'For time won't matter anymore . . .'

Noah lived 350 years after the Flood and died at 950, only 50 years before Abraham’s birth. “It is entirely possible that Abraham saw one or more of Noah’s three sons, Ham, Shem, and Japheth,” writes Noah W. Hutchings in his 1998 classic God Divided the Nations. “Ham had 30 sons, Japheth had 14 sons and Shem had 26 sons. We are not told how many daughters they had.

“It certainly would be improbable for a woman to have this many children in a normal life span today. Peleg, who lived at the time of the Tower of Babel, lived to be 239 years of age, and Eber, a grandson of Noah, lived to 464 years of age. So even after the Flood, for about 400 years, men lived to be 700 years old, and had large families. This was for the purpose of the rapid replenishing of the earth with people, since God desired that all the earth be reinhabited again.”

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“The ‘old world,’ which was the pre-Flood world, offers some very interesting things to examine when you study Genesis 1-10 and then come to Genesis 11,” says Jordan. “In Genesis 11 is a genealogy you can compare to the time period of the peoples’ lives in Genesis 5.

“In Genesis 5, people lived hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Methuselah lives 969 years and his life is cut short actually. People aren’t even having children until they’re 200-300 years old.

“Immediately after the Flood the longevity span begins to drop to less than 100 years. It quickly tapers down. The question asked is, ‘Why is that?’ One of the obvious reasons is there was a tremendous difference in the way the world was structured prior to the Flood and after the Flood.

“Before the Flood, the earth was not tilted on the 23.5 degree axis that it is now. That’s what makes us have seasons. Seasons are introduced in the Bible in Genesis 8:22, after the Flood. Prior to the Flood, the earth would have been a tropics kind of environment all around. That’s why in the archaeological evidence you find all kinds of indications of that in strange places.

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“Another thing is the Garden of Eden was on earth. In Genesis 4, Cain and Abel go to the door of the Garden and the cherubim are there providing the way that man can bring a sacrifice and offer it before God. There was place to go in the earth for those sacrifices.

“After the Flood, that place is gone; it’s been removed from the earth. When Noah gets off the Ark, he offers for the first time a burnt offering. The offering had to ascend UP into God’s presence. Noah is a second Adam. We’re all the sons of Adam here tonight but were also all the sons of Noah.”

Hutchings writes, "The Garden of Eden must have been an immense jungle of vegetation and animal life. The general area, as evidenced by the junction of the Euphrates and the Tigris rivers, was somewhere in the Persian Gulf near Kuwait. Oil is the residue of the decomposition of animal and vegetable matter, and there is more oil under the ground in that area than in any other place in the world . . . 

"Before the Flood it was unnecessary for men to eat meat, because the nuts and herbs were delicious and nutritious. Adam was told in Genesis 1:29 that the herbs, the seeds and the fruit of the trees 'shall be for meat' . . . If the world was restored to its Edenic condition, many of the reasons nations go to war against each other would be resolved. There would be food, shelter and clothing for everyone."

Historian Josephus actually says the "Garden was watered by one river, which ran round about the whole earth, and was parted into four parts."

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“ ‘The Garden,’ which always has the significance of the Kingdom of God, has been set up on earth by the work of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary,” writes Bible expositor Cora MacIlravy, circa 1916. “In this Garden, God has planted precious plants, costly spices and aromatic herbs. He has planted lilies, which are white and pure, humble and fragrant; and among these lilies is found the One who is the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valleys . . . Not only does the bride feed and work in this Garden, but she is a part of it. Her life is a little vineyard which is a part of God’s great Vineyard, a little garden which is a part of God’s great Garden . . .

“Dear reader, are we crying from the depths of our hearts, ‘Awake, O North wind’? Are our hearts longing for Him to blow upon our vineyards in conviction and dealing and testing, however hard it may be on the flesh? Can we pray most fervently that God will send His Spirit, as the north wind, to search out the pride; and that He will blow upon it until it is blasted and drops off, and we are clothed in humility? . . .

“How many times we thought we had entered into possession of those things that God had showed us and called us to begin to possess? How many times God has let us see the blessedness of the path in which we walk alone with Him, and we thought we were walking in it. But when He sent the Spirit to blow upon our lives, we found that He was not our all and all; that we were depending upon someone else or upon our feelings, rather than upon the Lord.

“How little we recognize our own plans and desires, which are as suckers in our spiritual lives. How little we apprehend the place we give the flesh and our own interests, our likes and dislikes, our experiences and self-absorption, which eat the strength and life out of our relation and attitude toward God. When God sends the Holy Spirit as the north wind, He comes and uncovers our nakedness, exposing the selfishness of our thoughts, and our false position. With a blast of conviction, He blows upon those suckers, and like a mighty wind He sweeps down upon them to try them. As they fall off, we are left apparently stripped and bare; but, in reality, we are in a better condition to bring forth blossoms and fruit to His glory than we have ever been before.

“Can we look into His face with confidence and say: ‘Awake, O North wind and blow upon my garden'? Lord, send the testings down, and the trials you see I need; send the hard things that are needed to try every blossom. Blow upon the blossoms in my life that are so beautiful and look as though they would bear luscious fruit for Thy glory. Blow upon them and prove whether they will abide, or whether they have no beginning of fruit in them. Let the wind of Thy dealings prove whether they will fall off because they are all show and cannot stand the test.

“How many of God’s dealings and revelations, how many of His calls to higher ground, have been rejoiced in and have made much show before our own eyes and in the eyes of others. But we did not yield that God might make them fruitful, and they remained only dealings and revelations, and never became possessions . . .

“He separates us from every one and everything that is harming our vineyards; He blows upon the human affections, both in us and in those who have a place in our lives; and before His north wind, human love withers up . . .

“In spiritual things, as in the natural, the blossom is not the fruit. How many times we see a vineyard or fruit tree beautiful with fragrant blossoms, and we begin to look forward to an abundant harvest of fruit. But when the blossoms fall off, and it is time for the fruit to appear, there are only a few small, weakly apples, pears, or grapes, whatever the fruit may be; and all the beautiful blossoms lie decaying and unsightly upon the ground beneath the tree.”