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Living to 900 Years Old
October 10, 2026 · 28 min
Did people really live to 900 years old before the Flood? Find out with guest Dr. Jake Hebert and evangelists Tim Moore and Nathan Jones on the television program, Christ in Prophecy!
Lamb & Lion Ministries exists to proclaim the Good News and hope-filled message of the soon return of Jesus Christ.
October 10, 2026 · 28 min
Did people really live to 900 years old before the Flood? Find out with guest Dr. Jake Hebert and evangelists Tim Moore and Nathan Jones on the television program, Christ in Prophecy! ...more Show the full description Show less Did people really live to 900 years old before the Flood? Find out with guest Dr. Jake Hebert and evangelists Tim Moore and Nathan Jones on the television program, Christ in Prophecy!
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In this video 0:00 The Promise of Christ's Coming and Evidence of the Flood8:54 Fossil Evidence of Extreme Longevity in Pre-Flood Creatures22:00 Long-Lived Oysters, Clams, and Other Flood Fossils24:10 Indirect Evidence from Giantism and Delayed Maturity26:20 Future Restoration of Long Life in Christ's Kingdom
The Promise of Christ's Coming and Evidence of the Flood 0:08 Greetings in the name of Jesus, our blessed hope, and welcome to Christ in Prophecy and the next episode in our series addressing the question, where is the promise of his coming?0:17 In 2nd Peter 3, the apostle Peter noted that 1 of the ways we could identify the last days is if mockers operating in their own lusts would be asking this question. Peter pointed out that not only would these end time0:29 scoffers reject the notion of the return of Christ, but they would also deny the creation and the flood. They do so in a vain attempt to avoid their inevitable judgment. As Peter said, by his word, the present heavens0:40 and earth are being reserved for fire being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.0:46 Pete Garcia, Nathan, and I have addressed the prophetic aspect of this prophecy in past episodes in this series. Now we'll turn to Jake Hebert, a scientist with the Institute for Creation Research who will0:58 address proofs for the flood aspect. Lamb and Lion Ministries has a long standing relationship with ICR. We cite its founder, doctor Henry Morris, often and even feature him on the cover of our overview of the1:10 end times publication. That is because doctor Morris understood, as we do, that the same God who revealed the beginning has also chosen to reveal the end. He is the only 1 who was there in the1:22 beginning and can see the end of time as we know it with equal clarity.1:27 Doctor Hiebert is an esteemed physicist whose research focuses on scientific proofs for creation as god described in the beginning, and he's an expert in cosmological and general apologetics. Here now is doctor J. K.
1:39 Bert.
1:41 As you are well aware, the theme of this conference is where is the promise of his coming? Claiming that all
1:52 things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. And they would deny Christ's return, they would deny creation, and they would deny the reality Noah.
2:04 And, we as Christians, we know that things do not continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. There were some big differences in that pre flood world. In fact, 1 of the most obvious
2:16 differences is that according to scripture, people routinely live to be 900 years old. And, you know, a lot of people have trouble with this, you know. Is it like a late night
2:28 TV infomercial? And, I'm, you know, now, at ICR, we certainly do take it seriously. But I'm sorry to say,
2:40 even some Christian apologists are claiming that these ages should be understood symbolically or metaphorically and not literally. But the Bible is a history book. And don't let anyone tell
2:52 you that you can't use the Bible as evidence. It's testimony that people once lived to be very old is evidence for that. And since the Bible is God's word,
3:05 we ought to expect there to be some confirmation of that. We might expect that there might be some people groups or historians who recall this extreme longevity. And it turns out there are.
3:17 Josephus, the Jewish historian, affirms that people used to live to be very old. Corroborate his claim. Augustine of Hippo. He
3:29 said the same thing. You've got, a lot of Native American tribes that say this as well, that say their ancestors used to live to be 200 years old. And you've got documents like the
3:41 Sumerians King's List that affirm that people before the flood were living to be very old. But is it possible
3:57 important question from the get go. Do we believe that this longevity was natural was natural. I, you know, I just assumed there
4:09 was something about the pre flood world, that enabled people to live to be very old. And I think that's correct. There's no hint in scripture that this longevity was in any way miraculous. Now, if
4:21 that's true, you are almost forced to conclude that the animals would also have experienced much greater longevity. And the reason for that is very simple. Just about any mechanism or
4:33 mechanisms you can think of to explain that greater longevity in humans is also going to apply the animals. You know, some people think, well, Adam and Eve, they had no mistakes in their DNA. And their descendants,
4:45 their immediate descendants had just a few mistakes in their DNA and that that could be part of it. But the same thing would have been true of the animals. When God made the animals, there were no mistakes in their DNA
4:56 either. Something about that pre flood world. Well, the animals are living in the same world that the people are. So you're pretty much forced to conclude the animals also
5:08 experience extreme longevity. 1st point I want to make here is that these fossils are from
5:20 the flood. Now, it's important to say that because a lot of the examples I'm going to show you, evolutionists will claim that these creatures lived millions of years ago. And we strongly, strongly disagree with that.
