Montana Republican: Noah was 600 years old when he built the Ark, so why do Americans need retirement?

Greg Gianforte, aspiring Republican governor of Montana, urges college students to reject policy that favors savings plans and retirement options because, like Noah, Christians have "an obligation to work" until they are hundreds of years old, the Huffington Post reports.

Speaking at the Montana Bible College in February, Gianforte told students, "There's nothing in the Bible that talks about retirement. And yet it's been an accepted concept in our culture today. Nowhere does it say, 'Well, he was a good and faithful servant, so he went to the beach.' It doesn't say that anywhere."

"The example I think of is Noah," Gianforte continued. "How old was Noah when he built the Ark? 600. He wasn't like, cashing Social Security checks. He wasn't hanging out; he was working. So, I think we have an obligation to work. The role we have in work may change over time, but the concept of retirement is not biblical."

Gianforte is a tech millionaire. He founded RightNow Technologies, and assumed a senior leadership position at Oracle in 2012 after the software giant bought him out. Lately, Gianforte has been touring the state promoting his "Bring Our Families Back" initiative, which aims to lure ex-pats back to Montana with the modern miracle of telecommuting.

Raw Story has documented Gianforte's history of providing financial support to conservative organizations, including  Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation, and the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, "which claims that, in other museums, 'the wonders of God’s creation are prostituted for evolutionism.'"

Gianforte and his wife Susan also helm their own philanthropic outfit, the Gianforte Family Foundation. The entity officially "[focuses] on improving education, lifting people out of poverty, protecting the unborn, and Christian outreach, as well as enhancing the family’s hometown community of Bozeman, Montana." The couple founded the charity "in response to God’s great goodness to them."