Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Hey, we are here, and it is the third podcast recording for us and the third day of the week. That’s right. And we are in a series where we’re doing highlights of the Old Testament, the milestones. We really got to get that right. The milestones of the Old Testament. Maybe that’s it. Okay. I like milestones. Milestones?

Jeff:
Mile markers. I like highlights. All right. Whatever. Milestones of the Old Testament. We’re going to get it. There’s only about 200 more stories, so we’re going to have to figure it out between now and then.

Chris:
Yeah, I understand. So we are in Genesis chapter number Now, by the way, if you listened yesterday, we sort of ended with the murder of the first righteous man, actually the first murder in all the Bible, Abel. And then we’re sort of skipping over chapters four and five, which really just talk about the descendants of Cain. You know, he had Enoch and then, and then, you know, then there’s seven. Yes, they have long lives. They give birth to Seth. Adam and Eve have another. So Abel or Cain now has another brother. And then there’s some sort of lineage that gives, you know, from Adam all the way to Noah, because we are about to enter into the flood. That’s right. Which is a pretty massive event for humanity.

Jeff:
And they lived very, very long lives. In chapter eight, it says that Adam was 130 years old when Cain was born. Right. And he died at 930 years old.

Chris:
Right. And there’s the part that we said we were going to get to.

Jeff:
Yeah. Then it talks about how you can go on down, all these other guys lived, you know, 900 years. It finally gets to Methuselah. Methuselah was 969 years old. And then by the time Noah was 500 years old, He was the father of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And then the story of Noah picks up. Yeah. Right. Where Noah is about 600 years old at this point. So they were just a young buck. He’s just getting into his prime. That’s right. Right. He’s middle-aged at this point. That’s where he’s at. He’s just starting the back nine. Yeah, that’s right. The back 900. And so they lived a very long time. Yes.

Chris:
There’s some interesting… Which, can we just acknowledge how crazy that is? For people who doubt the Bible and people who have a hard time swallowing that, it is pretty crazy to imagine humanity living that long. We’re so fragile anyway, right?

Jeff:
Yeah. Well, we know some of the things. So we know that the body seems to be a perpetual living machine. And then something starts to happen where we suddenly start aging. So it’s you’re not aging, you’re not aging, you’re not aging, you’re developing, developing, developing, developing. Then a switch flips in us.

Chris:
Well, you’re always aging. You’re always aging.

