Welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the Book of Genesis. This is study #5 of Genesis, chapter 6 and we are continuing to look at Genesis 6:1-4:

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. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

I will stop reading there. In our last study we were discussing the 120-year period prior to the flood. Since we know the flood began in 4990BC, if we go back 120 years, we come to the year 5110BC and that was the year that Noah was 480 years old. God gave him the timeline.

You know, critics accuse the children of God of being “date setters.” The way that charge is leveled today, you would think that to look in the Bible and see information about a date for the end of the world is the worst possible thing you could ever do. It is worse than speaking in tongues, falling over backwards or holy laughter and any of the other excesses and transgressions of the corporate churches. They believe those things are acceptable, but if you “set a date” and violate their position that “No man knows the day or the hour,” then you are a false prophet and a “date setter.” They come down on you as hard as they can. There has been tremendous effort put forth by both the churches and the world in unison to make “date setting” such a horrible thing and they are trying to apply all the peer pressure they can as man attempts to bring down an “iron fist” upon the children of God to threaten them and frighten them away from setting a date.

It makes me wonder all the more why that is such a horrible thing? Why is it the MOST horrible thing? It is not just a horrible thing among horrible things, but that is the “crime” among Christianity at this time if you think that Almighty God knows the end from the beginning and that could unseal His word at the time of the end and share it with His people. If you are one of these “date setters,” you had better be ready to face the judgment of mankind, the judgment of professed Christians and the societies of the world. For the most part, these are the same societies that permit gay marriage and abortion and even take aborted baby parts and experiment on them and ship them by overnight service. All this is fine in many societies’ eyes, but if you are a “date setter” you are a criminal. That is really how it is presented. It is presented as if you have done the worst thing possible. Again, why? Why is there so much effort and focus laid upon this particular point? Why do people want us to drop the matter? Not only do they want us to drop it, but they will go out their way to label us the worst heretics imaginable and you are not considered one of the Christian body if you continue to set dates.

God’s elect are not frightened or scared off from continuing to look in the Bible anywhere we please, by the provision and grace of God. God has given us His Word and the Word of God includes all 66 Books from Genesis to Revelation. It includes Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21 and the entire Book of Daniel and the entire Book of Revelation. It includes parables where the Lord Jesus went into detail about the end of the world and it includes information such as we find here in Genesis, chapter 6 where God Himself is giving a timeline to Noah. In other words, God is “setting a date.” God is telling Noah that the allotted amount of time to build the ark is 120 years and we know that 120 years later God would destroy the earth with a flood and everything with the breath of life would die, except for the few that were on board the ark. They found safety within the confines of the ark that God caused Noah to build.

Since God is our example and God is giving a timeline with a starting point of 5110BC and an ending point of 4990BC, a 120-year period of time. During that time He would be longsuffering and He would patiently put up with the sins of the people of the world of that day and during the time while the ark was a preparing, God would save people. The ark was built to the saving of Noah’s house and eight souls were delivered from the flood and it is very possible that God saved the three sons and their wives and Mrs. Noah. Maybe God saved one of the sons the first year and maybe He saved the second son 50 years later and maybe the last son was saved the week or the day before the flood came. Then God had saved everyone that He intended to save for that period of history and He could “shut the door.” Of course, when God takes an action, it is a sovereign act of a sovereign King. God determined, “I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion.” In His good pleasure, He determined to save eight souls from the flood and no more and then the door was shut. He shut the door on men, women and children. He shut the door on infants and toddlers and young boys and girls and pre-teens and teenagers and every other age group. He shut the door on the elderly as well as on the young. God shut the door because He had saved everyone He had predetermined to save and, secondly, the salvation of those people coincided with His timeline and when the timeline was fulfilled the door was shut.

At that time there could have been people that were critical of God and said, “It is not fair. It is not just. A good and loving God would not shut the door when there are so many people outside of the ark that will perish in the flood waters.” The flood was a tremendous deluge and the waters came from practically everywhere for 40 days and 40 nights. Water came from below and water came from above from deep space clouds as there was a water canopy above the earth protecting it from harmful rays. Although water came from everywhere, on the first day when it began to pour forth it is very likely that very few died and maybe even for the first week there were not that many deaths. Then the remaining people would have been desirous to enter into the ark. They would have known about it, obviously, because there was only one major shipbuilding project that had been going on for 120 years and the population of the world was relatively small; most people would have been living in the same general area because there was only one large continent. Word would have gotten around.

Also, Noah was a preacher of righteousness and he would have been preaching. Anyone that came by and saw the ark being built would have been given the timeline by Noah. For example, He may have said, “Fifty years ago God warned me He was going to destroy the earth with a flood and He gave me 120 years to build this boat and there are only seventy years left.” It was so long a time, people would not have cared or given much thought to it, but then it got down to 20 years and then 10 years and then just a year. More than likely, some people were getting nervous and, yet, man is so stubborn in his sin and set in his rebellion that he just cannot humble himself to submit to the will of God. In his pride he would not seek to enter into the ark. No, he would just wait and see what happens, but then the rain came and continued to come and it was a downpour that people certainly had never seen. Maybe they were not too worried the first day, even though Noah had the exact date when God told him, “And yet seven days,” but maybe they thought the big rain was just a coincidence, but then as it continued with torrential downpours the second day, and so forth. Eventually they would have realized that Noah was right. God was destroying the world with a flood and the only safe place was inside the ark. There could have been people coming to the ark on the second, third or fourth day, but the door is shut. God shut the door. God never opened the door again. It is the sovereign decree and will of God that He will have mercy (because He is a merciful God) on whom He will have mercy. They are those God determined not to save because they were not His elect and they were not predestinated and, therefore, God would not open the door. Their sins were not paid for by the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world and their sins remained upon them and they must die because the wages of sin is death.

