Animals Enter Noah's Ark While People WatchBible World
24:37Matthew 24:37
But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
As in the days before the Flood people went on with ordinary life — eating and drinking, marrying, planting and building, buying and selling — absorbed in business, pleasure and money-getting until Noah entered the ark, so outward life will go on as usual until the coming of the Son of man while people are blind to eternal realities. The likeness means the earth is again corrupt before God and filled with violence, with every imagination of the heart only evil continually, in turning from God, transgressing His law, and following selfish indulgence and intense worldliness. God gave 120 years of probation while Noah warned and built the ark and only eight were saved, and after Noah entered God shut him in and shut the ungodly out, so the decisive close of probation and withdrawal of mercy will come silently and unnoticed before Christ appears with no second chance after He comes. As God swept away the wicked by water and preserved those in the ark, so He will come not as Sin-bearer but as Sin-punisher to separate the ready from the unready, one taken and the other left, destroying the wicked by fire and purifying the earth while saints are preserved. Therefore all must take heed, watch and pray as servants awaiting a master who may come at evening, midnight, cockcrowing or morning, in constant watchfulness, whole consecration and pure holy lives, eating and drinking to God's glory in self-denial and temperance rather than being absorbed in the world.
Discourse Setting and Scope
The saying belongs to the discourse on the Mount of Olives about the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming at the end of the world, given shortly before entering Gethsemane, in answer to the question about the signs of the coming and the end of the world. It traces important events in the history of the world and the church from the first advent to the second and on to the complete restitution of all things, following the church through warfare and sufferings to promised redemption, the final triumph of God's people, the destruction of Satan and his followers, the total extirpation of evil, and the renovation of the earth as the everlasting inheritance of the saints. The two events of Jerusalem's fall and the final coming are described together, and the discourse applies with special force to those living in the thrilling closing scenes of earth's history.
The coming of the Son of man is a literal future coming, not an event already fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem. There will be no temporal millennium of a thousand years in which all prepare for eternity, and no flattering signs of millennial glory beforehand. Sin, violence, crime, wickedness and disbelief will remain until He comes; the world will not be converted and at peace, nor the church completely triumphant, before the second advent. As in Noah's day wickedness was great with every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually, so transgressors fill the earth with wickedness and violence through betting, horse-racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices and untamable passions.
The comparison affirms Noah as a literal person and the Flood as a real historical event, with the generation of Noah's day as the pattern for the character of people living before the return in the clouds. Christ's reference affirms Genesis as inspired Scripture and shows the Old and New Testaments belong together. Human nature without the influence of God's Spirit is the same in both times, so many scoff at or disregard warnings while deception works to make them ineffective, the great majority siding with the deceiver toward sudden destruction, while those who heed and show repentance dwell under the Almighty's care and receive salvation.
Jerusalem serves as a type, for its apparent strength and security did not prevent its destruction when warning was dismissed as madness, just as Noah's warning was met with unbelief though judgment was certain. As people carried on ordinary activities and did not recognize danger until destruction came, so the world's destruction at the coming will be still more awful than Jerusalem's, and people must be warned before it is too late. The Jewish people were destroyed because they rejected the message of salvation sent from heaven, warning those given great light not to reject it, connecting the world's condition before the second coming with its condition before the first coming. After describing events from the first advent to the second, the chapter speaks of the coming in the kingdom and of two classes of servants awaiting the return, and that closing account leads into the picture of the last-days church in Matthew 25.
Ordinary Life Until Judgment
As in the days before the Flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, planting and building, buying and selling until Noah entered the ark, so outward life will go on as usual at the coming of the Son of man. People will be absorbed in common life, business, pleasure and money-getting, carrying on ordinary activities without heeding warning or recognizing danger until judgment comes suddenly. They will be blind to eternal realities, living their lives without knowing when it will happen, and the comparison warns against carelessness and worldly preoccupation. The conditions surrounding that coming will resemble those before the Flood, when wickedness and corruption filled the earth yet people carried on without recognizing the coming judgment until it arrived, bringing an unexpected end to the unprepared.
They knew not until the Flood came and took them all away, and of that day and hour no man knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father only. So He will come in an hour they think not, catching the unready suddenly and unexpectedly, and therefore all must take heed, watch and pray and be ready at all times like servants left with work by a master on a far journey who may come at evening, midnight, cockcrowing or morning, lest coming suddenly he find them sleeping. Neglect of the warning about nearness is fatal, for as people then failed to recognize that the Flood was coming and suffered the consequence, so men absorbed in ordinary pursuits and gain, dismissing warning with the claim that life continues as before or that the Lord delays, will fail to recognize that judgments are near. Yet though no one knows the day or hour, believers are required to know when it is near from signs, for the verse speaks of the time just before the second appearing when the signs foretold are being fulfilled and the great day is at hand, portraying the condition of the church and arousing earnest zeal in every true believer.