Jeff:
Yeah, but you’re not dying, which is very interesting, right? You’re talking about the physical part of it? Yeah, the physical body remakes itself, the cells regenerate, they clean themselves, they realign their information, they do all the things, and the body seems to be this perfect machine for staying alive, and then suddenly something happens as we hit our prime where all of a sudden we shift into a mode from that point on where our cells are not as efficient at cleaning, not as efficient at regenerating, not as efficient. And then eventually we age, that seems to be aging, and then we die. So there’s several things. We know our environment has that impact on us. We know our food and what we take into us, our water and fluids, that has a lot. And then the sun has a lot to do. We can’t live without the sun, but the sun kills us too. So there’s a lot of interesting things. I would say if you really want to dig into why did lives last so long then, I think that there’s a very viable argument, scientific argument, for why. Answers in Genesis gives. They’re also the ones responsible for the Ark encounter down in Kentucky. But they give a great model One of those is because of the story of Noah. So the Bible says that it rained for 40 days and 40 nights and nonstop in order to cover the entire planet with water. That kind of water vapor environment around our planet would have radically cut down on the amount of UV without cutting down on the light, right? And the UV is what kills us from the sun. It’s one of the things that just destroys our cells. And so what they’re saying is, hey, you would have had a much higher concentration of oxygen, you would have had an almost perfect temperature on the planet, you would have had almost perfect food and water at that point because the world hadn’t been polluted, and you would have had almost no negative UV, only the positive aspects of light producing vitamin D and all those things in your body. And so it’s not unreasonable then that animals would live much longer, get much bigger, trees would get much bigger, the leaves would be much larger, and humans would live much longer. All those things to me seem like the perfect environment for longer life. And I think if we could reproduce that today on earth, I think you would see that. We do know that we can make plants bigger and animals bigger if we put them in perfect environments like that. So that may have been it. I think if you want to dig into a little bit more answers and Genesis has a really interesting model that you can find on that. So anyways, here we go. Now we’re going to pick up in Genesis chapter six, and it tells the story, the beginning of the story of Noah. Everything goes wrong at this point. It says, Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. And the sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. And then the Lord said, My spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years. In those days, and for some time after, giant nephthalites lived on the earth. For whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times. The Lord observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and He saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the Lord was sorry He had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke His heart. And the Lord said, I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth, yes, and I will destroy every living thing, all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I’m sorry I ever made them. But Noah found favor with the Lord. This is the account of Noah and his family. Noah was a righteous man, the only blameless person living on the earth at the time, and he walked in close fellowship with God. Noah was a father of three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now, God saw that the earth had become corrupt and was filled with violence, and God observed all this corruption in the world, for everyone on earth was corrupt. So God said to Noah, I’ve decided to destroy all living creatures, for they filled the earth with violence. Yes, I will wipe them all out along the earth. So build a large boat from cypress wood, waterproof it with tar inside and out, then construct decks and stalls throughout its interior. Make the boat 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high. Leave an 18-inch opening below the roof all the way around the boat. Put the door on the side and build three decks inside the boat, lower, middle, and upper. Look, I’m about to cover the earth with a flood that will destroy every living thing that breathes. Everything on earth will die, but I will confirm my covenant with you. So enter the boat, you and your wife and your sons and their wives, and bring a pair of every kind of animal, a male and a female, into the boat with you to keep them alive during the flood. Pairs of every kind of bird and every kind of animal and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground will come to you to be kept alive. Be sure to take on board enough food for your family and for all the animals.” So Noah did everything exactly as God had commanded him. Well, there you go.

Chris:
Wow. And you know, um, uh, again, I I’m a movie guy. So my, um, my brain goes to, uh, uh, what, what is it? Uh, no, no, hang on. We’re, we’re, uh, Morgan Freeman played God. It was, um, the first one was Jim Carrey. The second one was Steve Carell. Oh my goodness. What is it?

Jeff:
Oh, I forgot.

Chris:
Bruce Almighty and then Evan Almighty.

Jeff:
Evan Almighty was the Noah one.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s right. And then, but I remember Morgan Freeman playing God and he said, you know, he said, because it was about the Ark, and he said, you know, most people think that the Ark is a story of God’s wrath. And then, and then the lady says, well, what do you think it is? And he goes, I think it’s a story of love. He says, you know, he says he brought the animals two by two. And I thought to myself, I was like, holy cow, that is an interesting little, uh, cause you know, when my son was born, we decorated his entire nursery in Noah’s Ark.

Jeff:
Even the border on the wall, the wallpaper. Yeah. One of our kids was Noah’s Ark.

Chris:
Was it? And we did the whole thing. And you know, it’s so cute because the animals are there two by two, you know, but this picture here is crazy because we do see God’s love because he says his heart broke.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Chris:
He was so sad. He was so sad. He, because of his love for humanity.

Jeff:
Yeah. Well, if we make it all about us, it’s pretty horrible. Yeah. If we make it about God, this is how devastated God was.

Chris:
No, you know what? That’s a really good, That yeah, that’s a really good perspective right there. So yeah. So it’s, it’s pretty devastating when, when it’s all about God, because the creator was heartbroken and said, I’m sorry I ever made them help. How, how sad do you have to be to say that? Yeah.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, everything I’d hoped and planned, they’re ruining, they’re destroying it all. And, and it’s because of sin at this point has said all they ever thought about and imagined was completely and consistently and totally evil.

Chris:
Yeah, consistently and totally evil. Totally.

Jeff:
That’s all they imagined was just evil at that point. Hey, I don’t think we’re far from that now. Right. Right. But this is what God had said was, oh my goodness, it’s just, in just a few thousand years, it has gone completely insane on this planet. And so God said it broke his heart.

