My question is this. In Gen 6:3, God said, my spirit shall not remain in man for ever and his days shall be 120 years. However, The age of man extended far beyond 120 years after the flood, as Arphaxad lived 403 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If God shortened the life of man to 120 years, how therefore could anyone after the flood have lived beyond this? This seems contradictory?
\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\nFirst, let\u2019s see what the passage says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the Lord said, \u201cMy Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years.\u201d (Genesis 6:3)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At first glance, this verse may seem to indicate that God is limiting a human\u2019s lifespan to 120 years. Yet after the Flood, men continued to live well past 120 years. So, is there a contradiction between what God decreed and what actually came to pass?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If we look closely at the context and the fulfillment, we\u2019ll actually find that God is not discussing how long humans will live. Instead, God is referring to His own actions. In this passage, God is ordaining that the number of years between His decree to punish the wickedness of mankind and the carrying out of that decree will be 120 years. He gave mankind 120 years to repent of their sin and return to their Creator before sending His divine judgment in the form of the worldwide, earth-covering Flood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Note that this 120 years does not necessarily refer to the amount of time that God gave Noah to build the Ark. It\u2019s more likely that Noah has less than 100 years to build it, as God commanded Noah build the Ark and to take his sons and daughters-in-law into the Ark with him (Genesis 6:18). Yet Noah\u2019s eldest son was born 20 years after God pronounced His 120-year decree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
God\u2019s ordination of 120 years refers not the limit of man\u2019s life, but to the number of years of grace until He would unleash His divine wrath on the wickedness of mankind. Although He hasn\u2019t given us an exact timetable for when He\u2019ll judge the earth with fire, we can be sure that now is the time to repent or to call others to repentance and faith in the only Ark of salvation\u2014Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My question is this. In Gen 6:3, God said, my spirit shall not remain in man for ever and his days shall be 120 years. However, The age of man extended far beyond 120 years after the flood, as Arphaxad lived 403 years. If God shortened the life of man to 120 years, how thereforeContinue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28220,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[22,8,27],"tags":[516,100],"class_list":["post-28219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible-errors","category-bible-study","category-bible-teaching","tag-how-long","tag-life","has-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28219"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28222,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28219\/revisions\/28222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pathway2truth.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}