This is the situation we are entering into in Genesis, chapter 6. God had carefully allowed time to develop and it is nearing 6,000 years of earth’s history and this was all in order to illustrate that the world will be judged and God will destroy the unregenerate sinners and God will save His people. This is what the flood illustrates. It is a pre-figure of the end of the world when God would save all His elect, delivered in Christ, and He would destroy the rest of mankind that are not His elect. God allowed history to unfold to the point of the flood in order to provide a drastic historical parable of what would come at the end of time.

The reference to the 120 years is not only a reference to the timeline to the flood, but we can also understand it as if God is saying that the 120 years identifies with the allotted time for mankind in this world. I think I mentioned this before, but when we look at the Bible we know that through the Biblical calendar of history we know the world was created in 11,013BC and the Lord Jesus Christ was born in 7BC, after 11,006 years of history. Then Christ entered into the world and went to the cross and at the cross in 33AD Satan was bound. Here is what we read concerning the binding of Satan in Revelation 20:1-3:

And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. And he laid hold on the dragon, that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a thousand years, And cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.

Do you see how God is breaking up the history of the world? It was 11,000 years until Christ came and then Christ accomplished the purpose of demonstrating what He had done from the foundation of the world by going to the cross. And at the cross Satan was bound for a “thousand years.” We take the 11,000 years and we add 1,000 and it equals 12,000 and we read in Revelation 20:7:

And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison,

In one sense, Satan should have been loosed after 12,000 years of history, except that the figure of “the thousand years” represents the completeness of his being bound and it was an actual 1,955 years. This is how it worked out: in the year 1988, which identifies with exactly 12,000 years (11,000 years on the Old Testament side until the birth of Christ and the figurative 1,000 years of Satan being bound), but it was actually the 13,000th year of earth’s history. That is another reason why the 13,000th year (1988) is so significant because it should be 12,000, but it is actually 13,000 years of history, so when God says, “Yet his days shall be 120 years,” we know that the number “120” is “10 x 12” and the number “12,000” is “10 x 10 x 10 x12,” but they are essentially the same spiritual emphasis, as “10” is the number of completeness and “12” is the number of fullness. It is the complete fullness of time for mankind or 12,000 years, but, again, it worked out to an actual 13,000 years.

The Bible tells us something interesting in Moses’ last address to the people of Israel. It says in Deuteronomy 1:1-2:

And Moses went and spake these words unto all Israel. And he said unto them, I am an hundred and twenty years old this day; I can no more go out and come in: also JEHOVAH hath said unto me, Thou shalt not go over this Jordan.

Moses is 120 years old that very day and he is addressing Israel over the next several chapters. Remember that was our timeline in Genesis, chapter 6. When Moses was 120 years old, God said through Moses in Deuteronomy 32:8:

When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

Notice how He goes back to the separation of the sons of Adam, Cain and Abel, whom God separated. There was the line of Cain that wandered and were separated from God and there was the line of Abel through his substitute Seth that was counted for the true believers. God set the “bound” or the “limitation” of the people. It is like the oceans that have their bounds – they can go to a certain point and no farther. It is the same with mankind. God has established a boundary. He has set a bound of the people according to “the number of the children of Israel.” How many tribes or children of Israel were there? Remember Israel is Jacob and he had 12 sons that turned into the tribes of Israel, so it is just like the number “120,” but the emphasis is on the number “12” for fullness. The number for the mankind throughout the history of the world should have expired and the allotted time should have come to an end after 12,000 years of history, according to the number of the children of Israel and, yet, there were actually 13 tribes. Remember that God blessed Joseph when he was in Egypt and Joseph had two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh and God gave Joseph an extra portion so that Joseph became two tribes and, therefore, the 12 sons of Jacob became 13 sons of Jacob. Or, to say it another way, the 12 tribes were actually 13 tribes. We have the same pattern and idea.

It also works that way for the apostles in the New Testament. There were 12 apostles and then Judas hanged himself and they chose another apostle by lot and his name was Mathias. Later on the Lord selected another apostle, Paul, who referred to himself as “the least of the apostles,” and he was the 13th apostle. There were 12 tribes of Israel and, yet, there were 13. There was 12,000 years allotted for the world and, yet, 13,000 years. The reference to “120” points to the completeness of time for mankind, which would go to 13,000 years of history to the point of Satan’s loosing and the beginning of the Great Tribulation (1988), which began the end stage for the history of the world.

This is all in view with this statement in Genesis 6:3:

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