When I was just a little boy,
And had to go to Sunday school,
The story of Methuselah
Was better than the golden rule.

He was like Rip Van Winkle
Just a kindly old gentleman.
Who lived nine hundred and sixty nine years.
He was the oldest living man.

And so I closed my story book,
Imagination took it from there.
I created an ending in my mind,
Which I christened with a prayer.

But let's look closer at the facts,
And another story emerges.
Put aside your childhood assumptions,
And see where the truth diverges.

Methuselah begat Lamech
In his one hundred eighty seventh year.
One hundred and eighty two years later,
Lamech's first born son Noah was here.

Methuselah was three sixty nine,
On the day of his grandson's birth.
And early in Noah's six hundredth year
The flood waters covered the Earth.

The Bible said of Enoch and Noah,
That they walked with God all of their lives.
Because Noah was a man of faith,
God spared his wife, his sons, even their wives.

We assumed the same of Methuselah,
A claim the Bible does not support.
It never said he walked with God,
And here is where the truth does distort.

For did God not say unto Noah
that the wickedness of man was great?
That his every thought was always evil,
To build the ark and not hesitate?

Was Methuselah an exception,
When to Noah, those words, God did impart?
Did He say all but Methuselah
Had such wicked thoughts within they're heart?

I wanted to keep my assumptions,
However, the evidence was clear.
Methuselah's death and the Great Flood
Both occurred in that very same year.

The Bible never said he walked with God,
Or that he was a righteous man.
It never said he died a peaceful death,
Or that, for him, God had a plan.

We just assumed the best for him,
For in his veins flowed Adam's blood.
But what makes you think, if he died that year,
That God would have spared him from the Flood?

I'd like to think the evidence is wrong,
But I won't make such presumptions.
And the one who disregards the facts,
Is merely clinging to assumptions.

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