Life Span - How Long?

Quick, quick, ponder these few questions:

• How long does the Bible say the typical human life span will be?
• What was mankind’s original diet?
• When and why did our diet change?

There is a little known or overlooked apparent contrast in Biblical scripture that is having major impacts in our world today, and I would bet on your personal life as well. This contrast directly affects both the quality and length of your life.

Got your attention?!

I’ll return to this point and the above questions in a moment. But first, let’s do a quick review a few life basics. No doubt, most of us have heard of and are familiar with the pH scale used to measure how acidic or alkalic a substance is. The scale runs from 0-to-14, with 0 as highly acidic and 14 as highly alkalic. The steps along the scale represent a 10-fold change in either direction. Each food and drink has both a rating on the pH scale, as well as a pH effect triggered during digestion and metabolism (at the cellular level). For example, acidic lemons and apple cider vinegar become alkalic during digestion and metabolism. In the body, it reportedly takes 20 parts of alkalinity to neutralize one part of acidity. Various degrees/levels of cooking increase the acidic content of most foods.

Here are 10 points worth reviewing and remembering, including some common pH levels: (Info combined from several websites on pH)

1. Water: leaving water company (7 0 – 8.0), distilled water (5.4 – 5.7), bottled flat (6.9 – 7.5), bottled sparking (4.9 – 5.5) [Acidity increases while traveling through pipes to homes]
2. Healthy blood: 7.35 – 7.45
3. Healthy urine: 5.5 – 8
4. Acidosis: pH = 1 to 7.40 (triggers a host of major diseases such as cancer)
5. Neutral: pH = 7.41
6. Alkalosis: pH = 7.42 to 14.0 (triggers hypersensitivity and other problems)
7. Vegetables and fruits generally alkalize our body fluids, whereas other foods (to varying degrees), plus cooking any food, typically increase our acidity
8. Carbonated soft drinks generally have a pH of about 3, which is ten thousand times more acidic than pure water
9. During metabolism, everything we consume generates cellular waste (ash) with its own pH rating
10. Cellular repair, replacement, and maintenance release acidic byproducts into body fluids 

The typical American diet is highly acidic – an open door to every dis-ease.

Based on my readings and experience, I submit not only foods and drinks have pH ratings, but also our thoughts, words, and actions also likely have pH ratings!! Thus, it would be totally useless to watch carefully what we consume, but ignore what we think, say, and do that may be increasing the disease-hosting environment in our lives! I wonder whether we may ever see a pH scale for these common life actions? Selah.

How does all of this relate to the questions posed above? Glad you asked!

 

Mankind was created to never die physically – a heavenly policy, so to speak. Genesis 1:29 - 31 records the foods originally assigned for both humans and animals:

And God said, ‘See, I have given you every herb that yields seed which is on the face of all the Earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed; to you it shall be for food. Also, to every beast of the Earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the Earth, in which there is life, I have given every green herb for food’; and it was so. Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.

As an aside, contrary to common belief (including among many learned Jewish scholars), animals were herbivores, not carnivorous. This should help to explain why animals that survived the flood did not attack each other while entering Noah’s ark, and why they were able to cohabit for well over a year. If they had been carnivorous, God’s instructions to Noah would have been totally unrealistic, as the food requirements for carnivorous animals for over a year would have been un-man-ageable!

You shall take with you seven each of every clean animal, a male and his female; two each of animals that are unclean, a male and his female; also seven each of birds of the air, male and female, to keep the species alive on the face of all the Earth. (Genesis 7:2 – 3)

Following the ole, familiar story, the results of sin changed all of this and introduced death into our world. But even so, with this diet, humans lived for unimaginably long periods (nearly 1,000 years)! Could it be that their bodies had to learn how to die, or that their diets were so great, or possibly both?

Fast forward to after the flood, when we can tune-in to God telling Noah:

Every moving thing that lives shall be meat (food) for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. (Genesis 9:3)

Ok, what happened and why? To find the answer, back-track to Genesis 6, where God concludes His survey of humankind:

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. (120 – remember this) And 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. And it repented The Lord that he had made man on the Earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

Reducing mankind’s life span on the Earth was Heaven’s apparent formal policy shift in response to rampant sin. Nevertheless, people continued to live exceptionally long lives (Noah lived 950 years, 20 more years than Adam!) This all changed when, after the flood, God announced to Noah part of His strategic plan that would implement the above policy shift, namely a greatly expanded diet. Given our insight from the pH scale, in jest, I imagine Genesis 9:3 could be interpreted as:

Y’all, have a lot more acidic foods with those fruits and veggies! *

The strategy worked, and worked well! Check out the difference in life spans from Noah-to-Ishmael, the next recorded life span in Genesis:

And all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years: and he died. (9:29)

And these are the years of the life of Ishmael, an hundred and thirty and seven years: and he gave up the ghost and died; and was gathered to his people. (25:17)

NB: The wise will note that ‘gathered to his people’ is a clear signal of life after physical death! If there wasn’t, there would be nothing to gather, but just a corpse that returns to Earth elements.

