[by James Lloyd] As most know, Jesus Christ compared the days preceding His return to the time of Noah – a fact which focuses many commentator’s attention on the conditions which were prevalent in Noah’s timeline. A few prophecy teachers recognize the flood analogy as describing a discriminating destruction, in which “the one shall be taken” in judgment (Matthew 24:40), and “the other left” – read preserved – the unscriptural Rapture Cult doctrine notwithstanding.
Others see hints of another Nephilim incursion, as the pivotal event triggering the “wickedness of man” (Genesis 6:5) in Noah’s era, was closely related to the fallen one’s intervention in world affairs (Genesis 6:4). Unfortunately, very few have recognized the issue of longevity, and how those born, as Joshua put, “on the other side of the flood,” saw lengthy life spans, whereas the world populace born after the flood saw their term of physical existence plummet.
Recognizing the significance of prophetic metaphor, and the phenomena of Twice-Speak, where key phrases and words are repeated twice as a way to point us to the deeper meaning of a given text, we note how Joshua doubled the phrase “the other side of the flood,” twice:
“Now therefore fear the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the Lord. And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:14, 15).
This is actually a rare occasion, for the doubled phrase “the other side of the flood” is doubled twice by Joshua in his 24th chapter, in verses 2 and 3, as well as verses 14 and 15; and there is certainly great significance in what actually occurred before the flood, even without such a supernatural marker. The reader will remember that the Scriptures plainly state that, even before He engineered the great deluge, God purposed to shift the time allotted for a human life to a much shorter period:
“And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3).
Although a relative few think about such things, the transition to a radically shorter lifespan means that Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives, all had remarkably longer lives than those who were born after the flood. In such an unusual mixture of individuals, this would mean that the seniors in the post-flood society outlived their children. Furthermore, this ordained change was not limited to the occupants of Noah’s Ark, for the lifespans were progressively shortened, so that many who were born just after the flood, survived those who were born even later.
Since JESUS described the conditions of the end times “as it was in the days of Noah” (Luke 17:26), we might ask ourselves if there are any indicators of parents surviving their children in our timeline.
However, before asking such a question, we need to realize the flood event was a similitude which must have a contemporary parallel. To precisely locate the modern equivalent, we can simply recognize that before the flood, there was a societal infiltration by evil spiritual beings, the fallen angels, who sought to corrupt the physical lineage of the chosen of God. In this regard, many see that Satan realized the LORD was going to bring salvation, as He declared in Genesis 3, and it would occur via the agency of the physical seed of a woman:
“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
It is self evident the serpent realized, well before the advent of Christ, that God would dispatch His redemption to the world through the physical offspring of an unidentified woman. Thus, the effort to corrupt the seed of the people the LORD was to choose in this task, was not dissimilar to Herod’s effort to murder the Christ child in Bethlehem. In Herod’s case, he had no way to determine which male child was the chosen Holy One of Israel, so he murdered all of them.
So too, that wicked one could not foresee who the Lord’s chosen people would be at that juncture, so he sought to corrupt the entire bloodline of mankind, through the mingling of the fallen angelic essence, with the general population:
“And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughter of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose” (Genesis 6:1, 2).
Many believers have been blessed to learn that when the Scripture tells us that Noah was “perfect” in his generations, the Word of God is actually describing the fact that Noah’s seed – or his genetics (“generations” in the KJV), was uncorrupted:
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9).
Knowing that everything in prophecy occurs twice (or is doubled as noted previously, as well as in prior studies), when we seek to locate events or phenomena in the contemporary timeline which would indicate a modern parallel to “the other side of the flood,” we are immediately led to the conclusion that a great falling away from the truth of God would suffice. After all, the Genesis record tells us that
“God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5).
Need we ask if there is any evidence that such conditions are being repeated in our timeline?
— James Lloyd
Next: Pinpointing the generation which falls away, as well as the Remnant which collectively personifies the person of Noah
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A Profile book by the author, on the subject of such patterns, is found in the James Lloyd book Apocalyptic Linguistics: The Language Of Prophetic Metaphor
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