Chris:
And then let’s not glance over the fact that he says, my spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, holy cow, in the future, the normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.

Jeff:
After the flood.

Chris:
After the flood.

Jeff:
So when that canopy fell, we lost a lot of the protection from the sun.

Chris:
So what is the oldest person ever recorded

Jeff:
The longest documented and verified human lifespan is that of Jean Common of France, 1875 to 1997, a woman who lived to age 122 years and 164 days. This is from Wikipedia.

Chris:
So 122 and a half. Yeah. There you go.

Jeff:
All right. Which is. There was, there was a guy who died just a couple of weeks ago. He’s 114. Yeah.

Chris:
So right on the money, isn’t it? So God says no more than 120 years, obviously. She scooted under the wire.

Jeff:
Two and a half years. Two years and 166 days. Right, right.

Chris:
But yeah, that’s what God says. And so it’s so crazy how these writings, so think about this. So this, this was found a long time ago. And well, I guess by then humanity was only living that long too, right? Because this wasn’t, this was after the flood.

Jeff:
So when Moses wrote it, they were bumping 110. I think that’s Moses age, right? 110. Something like that.

Chris:
Well, anyway, all of that’s pretty crazy. That idea to me just blows my mind. I can’t even imagine it. Honestly, I really can’t.

Jeff:
Now, we can’t overlook the fact that this story, this flood story, shows up in other places, not just in the Bible. There are Sumerian, I think it’s in your Bible too, but there are Sumerian writings. There’s the Epic of Gilgamesh, right? There’s an Akkadian story called Atrahasis Epic. And all of them talk about the same, the Babylonian, Sumerian, that kind of thing right there around Mesopotamia. has stories very similar to this story. The gods decide they’re going to destroy the planet because of evil. They’re going to flood it. They tell, in this instance, Gilgamesh, or they tell the other guy, hey, build a boat, save the animals, right? Very, very similar. So archaeologists would say when multiple cultures have the same legend, it’s probably rooted in some kind of truth, right? Every culture on the planet Almost every native culture on the planet has had dragon stories. The British did. The Germans did. The Russians did. But so did the Chinese. So did the South Americans. Separated by oceans. right, have these stories of dragons. Probably there’s some kind of truth, a dinosaur, a flying reptile, something on that grand scale that way, because it’s all the cultures develop the same story independent of each other. And so a lot of times legends point to a core truth, maybe not the truth, but a core truth. And the core truth is all of the cultures back then in ancient cultures seemed to point to, in Mesopotamia, seemed to point to a cataclysmic flood. that was caused by God and that one person and his family were the survivors.

Chris:
And, of course, that would have been known from the descendants of humanity. Right. Because after the flood, Noah repopulates the earth.

Jeff:
That’s right.

Chris:
Or I should say God allows Noah to repopulate the earth. So legends of these epic stories. Can you imagine having that story? I mean, Liz’s grandmother used to tell us stories about the Great Depression. And we would sit around and all of our kids would say, tell us, Grandma, what was it like during the Great Depression? And she said, well, one Christmas we got an orange in our stocking and that was it. Just one orange. You know, it was like, what? You know, and that was really her story. It was a big treat. It was a big treat. That was her story. But can you imagine that story? So tell us, Grandpa, what was it like to be the only family surviving with a bunch of animals? And listen, we haven’t gotten to the actual flood yet, so we’ll save that for tomorrow. But, you know, this idea that, you know, the idea that God had. So here’s the plan. We’re going to build a boat and it’s going to be this big. And by the way, that ark experience in Lexington that you referenced earlier, I was down there and I didn’t get a chance to see it. I literally drove right by it. And I’m so angry. I didn’t get a chance to see it. So we’ll have to go down there one day and just experience it. But I’ve been told that the dimensions of this arc are almost divinely brilliant, where it’s exactly the right size that would have been needed. And people say, well, what about, you know, how could the elephants get in there? Well, guess what? They could have been baby elephants.