5:32 The rocks and the fossils are from the flood. These are water deposited sediments And they cover enormous amounts of surface on the,
5:44 of an area on the Earth's land surface. They stretch from continent to continent. I mean, you've got these continuous rock units, that just cover hundreds and thousands of square miles. And,
5:55 my co worker, Doctor. Jim Clary, has done a book on this. Moreover, these were deposited rapidly.
6:10 19 93 called The New Catastrophism. And he made it clear in that book he did not think much of creationists. Rock record that look like they formed
6:21 extremely rapidly. And 1 of the examples he gives is called Sutton Stone in Wales. And, the conventional thinking is that it formed over 5000000 years.
6:39 Creationists agree, but we think that's true of the entire rock record. That rock record was deposited during the year of the flood.
6:53 Well understood chemistry, those things cannot last for millions of years. So we have very good reason to believe that these rocks and fossils, rather than being evidence of evolution in millions of years, are
7:05 rather evidence for the flood. In fact, in some cases, you can still see the material is still soft and strong. So when you see these fossils, including dinosaur fossils, you're not looking at creatures that
7:17 lived millions of years ago. You were looking at creatures that perish in the Now, there's something else I need to, mention. We believe that the,
7:29 the flood triggered an ice age. In fact, we've got a very strong explanation for the ice age that is way better than what the evolutionists. And as those ice sheets melted at the end of the ice age, you're
7:41 gonna have some catastrophic flooding. And there might have even been some catastrophic flooding during the ice age itself, because we think there's a lot of rain at lower we think there's a lot of rain at lower
7:49 latitudes. But the bottom line is you're going to get fossils. You're going to get more fossils. So you're going to have fossils from the flood, but you're also going to have a few fossils from this post flood ice age.
8:01 And we know from scripture that lifespans were dropping, after that. Okay? Our best estimate is that the ice age lasted 700 years. It started pretty much immediately after the flood.
8:13 And the lives of the patriarchs overlapped that. Their lives overlapped this ice age. So if their lifespans are dropping, it's a good bet the animal lifespans are dropping too, but we might see evidence of longevity
8:26 in ice age fossils too, not just flood fossils. So we want to look at direct fossil evidence and indirect fossil evidence. Now we gotta cover a little background material 1st.
8:38 Some creatures have hard body parts and they have growth rings or bands that you can count. There's these fields out there called sclerochronology and skeletal chronology where you count these growth bands and you
8:50 try to see how old the organism is. And it's very similar to tree ring count. They do it a lot with bivalves, clams and oysters. They do it a lot. But to do it right, you usually have to
Fossil Evidence of Extreme Longevity in Pre-Flood Creatures
9:02 cut the the, clam or oyster open. You have to section it. Now, when you do this, you will often get graphs that look like this. You'll have it's a graph of the creature's body
9:14 size versus age. And, you you probably don't care, but that's the equation for that curve. Okay? L naught, okay, that is the size when it gets when it hatches or is born, and
9:25 l max is its final adult body size. Now, you don't truly, you don't need to worry about the equation. But here's what you do need to know. You've got rapid juvenile growth where it's increasing very rapidly. The the
9:36 length is increasing rapidly. Then it starts slowing down as it gets closer to adulthood. And a lot of times, it will completely level off and the growth stops. So the organism at that point may get fatter, but it's
9:48 not going to get longer or taller. Okay? So we have these growth curves. And we're going to be looking at a lot of these curves. Now, there's 2 ways you can construct these growth curves. The 1st and the best way is if
9:59 you have a population of organisms. And this could be a fossil population or it could be live a living population. So let's say you have a bunch of oysters and you measure their length and you count their growth rings
10:10 and you make a plot. Okay? Length versus age. Construct a best fit average trajectory to show you that organism's average growth trajectory
10:22 over time. And I mean, they do this a lot. Now, the best way to do it is with a population because then you can do lot of times, you may not have multiple creatures. You might just
10:34 have 1. And you but you can still do it. You can still construct a growth curve. It's not the best, but you can still do it. And they and they do this a lot as well. Pretty much all of
10:45 these to what the evolutionists call the Pleistocene or flood rocks. So if they're calling them Pliocene, Miocene, Oligocene, Eocene, all that. Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic,
10:57 Permian, whatever. We're saying all that's from the Now, the Pleistocene, okay, what they call the Pleistocene. Okay. That's basically ice age. But even some of these Pleistocene rocks
11:09 could be from the flood. And the creationists made a strong argument years ago that that would be the case. You know, if you're looking at what we would call lower Pleistocene, it's probably also from the floor.
