Therefore the Lord says: "Yet his days shall be one hundred and
twenty years." One hundred and twenty years more he would endure
those corrupt and violent sinners, in the hope of correcting them.
One hundred and twenty years more would God's Spirit strive with men.
One hundred and twenty years more the long-suffering of God, as St.
Peter says, would wait, if by any means they would turn and repent.
Oh, wonderful love and condescension of God! God waits for man! The
Holy One waits for the unholy! The Creator waits for the work of His
own hands! The wrathful God, who repents that He has made man upon
the earth, waits one hundred and twenty years for the very creatures
whom He repents having made! Does this seem strange to us--unlike
our notions of God? If it is strange to us, my friends, its being
strange is only a proof of how far we have fallen from the likeness
of God, wherein man was originally created. If we were more like
God, then the accounts of God's long-suffering, and mercy, and
repentance, which we read in the Bible, would not be so strange to
us. We should understand what God declares of Himself, by seeing the
same feelings working in ourselves, which He declares to be working
in Himself.
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