Men before the Flood lived many hundreds of years, and when one hundred years old they were considered but youths. Those long-lived men had sound minds in sound bodies. Their mental and physical strength was so great that the present feeble generation can bear no comparison to them. Those ancients had nearly one thousand years in which to acquire knowledge. They came upon the stage of action from the ages of sixty to one hundred years, about the time those who now live the longest have acted their part in their little short life time, and have passed off the stage. Those who are deceived, and flattered on in the delusion that the present is an age of real progress, and that the human race has been in ages past progressing in true knowledge, are under the influence of the father of lies, whose work has ever been to turn the truth of God into a lie (4SG 154-156). {1BC 1089.9}

Mennesker før vandfloden levede i mange hundrede år, og når de var et hundrede år gamle blev de blot betragtet som yndlinge. Disse længe levende mennesker havde sunde sind i (1090) sunde legemer. Deres mentale og fysiske styrke, bar så stor at den nuværende svage generation ikke kan have medlidenhed med dem. Disse oldtidens mennesker havde næsten et tusinde år til at få kundskab på. De blev udvokset i tresårsalderen til hundrede år, på det tidspunkt hvor dem der nu lever længst, har gjort deres andel i deres lille korte livstid, og har forbipasseret dette stadie. Dem som er bedragede, og bilder sig ind at nutiden er en fremgangsrig tidsalder, og at menneskeneslægten i tidligere tider vokset i sand kundskab, er under indflydelse af løgnens fader, hvis værk altid har vendt Guds sandhed til en løgn (4SG 154-156).