11:24 Stage. And the mid Pleistocene could maybe go either way. And then this is not an absolute hard fast rule. It's just it's a rule of thumb. So just keep that in mind when we're looking at this. Now, there are a couple of
11:34 things we gotta worry about. Growth curve for a single Genesis kind of animal. 1 for
11:46 the fossil version and 1 for the modern version. And does it look like show. Now, most of you are probably aware that ICR, we think the
11:58 genesis kind that God created is broader than species. It's probably at the family or genius level. Same genus, they're they probably belong
12:10 to the same kind, even if they've been assigned different species names. Now, another thing you gotta worry about is that even today, creatures can experience great longevity if they're in very cold water. You've
12:22 got this this clam right here that can live to be 400 to 500 years. But it's the same species at lower, warmer waters, lower latitudes and warmer waters. It doesn't live there. You've got the
12:34 Greenland shark. They think it can live to be 4 to 500 years. If you eat less, they there's thinking that that might increase your longevity. And people have even suggested doing that for
12:46 humans, right? You eat less, you know, you live longer. Okay? Now, what I want to point out in the examples I show you, those are not good explanations because in the examples I'm going to be showing you, evolutionists
12:58 would agree that these creatures were living in warmer waters. And we're gonna see some examples from Antarctica. But evolutionists believe at the time Antarctica was much warmer than it is now. And we're gonna see
13:09 that they had very large body sizes, indicating they were very well fed.
13:21 Let's go ahead and get into the good stuff. Alright. So let's look at look at some long lived, what we call extant oysters and clams. These are creatures, oysters and clams that aren't extinct. They're still
13:33 around today. And 1 that people love to eat for seafood is called the Crassistria virginica oyster or the eastern oyster. Versions
13:45 called Crassistrhea titan and Crassistrhea gigantissima. Now, it's amazing how many of these fossil species names have connotations of giantism.
14:04 And you can see there's a 5 centimeter mark there. Maybe that doesn't fully show you the full scale. So here's a picture of me holding a giant fossil oyster. Okay? That gives you a feel for
14:16 how big these are. Now, even the evolutionists have acknowledged that these modern Crassistraea virginica oysters are almost certainly the direct descendants of this Crassistraea
14:28 gigantissima. That means it's the same Genesis kind. Okay? That means these are the descendants of these much larger paper published in 2001 where they looked at some
14:40 modern oysters, some from the ice age and some from what the evolutionists call the Miocene that we think is from the floor. And so this is a summary of their graphs. Now, the lengths of these graphs are not
14:52 arbitrary. Okay? The graph stops at the maximum age that was in each group of oysters. So if you look at that dark solid line, that's the modern group. That's the average growth curve for the modern
15:04 group. None of them lived past 6 years. The slightly thinner growth curve there, that's the ice age. Now, some of 1 of them at least lived to be 9 years old. Now, that's interesting.
15:15 It looks like these ice age oysters were living maybe 50 percent longer miacin, those are from the flood and they're living to be 20 and 23 years old.
15:27 And I want to emphasize that could easily be an underestimate because they got killed in the flood, right? We don't know what the true lifespan potential is. And there's other examples
15:40 there's other examples from the the eastern seaboard, where you've got these Pleistocene oysters that had much greater lifespans. And it was discussed in this 20 18 paper. Are some maximum lifespans
15:52 for Maryland oysters going from the ice age to the time of the American revolution down to modern times. And you can see there's an obvious drop in lifespan. Same thing for the for in Virginia.
