A hot mike caught an interesting conversation between two of the world’s worst despots, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Communist China’s Xi Jinping.

Their conversation provides the backdrop to the easily missed secondary judgment associated with the world-wide flood in Genesis 6.

Putin and Jinping were walking with North Korea president, Kim Jong Un, to watch a military parade in Beijing marking the 80th Anniversary of the end of the second world war.

Reuters caught the conversation, which started off with Putin making the comment that “Biotechnology is continuously developing,” Fox News reports.

It continued with Jinping stating that “human organs can be continuously transplanted.” The Chinese president then added, “the longer you live, the younger you become, and [you can] even achieve immortality.”

 “Some predict that in this century humans may live to 150 years old,” Jinping added.

Like every other person in the world, Putin and Jinping will not live forever. At some point, the reign of these two megalomaniacs will come to an end because of old age.

But this discussion between these two world leaders reveals God’s motivation for a secondary judgment issued at the time of the flood.

Though it doesn’t get the same headlines as the worldwide flood it was equally significant:

“Then the Lord said, ‘My Spirit will not remain with man forever, because he is also flesh; nevertheless his days shall be 120 years. nevertheless his days shall be 120 years.’” (Genesis 6:3 NASV)

In this verse, we are told that God limited man’s life span to 120 years. Before the flood, people were living hundreds of years. We have Methuselah who lived 969 years and Jared who lived 962.

The reduction to 120 years, didn’t take place instantly. After the flood, we see a gradual decline over the next few hundred years. After, the death of the Patriarch Joseph, who lived for 110 years (Genesis 50:22-26), no one lived longer than 120 years.

in his column, Odd Body — published in the National Post — Dr. Stephen Juan confirmed this 120 year limit. Dr. Juan wrote, “Some cell biologists now believe there is a definite limit to human cell reproduction making the maximum age possible for human life to be about 110 to 120 years.”

In 2014, neurobiologist, Professor Colin Blakemore told the attendees of a gerontology conference that 120 was the maximum age people could live too. He described it as the “absolute limit to human lifespans.”

We are just figuring it out now, but the Bible cited this thousands of years ago.

I believe God purposefully reduced how long people could live to limit the impact that evil tyrants, such as Putin and Jinping, could have.

Josef Stalin ruled the Soviet Union until his death at the age of 75 in 1953. Not only did he spread communism around the world, but he ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist. It’s estimated he was directly responsible for the deaths of over 20 million in his own country.

Can you imagine the kind horror he could have inflicted, if he lived for hundreds of years. God put things in place to ensure that didn’t happen.

But I believe this 120 year judgment also provides a Biblical explanation on the demise of dinosaurs as I explain in the following podcast: