My name is Methuselah. Your scholars have difficulty determining the meaning of my name. I won’t spoil the mystery. I usually appear in your Bible trivia games as the man who lived longer than anyone else. I died in the year of the great flood.
I am quite perplexed at the great variety of Christian doctrines your generation presents to mankind. I will not bother you with all my questions regarding your perplexing doctrines. It would take too much time to ask them all. Furthermore, I am afraid I will get many different conflicting answers depending upon which stream of Christendom I tap. But I will ask one. At the center of this “good news” which is so often mouthed in your day, are Scriptures like, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you and your household” (Acts 16:30,31). Here is another: “He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned” (Mark 16:16).
When I was alive I never knew or even heard of this man named Jesus. And saved from what? Death was imputed to me because of Adam’s transgression, not my own. Furthermore, death was never defined as everlasting punishment. We, of the pre-flood age, never heard of such things. We also never heard of the Mosaic Law or the Ten Commandments. God never left us a warning about “everlasting punishment.” We were never told to accept this Jesus as our savior.
So I ask you Christian, where is my hope according to your beliefs? I only know I died because of Adam’s transgression (Romans 5:14). How can you consign me to everlasting torture because I did not accept the teachings of a man I never heard speak? Am I to be judged by a different standard than you will be? Is God a respecter of persons?
Now some of you are wise enough in the Scriptures to have read the portions which say that Jesus went to those who were disobedient before the flood and preached to them. But most of the Christian sects do not accept that He preached the gospel to the dead because this would violate their sacred traditional doctrine that there is no hope of hearing the message of salvation after death. They consign us all to torment except the eight on the boat. But were the eight in the boat righteous? If they were without sin, wouldn’t they never die? But they died just like me! Death was imputed to them just as it was to all the family of Adam. In Adam, we all die! I ask you to think, reason.
As to the ark incident, I ask you for a moment to picture yourself in any of your big cities. They are as corrupt if not more than our generation. Picture some man building a boat in Central Park in New York City. At the same time he tells passerbys that the entire world will be covered with water and destroy everyone who doesn’t get into his boat. Be honest with yourself. No one supports the man except his immediate family, no distant relatives, no church leaders, and no government officials, not even religious zealots! Just his immediate family. Do you really think you would get on that boat in Central Park? (Many scholars believe it never rained prior to the flood which would add to one’s inability to believe Noah.)
You may glibly exclaim you weren’t born in my time. You don’t have to think about what you “might” have done in this circumstance. This shows to me your lack of understanding of even the basics of life. You are joined to me much more than you think. There is only one family of Adam in this world and we all share the same grave. “In Adam all died.” Being closer to the first Adam then you, I understand the mystery in Paul’s words much better than you moderns. I lived longer than any man who ever lived. I understand living in death better than anyone. I understand very well, “The wages of sin is death.” Many of you have twisted this to say, “The wages of sin is eternal torment.” If any of us on this side of the flood were taught of such a thing and given an opportunity to escape such a fate, surely more of us then one single family would have done so. All we knew was that the “the wages of sin was death.” I succumbed to this fate when I was 969 years old. I lived longer than the righteous Noah did. No, I did not enter the Ark. My death served as a marker. But remember, Noah and his family also suffered the same fate that all in the family of Adam suffer, death.
I share this for your benefit. I am joined to you through Adam. We all share the same fate, death. However, your Roman Catholic/Protestant teachings of “salvation from eternal torture” separate you from me. I know nothing of these things. If what you say could possibly be true, then you offer me no hope. Our Creator would certainly be a respecter of persons. Your Scriptures declare Jesus went to hell (Hades) to preach to those who were disobedient in the days of Noah. What do you think He preached-good news or bad? What do you think the outcome of His preaching might be? How do you think you would respond to His preaching being locked up in Hades for several thousand years? Oh, by the way, according to the first three quarters of the Bible, the righteous and the unrighteous before and during the Old Covenant all went to the same place, Sheol. Despite what your modern theologians might say, King David, a man after “God’s own heart,” was with me in Sheol (Hades in the Greek). All of us went to the same place-Sheol.