16:05 Not as obvious, but there is a little bit of a draw. If you're interested in all the technical details, this is open access. You can read it at the website of the Creation Research Society.
16:19 Another oyster out there, the American bittersweet, glaceverus americana. Actually, I think that's a claim. I think I messed up. But then nevertheless, it's a buy. From North
16:31 Carolina. We got growth curves from North Carolina. Now, those dark solid lines, those are the good growth curves for modern ones. And you can see that none of them are living past 10 years.
16:46 Early Pleistocene, probably flood or maybe ice age. And you can see they are routinely living to be 30, 40, 50 years old. And there's 1 of them that actually made it to 86 years of age.
17:01 Obvious, but even evolutionists acknowledge there could be some very long lived specimens in Florida that we just haven't found them yet. There's another kind called the mercenary
17:13 clam or the hard clam. You see some examples from North Carolina, where the ones before the flood are are are They're they're living, longer.
17:25 Florida, kinda. The early places seen, it looks like they're living longer, but it's not nearly as pronounced. And to be fair, there is some contrary data here. I want to be upfront with you. There's some data that
17:37 are kind of contrary, not so much on the lifespan per se, but on the body. Yeah. We're seeing these other oysters were really big. If you these clams from
17:48 the place of body size difference. I'm sorry. I meant to say Gulf of America. Sorry about that. Okay.
18:00 And there are a few, okay, that are still around today that live to be very old. Okay? So there is some contrary data there, and I want to be upfront with you about that. But we've also got some examples from Japan.
18:12 This, this, shell creature is still a And if you look here, you can see that as you go forward in their lives spans drop
18:24 and they actually get smaller over. So we've got some evidence from what clams and oysters that are still alive today. We've got a lot of evidence from clams and oysters that are now
18:38 tip of the Antarctic Peninsula called Seymour. And, they found all kind of fossil creatures there. And so here are from what they call the Cretaceous. For us, that's from the
18:50 floor. Hundred years old. Maybe even 130. Very long lifespans. And these, they're not even that big. They're
19:02 like maybe 8 centimeters. Now, some of the scientists who looked at them described this
19:13 as extreme longevity, but they said, you know, it's very likely that there's even older fossil specimens out there that we just haven't found them yet. You've got 1 that was just enormous.
19:26 There was 1 called the platyceramis platanus that some people might think is a subgenius of this. Growth curve for it. Now, to be fair, some of this is extrapolated, but it's a reasonable extrapolation.
19:39 And you can see this thing might have still been growing at 120 years of age. You've got some from the juris.
20:04 Kind of weird looking ammonite. It doesn't look like the chambered nautilus, but it's got a shell that looks like a giant paperclip. But they believe it was more than 200 years old. And the scientists even commented and
20:15 said, accept the reality of this extreme longevity in this enigmatic animal. We've also got some very long lived, small mammals
20:26 from the from what they call the Jurassic. Access paper. You probably don't want to bore yourself with the details. But if you do, you can read this online. But they found these cute little critters, like this guy
20:38 right here. Little bitty things that like the size of a shrew. Little bitty. I don't think any of them, had a mass greater than like 130 grams. Little bitty things. But they realized that there are
20:50 growth bands in their teeth and the root of their teeth that they can count. And these are little bitty fossil teeth. And when you do that, okay, and they and you compare that to lifespans of okay, and you compare that
20:59 to lifespans, similar sized mammals today, they are way above the trend line, okay? You see those little black dots? Those are the lifespans of living
21:11 mammals today in the wild, Okay? For for having none of them have amassed more than 140 grams. Those colored blue square colored squares are all those fossil creatures.
21:23 They were living much, much longer. 1st mammals in the late Triassic and early Jurassic lived much longer than similar sized
21:34 mammals today, up to 14 years old. Which lived to just over a year, this is a huge difference in lifespan.
21:48 Alright. Now, we're gonna come back to indirect fossil evidence, but, we're gonna take a little detour here. I don't wanna overwhelm you with too much information. So you might wonder how on earth did I end up doing this
Long-Lived Oysters, Clams, and Other Flood Fossils
22:00 research in the 1st place? I mean, I'm I'm not a biologist. Am I out of my lane here? Well, maybe. Okay? But there there was a physicist named Jeffrey West and he and 2 biologists, came up
22:11 with what they called a metabolic scaling theory to explain why animals are the sizes that they are and why different body parts are the sizes that they are. And, they just they
22:23 were able to show that the mammal, cardiovascular, and respiratory systems are designed they're optimized to be energy efficient.
