QUESTION by Andrews; Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 24, 1869

QUESTION.

By Andrews; Dudley Marvin Canright

BRO. ANDREWS: It is often said that Noah was one hundred and twenty years preaching, and building the ark. Where is the evidence that this was so? In Gen. v, 32, it says that “Noah was five hundred years old.” This was before the flood was mentioned, and before God had spoken to Noah about it and the building of the ark. Gen. vii, 11, says, “In the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life” the flood came. Where, then, was there room for the one hundred and twenty years? D. M. CANRIGHT.

REPLY.—The answer to these questions must depend principally upon the interpretation of Gen. vi, 3: “And the Lord 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.”

This text is found in the midst of the statement of the causes of the flood. Gen. vi, 1-8. What does this period of time relate to? It certainly does not mean to fix the duration of the life of man. Noah lived 950 years. Gen. ix, 29. Shem, his son, lived 600 years. Gen. xi, 10, 11. Arphaxad, his son, lived 438 years. Gen. xi, 12, 13. Salah, his son, lived 433 years. Verses 14, 15. Eber, his son, lived 464 years. Verses 16, 17. Peleg, his son, lived 239 years. Verses 18, 19. Reu, his son, lived 239 years. Verses 20, 21. Serug, his son, lived 230 years. Verses 22 and 23. Nahor, his son, lived 148 years. Verses 24, 25. Terah, his son, lived 205 years. Verse 32. Abraham, his son, lived 175 years. Gen. xxv, 7. His son Ishmael lived 137 years. Verse 17. His other son, Isaac, lived 180 years. Gen. xxxv, 28. His son Jacob lived 147 years. Gen. xlvii, 28. We have thus given the lives of thirteen generations, beginning with Noah. This statement of their lives is quite sufficient to show that the period of one hundred and twenty years was not the limit assigned to human life in the days of Noah; for Noah not only lived very far beyond it, but his posterity for twelve generations did also greatly exceed it.

What, then, does this period of one hundred and twenty years designate? The answer is obvious. It was the length of time that the Spirit of God was to strive with that wicked generation. God says, “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” There was a limit fixed to it. When he says further, “for that he also is flesh,” the meaning evidently is that God had made man’s frail nature a reason for bearing with him as long as he had; but he would not regard that as a reason for bearing always. It was for this very reason that he bore as long as he did with Israel. Ps. lxxviii, 39: “For he remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again.”

The announcement, therefore, that his days shall be an hundred and twenty years must be understood to mean that the Spirit of God would strive with mankind that length of time, and no longer. That was the limit of human probation, or, rather, of the probation of that generation. Inasmuch as it is written that God said this, we understand that he announced the fact to the antediluvian world by some inspired man. So we may be certain that the old world had warning of the termination of their probation one hundred and twenty years before it ended. But by whom did God first make this announcement? It is most natural to conclude that Noah, the “preacher of righteousness” (2 Pet. ii, 5), who ended the work so nobly, was the very one who began it. We may be certain that, as this period of one hundred and twenty years would expire within the lifetime of the generation to whom it was first announced, it was from the moment of its announcement till the last hour of grace to that wicked people, the present truth to the church of God. The father of Noah, Lamech, died five years before the flood. Methuselah, the grandfather of Noah, died the very year of the flood. It is evident that Lamech was a man who reverenced God. Gen. v, 28, 29. It is every way probable that his father, Methuselah, the son of Enoch, was also a man of piety. These men could not have been otherwise than intensely interested in this most solemn announcement of the time when the Spirit of God should cease to strive with men. But, as they did not live to witness the consummation, and as Noah was the chosen instrument of God to lead out in the building of the ark, we may well conclude that Noah was the man who stood at the head of this preaching.

When it is said of Christ that he, by the Spirit of God, “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” (1 Pet. iii, 19, 20); we understand that this preaching was done to those who are now in prison, that is, in hades, the place of the dead, but who were then upon probation. Their opportunity closed when the longsuffering of God ceased, and that was marked by the completion of the ark. 1 Pet. iii, 20; Heb. xi, 7. We further understand that the Spirit of Christ, by which he preached to the antediluvian world, is that which did strive with men one hundred and twenty years after the solemn announcement of Gen. vi, 3, and did not strive with them after that period expired. As Christ did not preach in person, but only by his Spirit, he must have used human agency, and as the life of Noah covers this whole period which began in his four hundred and eightieth year, and this was eminently his work, it is reasonable to believe that he was the “preacher of righteousness” by whom this was proclaimed.

As to the length of time employed in the construction of the ark we have no means of determining. A considerable period of time must have been required for so vast a structure. A very large property must have been used by Noah to meet this expense. But we may be certain that it was not money alone that moved his workmen. It is likely that many who performed labor upon the ark were interested, for a time, in the doctrine of Noah. But by-and-by, when the current set so strong the other way, they lost their faith, and so perished in the waters of the flood.

The only connection that the statement of Gen. v, 32, has with this matter, seems to be this, that Noah remained unmarried till within about one hundred years of the flood. Probably, in view of the awful wickedness of that age, he designed not to marry at all. But it is likely that God, who purposed, through him, to perpetuate the race of mankind after the flood, made him take a wife. There is no sufficient proof that the birth of Noah’s sons, one hundred years before the flood, preceded the announcement of the flood. On the contrary, there can be no reasonable doubt that the announcement of the close of human probation, at the end of one hundred and twenty years, was made twenty years before the birth of his oldest son.