The words of Psalm 90:10 are quite generally regarded by readers of the Bible as teaching that the Creator has positively fixed seventy years as the limit of man’s age, with a penalty of labor and sorrow for those whose strength enables them to overstep the bonds by a few years. The text, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away,” is well known, and so firmly fixed in the popular mind is the idea that the age of man is limited by a divine decree just as surely as is the length of the year, that those who talk about living a hundred years or more are looked upon as hopelessly endeavoring to overturn the order of creation.MEDM August 1905, page 242.1

Now if the text in question does teach that God has fixed the length of human life, limiting it to seventy years, then it is evident that to attempt to extend the period of man’s life would be both foolish and wicked; but all the evidence goes to show that no such limit has been set. We find, as a matter of fact, that very many do live much longer than seventy years, in the possession of health and strength, and that without any thought of transgressing divine decrees. If it be said that these are but exceptions, and that enough more die before seventy to bring the average down, it must be replied that by far the majority of mankind die long before seventy, and that at the present time the average age of the human race can scarcely be one-half that stated by the psalmist. How, then, shall we understand the text?MEDM August 1905, page 242.2

The answer is plan: Understand the text just as it reads. It simply states the fact that at the time it was written the average age of man was threescore and ten years. It does not say, nor does it intimate, that God ever fixed the limit of man’s age at seventy years. Indeed, evidence to the contrary is furnished by the writer of the psalm in question. The psalm is “a prayer of Moses, the man of God,” who at the age of fourscore was just beginning his lifework, and whose “eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated,” at the age of sixscore years. Caleb, one of the associates of Moses, successfully carried on difficult military enterprises, involving severe bodily exercise and exposure, at the age of eighty-five, and was as vigorous and athletic at that age as when he was forty. Moses was not writing his own experience, but was merely telling how it was with the majority of man.MEDM August 1905, page 243.1

When God called Israel out of Egypt by Moses, it was his design that their days should “be long upon the land” which he was giving them. “But with many of them God was not well pleased; for they were overthrown in the wilderness.” 1 Corinthians 10:5. He gave them the bread of life and the water of life, and was justly disappointed and grieved when they died, many of them undoubtedly at what would now be called a “ripe old age,” since it was not the young who perished, but those who were adults when they left Egypt.MEDM August 1905, page 243.2

The record of so many who lived to be much more than a hundred years old, and the absence of any decree arbitrarily limiting man’s age, are proof that God has placed no obstacle in the way of man’s living, but the contrary. It is not true that God endows each person at his birth with a certain “store of vitality,” varying in quantity in each case, and that when that store is used up the person must die. That would indeed be “respect of persons,” and contrary to God’s character. God’s mercies, which preserve us from being consumed, “are new every morning.” For each day as it comes God gives the strength necessary for the day, and our length of life depends solely on our appropriation of these mercies. His law is life, and all who walk in his law have the promise of life, both that which now is and that which is to come. 1 Timothy 4:8. E. J. W.MEDM August 1905, page 243.3

July 1905

September 1905