22:39 Sadly, they did not give the Lord Jesus credit for that. Okay? They credited natural selection. Basically, they created credited the nature And in ICR, we are strongly pushing back on this.
22:51 Okay? We think natural selection is a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a Arodis, a
23:00 Arodis, a Arodis, a paradigm. And so we're working on all this
23:12 evidence that these animals have innate features that enable them to adapt to different environments. Okay. It's engineering, but it's engineering on an even greater level. And even the blind
23:24 cave fish, which is like a poster child for evolution and natural selection.
23:37 Mutation where they don't have eyes and it's a slight advantage. And the ones that do have eyes, they bump into twigs underwater, scratch their eyes, get infections, and die, something like that. The story
23:49 is a little fuzzy, actually. But we're saying, no, this is deliberate. This is happening rapidly. These organ these are they are making targeted, predictable changes, and they're doing so rapidly. Sometimes within a
24:00 single And that just gives the Lord Jesus an even greater amount of glory, because this is designed on an even greater
Indirect Evidence from Giantism and Delayed Maturity
24:19 longer time to reach adulthood. In fact, there was actually a mathematical relationship. And biologists had known about this for a long time. They take longer to reach adulthood.
24:31 But people have done studies of longevity and living animals have shown that animals that take longer to reach adulthood live longer. That is a strong, consistent trend.
24:43 Okay? If you take longer to reach adulthood, you live longer. And of course, even from just general observations, we know that bigger animals live longer. Right? A flea has a very short lifespan. A dog has a
24:55 longer lifespan and so on and forth. Draw. So what does this mean? Okay? It means that we might
25:07 have indirect fossil evidence, okay? If we can show creatures were very large compared to today, show evidence of giantism, and also that they were
25:19 taking a very long time to mature, much longer than animals today,
25:32 give it a shout out to some creationists of the past, Donald W. Doctor. Jack Cuazo and Greg Beasley. I couldn't find, Greg Beasley's picture, but I want to honor these men because
25:44 they realize this as far back as 19 80. That creatures that take a long time to mature, they ought to live longer and and they might have larger body
25:56 sizes.
25:57 We wish we had time to show you Jake's full presentation. He exhibited giant kangaroos, sharks, shellfish, birds, and even dinosaurs whose sizes are just mind blowing. The fossil record leaves no doubt there was indeed a
26:08 flood and that the lifespans of both humans and animals were in the hundreds of years.
26:13 And they will be so again. Isaiah prophesied that once Jesus Christ returns to set up his earthly kingdom, no longer will there be in it an infant who lives but a few days or an old man who does not fulfill his
Future Restoration of Long Life in Christ's Kingdom
26:25 days. For the youth will die at the age of 100, and the 1 who does not reach the age of 100 will be thought accursed.
26:32 Amen. I simply cannot wait.
26:34 To watch all of the where is the promise of his coming 20 26 bible conference presentations in their entirety, we are offering them on DVD or flash drive. Along with the 4 presentations, 2 question and
26:46 answer sessions are included. So order your copy today. You can also visit our Christ in Prophecy YouTube channel to watch the conference's live stream in its entirety.
26:54 And if the Lord tarries, we hope you'll make plans to attend our 20 27 annual Bible prophecy conference also here in McKinney, Texas. But regardless, Tim and I would be glad to come to your area and preach God's
27:06 prophetic word. You only have to ask, and we'll help you coordinate a local or regional conference. Help us bring the joy of the good news of the return of our lord to your church family and friends. And remember, folks,
27:17 that god's patience is mercy, his timing is perfect, and his return is certain. These are the days to stay anchored, awake, and faithful, stirred to live with hope in a world that desperately needs it.
27:28 Well said, Nathan. Let's conclude this episode with Jake's final word of encouragement and a look at where you can get more of those mind blowing ICR resources. Godspeed.
27:39 Our former president, doctor John Morris, you know, we lost him a few years ago, but he loved to say it's a great time to be a bible believing Christian, and he's right. You know, and sometimes it's kinda like the the
27:50 tale of 2 cities. It's the best of times. It's the worst of times. In some ways, it seems like it's it's a very bad time to be a Christian. Apostasy and a heresy, people falling away from the faith left and
28:02 right. It's all over the place. And yet, we've never had more evidence confirming what the bible says than we have now.
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