Noah

Entry - Five

I know I told you that Entry # four would be about Noah, but ended talking about Cain and Abel: I needed to cover their story to try and clarify some things such as: Punishment vs Consequences... Just in case you didn’t catch on to that. Thus far, the Lord has not punished anyone... They have all been consequences of actions. "The American Heritage Dictionary" says:
“Punish - To handle roughly; injure; hurt; mistreatment. Punish usually means subjecting someone to loss of freedom or money or to physical pain for wrong doing.”

“Consequence - That which logically or naturally follows from an action or condition; an effect; result. The relation of a result to its cause. A logical result or inference.”

Using this definitions of punishment and consequence: we can safely say that punishment doesn’t necessarily relates to the bad choice one makes... no matter what one does wrong; he/she will lose freedom and will be mistreated etc.... Question: does the Lord punishes us??? Has he punish the people in these sacred books??? ... So far I haven’t seen any punishment from the Lord... I have seen consequences of bad actions... The Lord has not taken anyone’s freedom. He hasn’t hurt anyone. The individual has chosen the bad action knowing fully well - the consequence of that bad action. If they hurt, it is because they chose to get hurt. A bad Consequence is not Punishment; it is simply the logical result related to an action. We shall see more example of good and bad actions and the consequences there of.

Moving along - Have you notice some chapters in the scriptures that are pretty much a list of names of people’s generations? I used to skip those list of names. Some chapters where full of them... I thought they were boring, and had no guilt skipping them. I couldn’t even pronounce half of their names anyway. I knew they were important, but I just couldn’t see the excitement of knowing who was who.... until now! Ponder this::

During the time of Adam; people used to live over 900 years old. The oldest recorded in the Bible is (Jared) 962 years old. The last of those men were Noah, who lived 950 years and his children. Now let me go back to Adam and Eve for a moment and point something out before I go on, on this subject:.. If Adam and Eve started having children right away; which would make sense, and they were both 130 years old when they had Seth; they were not a small family. Eve must’ve had Seth shortly after Cain left, otherwise she wouldn’t have made the connection of Seth being the replacement sort of thing for Abel. And Cain must’ve had children of his own before he left Adam and Eve. Some of Cain’s brothers and sisters were easily between 1 - 100 plus years old. .. Which means that they also had children and some of their children had children too. We don’t even know if there were twins, triples, quadruples and so forth...it’s possible... Adam and Eve could easily have had about four-five generations of children within those 130 years of life. Why am I pointing this out? Well, because some people think that during the time of Cain and Abel, there were only the four of them, which it is not true, for why else would Cain be afraid of those who would seek him and try to kill him? Or have a wife? If Adam and Eve were obedient to God.. Which THEY were.. Don’t you think they would continually have children almost from the moment they left the garden???... and just like any family, I’m sure there were good and bad children, but obviously not as bad as Cain, or they would have mentioned it. Abel seemed to be exceptionally good, which means Seth was also exceptionally good, for why else would they go through the trouble of recording his generations??? It seems that they probably kept a record of the names of their children somewhere, but the one that was preserved for us to have was that of Seth, and of those of his children that were exceptionally obedient to the Lord. They were not necessarily the first born. Seth was definitely not the first born, neither did Enos his son.... Look, he was 105 years old when Enos was born... any obedient child of God would do as he was commanded by the Lord from the beginning... To “multiply and replenish the earth” he would have started a lot sooner then 105 years old. Remember, posterity has been a great factor throughout the ages. More accurately, since the beginning. It was, and it is in our conscious and subconscious mind to have children, to have a posterity... now days, if people don’t feel the same ways; it is because they choose to not feel that way: But if they honestly search their conscious; they will find that their souls yearns for a posterity.

Anyway, after Cain’s and Abel’s story; we read about Noah and his family.... Now here is the fun part about the list of generations... I wanted to know who of those great patriarchs was still alive when Noah was born: (I think is great when I hear of people that still have their great, great, grand parents alive.) I used to think that Noah was born many centuries after Adam and Seth...But, look at this: Noah didn’t meet Adam; Adam had died ONLY about 126 years earlier. He didn’t meet Seth either. Seth died ONLY 14 years earlier.... He did meet Seth’s son Enos. Enos lived about 84 more years after the birth of Noah... isn’t that AMAZING??? Noah could have learned all about our first parent from Adam’s grandson. The generation gap wasn’t that far way. Noah new a patriarch that actually knew Adam for many years... HOW COOL is that??? Genesis 5 gives you the names and years of the righteous patriarchs that came through Seth. You can check the math if you want. NOTE: some of Seth’s children had the same names as some of Cain’s children... so beware and don’t get confuse as to who is who.

Adam lived 930 years. He was:
130 yrs old when Seth was born - (Seth was 105 when Enos was born)
235 yrs old when Enos was born - (Enos was 90 when Cainan was born)
325 yrs old when Cainan was born - (Cainan was 70 when Mahalaleel was born)
395 yrs old when Mahalaleel was born - (Mahalaleel was 65 when Jared was born)
460 yrs old when Jared was born - (Jared was 162 when Enoch was born)
622 yrs old when Enoch was born - (Enoch was 65 when Methuselah was born)
687 yrs old when Methuselah was born - (Methuselah was 187 when Lamech was born)
874 yrs old when Lamech was born - (Lamech was182 when Noah was born)
Noah was born 126 years after Adam Passed away.

You can do this same pattern with each of these patriarchs. Remember, these are not the only children they had... they had many, many more after them... But these men are the main ones that were exceptional in the Lord’s doing.

Another interesting thing is that all these patriarchs died before the flood... Lamech, Noah’s father died about five years before the flood. And his grandfather Methuselah died in the year of the flood: when Noah was about 600 yrs old. It would make sense if Methuselah died just before the flood came about... especially if he was a righteous man. Don’t you think???

Well, I hope this bit of information helps you a little - to see why it is important to have these names. I’ll wait for the next entry to talk about Noah, and some of the things I noticed while I read about that time. Thank you.

JC