 years and at the end of 120 years the flood would come. No other timeline or date fits. We know that in the period before the flood men lived to be hundreds of years old. Noah would be 600 years old at the time of the flood and that age span was not unusual. His father Lamech died five years before the flood at the age of 777, so the 120 years cannot be applied to the lifespan of people before the flood. Even after the flood Shem lived several hundred years, so it doesn’t fit with lifespans. What about after the flood? Of course, post-flood is not in view because God is speaking of a period before the flood, but even after the flood the Lord does set a limit on man’s lifespan as 70 or, by reason of strength, 80 years and we find that even today with all the medical advances of the world the lifespans are still 70 or 80 years, just as God said in Psalm 90. There is only one possible solution to what the 120 years refers to and the context of Genesis, chapter 6 indicates that God had come down and seen the sinful deeds of men and He said, “I will not always plead the cause of man, for erring he is flesh.”

God set a time and he established a timeline, “Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.” That statement has to refer to 120 years before the flood and we know that the flood occurred in the year 4990BC. We also know that the flood occurred in Noah’s 600th year, so Noah was born in the year 5590BC, according to our calendar, and 600 years later was 4990BC. Noah’s 480th year was the year 5110BC and that was 120 years before the flood, so Noah was 480 years old when God came to him to reveal His intention to Noah, as it said in Hebrews 11:7: “By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet,” and this warning was not just the week before the flood. You cannot build an ark overnight or in a week or a month or year, especially due to this early date in history. The ark was not built in a dry dock with several hundred people working on it, like ships are built today. With modern technology and tools, you still have a couple hundred men working on a ship and it can still take quite a while, maybe even a year or two, especially a ship the size of the ark. Later on we will see the dimensions of the ark and we will see it was a huge vessel and, yet, it was built in ancient times and God commissioned Noah to be the shipbuilder. More than likely, Noah had some help and his sons may have helped and Noah may have hired some workers from the local village. We do not know the details because God does not give us that information, but we do know that without modern technology and tools, it would have been a very long process to build a ship of the size that God instructed Noah to build. Let us jump ahead to Genesis 6:15:

And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.

It would have been about 450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high and it is going to be three stories high. It would take an enormous amount of work, so God in His wisdom gave Noah sufficient time to build it. It was not a project to be rushed and it was something that Noah would have had to learn the necessary skills to do and God gave him that ability, but that does not mean that he instantaneously knew how to build an ark. We are speculating, but the 120-year timeline was necessary and during that 120 years while the ark was being prepared God was using that time for salvation. Noah built an ark to the saving of his house. It also says in 1Peter 3:18-20:

For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.

Do you see how God states this? Christ was preaching to the people “in prison.” They are unsaved people “chained” in the kingdom of darkness. God’s remnant of elect were there, so God was longsuffering. With that statement we have a timeline – 120 years. God waited, just as the Lord tells in James 5:7:

Be patient therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain.

The early rain was the church age and the Latter Rain was during the period of the Great Tribulation when God saved the great multitude. Do you see how God waits? He waits for His Word to accomplish the purpose it was sent forth to do to produce the fruits in their proper seasons: the firstfruits under God came in during the church age and the great multitude came in during the ingathering period of the little season of the Latter Rain. God would not bring judgment while He waited. God was patiently waiting in the last 17 years of the Great Tribulation for the Latter Rain to accomplish its purpose in saving the great multitude and He waited patiently according to His timeline, just as Christ through Noah preached to “spirits in prison” while the ark was a preparing, according to His timeline. As it says in 1Peter, chapter 3 God is longsuffering while He waits for His timeline to reach completion. During that timeline, it says in 1Peter 3:20, that God “waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”

The word “preparing” is also found in Luke 1:17:

And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just; to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.

The construction of the ark is really a picture similar to the building of the house of God. Actually, the word “preparing” is translated as “build” in Hebrews 3:4-6:

For every house is builded by some man; but he that built all things is God. And Moses verily was faithful in all his house, as a servant, for a testimony of those things which were to be spoken after; But Christ as a son over his own house; whose house are we…

Christ built the spiritual house of God. God commissioned Noah to build the ark and Noah had 120 years to complete the task, so Noah went about the task as he occupied, year after year. God wanted Noah to build the ark and even if Noah did not feel he knew how to do this, he would have prayed to God for wisdom in how to perform it. God was with him to complete the task and Noah knew in the year 5110BC that he had 120 years to do this. Let us look at this statement again in Genesis 6:3:

… yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.

God is speaking of mankind that has erred in flesh and God is establishing a date for mankind. God would continue the pre-flood world for 120 years more, so in the year 5110BC Noah was given advanced warning and information of things to come and Noah knew that in the year 4990BC the 120 years would expire. Noah was a man of God and he labored intensively in his task and the ark began to take shape. Again, we do not know how it progressed, but year after year he worked. You know, Noah also had to support his own family. He had to work in order to live and eat. No one was going to support him. It is possible he had a farm he had to take care of and he had other responsibilities, but he continued to build the ark, year after year. He had one eye on the task at hand and one eye on the completion date, the time he was given in which to complete it and as the date got closer the urgency to complete the ark would have grown. Noah would have felt there was so much to do and, more than likely, he would have moved away from other responsibilities to devote even more time to the ark. It must be done in time and according to the schedule that God had established.

The 120-year advanced notice was in Noah’s 480th year and, again, it was 5110BC and it was the year 5903 from creation. Just an interesting timeline that goes along with this: from 5110BC to 1988AD (the year of Satan’s loosing) was 7,098 calendar years and that number breaks down to “2 x 3 x 7 x 13 x 13.” The number “2” relates to the caretakers of the Word of God; the number “3” indicates God’s purpose; the number “7” indicates perfection; and the number “13” points to the end of the world and that number is doubled to indicate it will soon come to pass. Again, the year 1988 was the 13,000th year of earth’s history, but it also identifies with the 12,000th year of earth’s history and the number “12,000” relates to the number “120” because “10 x 12” is 120 and if you multiply by 10 again, you get 1,200; and if you multiply by another 10, you get “12,000.”

But, again, we will get a little more into that in the next study regarding how the Bible presents the figure of 12,000 years for the history of the world, but how it is actually 13,000 years. Lord willing, we will discuss that in our next Bible study.