Now fast-forward a few hundred years to the 40-year sojourn of the new nation of Israel in the wilderness – their punishment for failure to believe and trust God in conquering the sinful inhabitants of The Promised Land. More specifically, everyone from 20 years old and up would die in the wilderness. If everyone in this crowd would have lived to 120 years, per Genesis 6:3, the sojourn in the wilderness would have lasted up to a whopping 100 years! Unimaginable and likely unbearable punishment!!! In His great mercy, God shortened this period and their lives. This had the dual objective of facilitating an earlier implementation of the strategic objective of conquering and possessing The Promised Land!

Moses, through whom God wrote Genesis 6:3, noticed and wrote a prayerful complaint about this strategy:

The days of our years are threescore years and ten (70 years); and if by reason of strength they be fourscore (80) years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. (Psalm 90:10)

Now fast-forward to our day! We typically and seriously MIS-INTERPRET the above verse as God’s formal announcement of yet another policy shift regarding the typical life span of mankind on Earth – totally ignoring the important context in which it was written! What Moses complained about apparently was a strategic plan (a) to show great mercy in implementing the announced punishment of all adults for their disbelief and mistrust of God related to conquering Canaan, and (b) to speed up actual implementation (by the younger generations – those under 20 years old) of God’s strategic objective.

For critical insight as to why this strategic objective (conquering Canaan and destroying a hoard of horribly wicked people) had to be implemented in a timely manner, let’s rewind to Genesis 15 and tune-in to part of a conversation between God and Abraham concerning his descendants:

…But in the fourth generation (roughly 400+ years) they shall come here again: for [the reason for the delay, Abraham, is that] the iniquity of [sins and time of Grace to] the Amorites is not yet full [complete]. (Genesis 15:16)

This oft-ignored verse is choc full of spiritual insights for those who are attentive and wise, and is very relevant for us today! In this simple statement, God announced/revealed to Abraham (and to us, if we are listening!) His policy of protracted Grace to increasingly wicked people. The term, Amorites, refers to the collective hoard of people who were occupying the land of Canaan. This group included many sub-groups. God promised the land to Abraham and his descendants, but the ‘lease’ the (then) current residents had on the land had not yet expired. God would grant them time to repent and do what was right, yet He knew they would not do so. Moses escorted the people out of Egypt 430 years after Joseph’s family joined him there. This suggests the cup of iniquity of the Amorites was then full to the rim, and time for God’s judgment was ripe! (Ponder God’s 3-point modus operandi in Jeremiah 9:23-24) Israel’s staunch refusal to trust God to enable them to conquer the land effectively delayed God’s planned timely punishment of the current occupants of the land. Had the sojourn in the wilderness lasted about 100 years (enough time for the 20 year olds to reach their full life span of 120 years), the needful judgment of the Amorites would have occurred roughly 530 years after Joseph’s family joined him in Egypt – making God a liar regarding His promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:14! It all adds up quite clearly, strategically, and mathematically!

Here are some critical ponderings to take away from this review:

1. What if we still lived to be 900+ years old today?
2. It took the Amorites centuries to fill their cup of iniquity, eventually demanding the judgment of God (400 years from the time of Genesis 15:16, plus whatever time that preceded this conversation). How long do you think it would take for us to fill our own cup of iniquity?
3. Back to my initial question, how long does the Bible say the typical human life span will be, and who stands to gain in deceiving us to mis-interpret Psalm 90:3?! The wise reader will perceive the answer.
4. With insight from the pH scale and the likelihood of pH ratings assigned to your thoughts, words and actions, what’s your game plan to reach for the promise of Genesis 6:3?

    As you ponder these questions, consider this: 

We today are much more savvy (technologically and otherwise) 

in finding enhanced and creative ways to commit wickedness

-- ways that were unavailable to the Amorites!

Another word in chemistry for alkaline is …..(drumroll)… BASIC…

(…as in getting back to our basic diet?)

~~~

* There may be other reasons for expanding human diets to include meat. For example, what if the global flood significantly diminished (washed away) soil nutrients such that the original diet would be nutrient diminished? Also, some Bible scholars believe the mention of 120 years in Genesis 6:3 refers to the time before God would send the flood on Earth, not to mankind’s post-flood life span. What if it’s both? 

Also, several posts in this blog explore Bible hints that, during The Millennial Reign, human life spans will once again be very long, human and animal diets will once again flip (back to the Genesis 1:29-30 diet), and there will be perfect peace between humans and all animal species.