Thursday, January 2, 2020

Genesis 5:25-32 comments: Noah, the comforter


5:25 ¶  And Methuselah lived an hundred eighty and seven years, and begat Lamech: 26  And Methuselah lived after he begat Lamech seven hundred eighty and two years, and begat sons and daughters: 27  And all the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years: and he died.
5:28 ¶  And Lamech lived an hundred eighty and two years, and begat a son: 29  And he called his name Noah, saying, This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the LORD hath cursed. 30  And Lamech lived after he begat Noah five hundred ninety and five years, and begat sons and daughters: 31  And all the days of Lamech were seven hundred seventy and seven years: and he died. 32  And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Noah is here defined as a comforter. The Holy Ghost, the part of God that is Spirit, is called The Comforter.
John 14:26  But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.
Noah represents the person by which God chose to deliver those of mankind who would listen from the great wrath to come, the Flood that covered the world. God came in the form of a man to deliver those of mankind who would listen from the great wrath to come at the end of human centered history and in eternity.
1Thessalonians 1:10  And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
Noah is a type of the Holy Ghost and a type of Christ. Types in the Bible are useful to understand doctrines in the Bible. Although all types break down at some point and cannot be too dogmatically applied they can be a great help. For instance, later, Joseph will be a type of Christ in many ways but he will not die for the sins of mankind and no one’s salvation is dependent upon his death, burial, and resurrection. But you can see Christ all through the narrative of the Bible if you open your eyes and look.
One thing of note here is the incredibly long lifespans of people in the pre-Flood world discussed previously in my comments on chapter 5:6-20.
Noah’s three sons are mentioned in this passage. All of the people of the earth today, billions of people, come from these three.
Genesis 9:19  These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread.
This would be one of those population bottlenecks that geneticists talk about. Of course, secularists would not agree with the Bible but the explanatory power of the Bible narrative cannot easily be dismissed by anyone with a brain. A universe that comes about suddenly, life in rapid succession originating in the oceans and then from land, the beginnings of death, the foundation of the world’s religions, genetics, and history all explained in a way that is compelling, brief, and direct and stands in direct opposition to the modern accepted narrative of so-called scientific but entirely theoretical suppositions. The Bible is what is called a primary source, in this part with Moses being God’s secretary, His amanuensis. It represents a certain way of looking at things, from God’s point of view and man’s point of view, in direct opposition to the atheistic determinism of modernity which is based solely on man’s fantasies and not in any way on the word, the eyewitness testimony, given by God to Moses.
With most of history’s evidence buried in the dirt that no spade or shovel will ever uncover and with most of the writing on stone, parchment, paper, and clay long destroyed modern man, since The Enlightenment, tries to piece together a narrative that excludes God. The alternative is to seek God’s own narrative, preserved through time for us here. There is no middle ground. You either believe in God’s word or you believe in the fantasies of the atheist mind who, in his desperation and soul agony, tries desperately to escape from God by pretending He is not there.
Which narrative you accept will depend upon whether you have the Spirit of God indwelling you and are not resisting Him.

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