Jeff:
Yeah. Right. Well, yeah, that’s the answer with all of the big animals. Even if, let’s say, you know, you want to get really, really technical. If you believe in a biblical creation, then the dinosaurs and humans would have been on the same planet at the same time. Yeah. Maybe that’s where the dragon legends came from. Yeah. But how do you get a dinosaur on the ark? Well, babies would be the way to do that, right? And very small. Same thing with rhinoceroses. I was surprised, we were in East Africa one time, we were on a safari, and we come around the corner and there were three huge, huge, like the size of our truck, or bigger, bigger than the size of our truck, rhinoceroses. And so I was just riveted by it. And then all of a sudden a little baby steps out from around, and it was only about two and a half feet tall. It looked like I might’ve been able to pick it up. I bet it didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. Its mom standing there probably weighed four tons, right? Three tons. She was huge. But this little baby comes around the corner and looked not much bigger than like a Great Dane. And I’m like, okay, that’s how you do it. You don’t go get the five-ton animal, you go get the 150-pound baby. That’s what you do.

Chris:
And I led us down that trail. I love that, though.

Jeff:
That’s for tomorrow. He told him, go get animals. And so if you’re wondering, how did he get the animals?

Chris:
Right, right, right. And they’ll come two by two. And it says God brought the animals, right? That’s right. But as we were talking about God saying that he’s going to destroy the earth, but Noah found favor. Think about this. I wonder what the earth’s population was at that time. Like how many people would have been on the face of the earth? And it says Noah was the only human who was living blameless, right? He was the one with the pure heart. It wasn’t as if he was perfect. They didn’t say that, right? Blameless, meaning his heart posture was one who loved God and obviously followed him and was not being corrupted with things that were, like God said, totally and completely evil.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Chris:
So, yeah.

Jeff:
Here’s another thing. One thing we blew over was the Naphtalites, by the way.

Chris:
Yes.

Jeff:
We didn’t even cover that.

Chris:
Yeah. Do you want to take a few minutes there? In those days and for some time after the giant nephtolites lived on the earth for whenever the sons of God, capital G, had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of the ancient times.

Jeff:
Yeah. So some people would say, Hey, these sons of God are angels coming down and having relations with, with human women. And that’s where these giants came from. It’s unlikely because Jesus talks about how the fact that angels are not, um, uh, don’t, don’t, are not married or given in marriage, right? So it seems to imply that they’re non-reproductive creatures. So I think that’s unlikely, but it’s probably more likely that it’s Seth’s line, who was a godly line, blending with Cain’s line for some reason. But coming out of that, hey, there’s some big people, right? And we know that by the time you get to Goliath’s age, and David is 1,000 years later, you still have people that are almost 10 feet tall. Not all of them, but some. There are some. And you might go, oh, that’s kind of weird. But hey, I don’t know if you knew this. There’s people, tribes in Sudan and a couple other places, where the average height of the men is almost seven feet tall. Average height is almost seven feet tall, right? So even today we have, when the average height that humans on the planet is like five, six or something like that, right? There are tribes that are almost seven feet tall. The women are over six feet tall. So if that’s a fact, then it’s not surprising to me that there would be some genetic anomaly that would create entire tribes of people.

Chris:
We know it’s possible because there was the tallest man on earth was almost as tall as Goliath.

Jeff:
Yeah, well, the tallest guy in the Guinness Book of World Records, you mean? Yeah. Because Goliath would have been taller than that guy.

Chris:
Right, right, right. But I didn’t mean on the Earth.

Jeff:
Yeah, but in modern times. So what was his name? I forgot his name, but Guinness Book of World Records.

Chris:
This is why I love this. Yeah. Who is the tallest man ever recorded in history? Oh, I didn’t do it.

Jeff:
I had to think about it.

Chris:
Who is the tallest man on Earth?

Jeff:
Robert Pershing Wadlow, the tallest man, was 8 feet and 11 inches in height. His answer is from Wikipedia.

Jeff:
Thank you. Yeah, and he lived in the 20th century.

Chris:
Right, which is, he was only 10 inches shorter than Goliath.

