As in the days of Noah....

[Rev. Dr. Denis Plant]

Just as it was in the time of Noah, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. In those days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, buying and selling, planting and building, until the day Noah entered the ark. They knew nothing, until the flood came and took them all away. It will be the same at the coming of the Son of Man. (Mt 24:36-39; Lu 17:26-30).

It is often supposed that the people destroyed by the Flood were terribly wicked. But Jesus does not say so. He describes them as doing ordinary, everyday things, the things that everyone does as a normal part of life – eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting, building. Why then were they all so pitilessly drowned? Why that ghastly spectacle, as far as they eye could see, of bobbing corpses, men, women, teenagers, even little children and infants? When they hammered on the sides of the ark, begging Noah to take them up, why were the doors not opened?

What awful indictment did God have against them?

Jesus tells us. “They knew nothing!”

They were possibly nice people doing kindly things, but they lived as if a man were no better than a dog, a woman no better than a goat, children of no more worth than sheep. They lived for themselves alone. They were totally focussed on earth and had no view of heaven; their bellies were their gods (Ph 3:18-19).

But they should have known.

Noah had been preaching for 120 years (He 11:7; 1 Pe 2:20; 2 Pe 2:5). Had they listened to him, they would have known that a day of judgment was coming.

The world today is still full of such people. Well-mannered, good neighbours, usually honest, upright citizens, hard workers – but they have no horizon beyond today, no vision past earth, no time for God, nor any interest in Christ. They know nothing. But they should know. They have no excuse. For them, the last Day will be like the day of Noah. The coming of the Son of Man will bring them no joy, but only fearful judgment, without mercy, without recourse, and too late for repentance.

 So the setting for judgment is not one of universal wickedness, but rather of universal indifference. The only way to escape the doom of God is to discover the will of God now, and do it!

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