After living an extraordinarily long time, he may have missed the boat!

“Altogether, Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died.”

Genesis 5:27 NIV

When we interview him, his eyes are rheumy and there’s very little between his skin and his bones. He has lived an extraordinary length of time.

What would it be like to live for 969 years? How would you enjoy living, not just with your kids, grand kids and great grand kids, but with the next twenty-five generations as well – all at the same time?

The first thing Christian parents think of is the Godly influence you could have on the many who followed in your family footsteps. You could forge the spiritual lessons of your entire life deeply into the lives of those who came behind you. Imagine the possibilities of your prayer agenda!

Yours would be a novel place in life, integrating with other ‘ancients’ like yourself, but children and all in between! (sorry for so many exclamation marks, but this is mind-blowing stuff!!)

Only God could conceive of one man’s potential for tens of thousands of your relatives living within your personal sphere of influence. And God did indeed consider this. No man in history has ever had this scope of impacting life-style given him to be passed on.

He could have taken a place of honor beside the others in Hebrews chapter twelve who are commended for their incredible faith. But he’s not there. He lived long, but he almost certainly didn’t live well.

Only one of this man’s many offspring amounted to anything in his life. His name was Noah and he was a grandson, born in Methuselah’s 369th year.  We know that Noah had been warned of God of impending disaster coming to earth’s inhabitants and for over 100 years preached a warning to all who would listen. Unfortunately, when the floodwaters broke upon the earth, only Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives were aboard the safety of the ark that Noah and his sons had built.

Given the genealogies and years listed in Genesis chapter five, there is the real possibility that Methuselah as well as everyone of his family except Noah and his immediate family, were swept to their death by the swirling waters of the catastrophic disaster.

This ancient man speaks powerfully from across the centuries to anyone who will listen today. If Methuselah had lived well, instead of just long, Noah may have needed a fleet of arks to save those who responded to his message!

It’s not the length of a life that counts,

but what that life counts for

that matters for time and eternity.