Jeff:
Right, right. He’s nine feet tall. Right. Eight feet, 11 inches tall. Right. Literally, he could, so Jack Hiles knew him, by the way. Oh, did he? Yeah. And he could reach up and his elbow would be above, almost above the rim on a basketball hoop. That’s how tall he was. Think about that. He’s nine feet tall, his elbow would go a foot over his head. And he could reach above a rim, stand a flat footed. So the fact that this existed, it doesn’t surprise me at all. It’s not a weird thing. And it didn’t mean that it had to be angels that was breeding with women.

Chris:
That’s right. That’s right. Because the sons of God were, you know, Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Seth were a godly line from… Seth was following God.

Jeff:
Cain was not. Right. Right. And that then you’d have good people and bad people. And that’s what came out of that. So that’s what I believe. Now we’ll get people who will want to write about that because there’s really, it’s fun to be a conspiracy theorist and go, oh no, this was angels and they were breeding with people and this is a whole new race of humanity and all that kind of stuff. I don’t know that I think that’s true, but I would say, so there’s that element. There’s also this design for the boat and you referenced it earlier. It’s exactly the right form. The notes here in the Life Application Study Bible talk about how, It was exactly six times longer than it was wide, which is the same ratio used by modern shipbuilders today. Wow. Right? So if you’re going to build an aircraft carrier, if you’re going to build a cargo ship, if you’re going to build an ark, you use the same formula. And here it is thousands of years before anything was ever built that big. and it’s exactly the right size. And then he built it with exactly the right, you know, having the windows be all around the top, at that top piece would pull all of the, it’d create a draft for the sake of getting air all through everything. It’s just, it was perfect. It was a perfect design for what humanity could do with their technology at that time.

Chris:
Yeah, and think about how far we’ve come in technology and studies and things like this, and nobody, like to your point, we still haven’t come up with anything better.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Chris:
Right? Which is crazy.

Jeff:
Yeah. So let me finish with this. I was talking to a guy one time on a plane, and he goes, he knew I was a Christian. And so he said, Hey, so I struggle with this. Do you really believe In a flood, you see, because the reason why I can’t believe in the Bible, the reason why I can’t believe in God, is because I don’t believe in Noah. And he said, I have a, it’s impossible for me to believe, and there’s, I saw a comedian recently do something along these lines too. It’s impossible for me to believe that some old guy builds a big boat, two animals of every kind, and God floods the entire planet. I just can’t wrap my head around that. I can’t believe that. I said, so you know, we’re talking about, you’re asking a guy who also believes a creator created everything. Right. This isn’t hard for me to believe if I believe that a Creator created everything. And he goes, well, I can’t believe that either. I said, yeah, because it’s so much easier to believe that everything came from nothing. Right. And he started laughing. And he goes, well, I don’t know. And I said, so you understand it takes faith. It takes faith. But I’m not going to let you come and go, oh, it’s silly for you to have faith in this when you are the guy who’s claiming that everything, not just on this planet, but in the entire universe came from nothing. And he sat there for a minute. I said, I have this little poem I like to quote sometimes. It says, I was a tadpole when I began to begin. And then I was a toad with my tail tucked in. Next, I was a monkey swinging from a tree. And now I’m a professor with a PhD. He started laughing. I said, so really, you know what you believe? What you’re saying you believe is everything came from nothing. And now you’re intelligent enough to even contemplate that concept. as opposed to, I believe an intelligence created it all and made me intelligent on purpose. And now I’m able to sit here and have an intelligent conversation with you while you reject that intelligence. That’s what I believe. I said, that seems more reasonable to me than yours. And he goes, well, when you put it that way. So sometimes people will use the story of Noah to try to embarrass you as a Christian. And I would say, it’s not unreasonable if you believe in a creator. Right. It’s not. And it literally says the Creator’s heart was broken, and He decided to hit the reset button. But His love and His grace was, I’m going to preserve humanity in and through Noah.

Chris:
Yeah. Well, that is a great place to end, and we will pick up with the rest of the story tomorrow on The Bible Guys.