Methuselah as a metaphor of God's longsuffering |'Banji Odurombi
Methuselah and his long years of traversing planet earth have always come under sharp rebuke by preachers in the orthodox, evangelical, and Pentecostal circles. He is the butt of jokes of how a man merely squandered mortality on copulating—populating the world with offsprings. He is, in the assessment of many a preacher, the typical example of leading a grand lifestyle of wasting time—life's most precious gift. Men are therefore warned to desist from the kind of life led by this grandfather of Noah. He bears a name so despised that not many will dare christen their baby boy. In short, it defies critical apprehension how 969 years can be summarised as having sons and daughters. But haven't preachers been unfair to this man whose life was a metaphor of God longsuffering?
His father, Enoch (Jude said about him that be prophesied of the coming of the Lord-Jude 1:14) named him Methuselah, meaning at his death judgment will come. In other words, at his birth his dad knew by prophetic insight that God would destroy the earth with water. And to warn people in his generation of this imminent doom, he named his son after this inevitability. In other words, the name Methuselah became a conveyer of the judgment that was to come upon the earth. He probably had been warning men in his generation before the birth of his son. And at his birth, as people called his name, say for instance, his class teacher, such a teacher is reminded of the inevitability of God destroying the earth. As his name is being called, his classmates hear and are reminded of this doom too. The point is, every time his name was mentioned, it brought to remembrance the inevitability of the destruction of the earth.
To further confirm the inevitability of this divine judgment, Methuselah's grandson, Noah, was instructed to build an ark which was estimated to have been built for 120 years. His contemporaries would have wondered the purpose for which the ark was built; perhaps they couldn't make sense of it as the explicit evidence of the message that Methuselah's name communicated all along. True to his name, the prophesied judgement came to pass. Bible historians account that the flood did come in the year that Methuselah died.
So the question is: why did Methusaleh live that long? Why did he live to be 969 years? Simple! Because of God's longsuffering. He is never willing that anyone should perish. Because of this, He granted a near millennium existence to one man.
With this understanding, I hope the name of this man whose life is a worthy example of God's patience wouldn't be treated with disdain again. Have a most wonderful week ahead!
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