The coming brings sudden judgment and separation of the ready from the unready, one taken and the other left. It contrasts the faithful servant found carrying out his duty with the evil servant who assumes his lord is delayed, mistreats others and indulges himself, and the latter faces judgment. The pre-Flood people were destroyed because their hearts were continually evil and they trampled on commands, and their fate illustrates the retributive judgment awaiting rebels when the Son of man is revealed upon a world marked by wickedness, corruption and violence. These words are being fulfilled as a warning that the return is near, calling believers to watchfulness and to prepare life and character so as not to be taken unawares but to be ready when destruction catches the unprepared by surprise.
Corruption Then and Now
The verse means the earth at the coming of the Son of man will be corrupt before God and filled with violence, with every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually. People will turn from God, refuse His will and transgress His law, forget God and the future life, and follow unholy imagination, perverted ideas, selfish indulgence and intense worldliness. As the antediluvians set their hearts only on sinful pleasure, did not seek the counsel of God who created them, and stayed absorbed in everyday life until Noah entered the ark and knew nothing until the Flood came and took them all away, so it will be again right up to the coming of the Son of man. The conditions before the Flood thus illustrate widespread wickedness, violence and indifference to warnings of judgment, with human nature without God's Spirit the same in both times.
That corruption appears as amusement and excitement, festivity, theaters, horse-races, gambling, sports, fashions, unprofitable reading, drinking and smoking, with pleasure-lovers crowded in highest excitement. Intemperance will be widespread, churches demoralized and the Bible neglected and desecrated, while many reject truth because it restrains licentiousness, violence and crime. People will be absorbed in worldly excitement, dressing, liquor that sells reason, and games made a passion for supremacy in inferior matters while Satan plays the game of life for their souls, with crowds watching and applauding human violence. At the same time calamity follows calamity, crime and cruel violence increase, people without God's protection find safety nowhere, and human ingenuity produces powerful means of wounding and killing. God's judgments will interrupt the last days' revelries, warning that people are living on probation and must not be lulled into spiritual sleep.
Money has become the measure of manhood and men serve mammon, estimated not by integrity but by wealth, absorbed in gain, buying and selling, and accumulating possessions. Men heap treasures for the general conflagration, buy up wheat and goods to extort whatever prices they desire, become co-partners in robbing the poor, and exercise selfishness and violence until the oppressed are exasperated and cruelty fills the world. This brings oppression, robbery, bribery, fraud, misappropriation, fraudulent transactions by men with power to release the guilty and condemn the innocent, murder for gain, and strife between capital and labor. It brings also cruel violence of the poor against the rich who exalted themselves and oppressed them, with loss of selfishly hoarded property, showing the daily revelation of the working of sin in cities is only the beginning. The lesson is not to be determined to get rich but to abide by simple truth, recognize human value as purchased by Christ's life, practice brotherhood and stewardship to turn men from sin to righteousness, and seek first the kingdom of God.
The likeness includes making God's law of no effect, with a power from beneath leading men to war against Heaven and human beings confederated with satanic agencies to declare the divine standard of righteousness void. From pulpit and press by voice and pen it is proclaimed done away, while human lawmakers who themselves break it make and enforce laws to uphold the first day of the week, which God gave as a common working day, commanding those under them to keep Sunday as the world's sabbath. Betting, horse racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices, untamable passions, violence, bank failures that ruin families and leave widows and orphans to starve, divorce, murder, suicide, licentious practice, flirting, impurity and broken propriety prevail, even among professed believers. Youth are trained to love excitement, glorify themselves and follow evil desires of their hearts, with depravity, cruelty, violence and crime as the result, and because iniquity abounds the love of many waxes cold, felt even in health institutions where cherished iniquity opposes God's work of restoring His moral image. Meanwhile worldly business, sports, fashions, amusements and unprofitable reading occupy minds, spoil judgment, divert from eternal realities, and convert the church, with a long procession walking the broad road to eternal ruin amid reveling and drunkenness.
Wicked cities have become like the ancient world before the Flood and like Sodom and Gomorrah, their inhabitants tested and punishment near for rejecting commandments and warnings. Greater New York and other large American cities fast reach that condition, and San Francisco is a sample of what the whole world is becoming, with the same iniquity filling other large cities. Schools need distance from cities because disregard for God, love of selfish pleasure, pursuit of pride, use of gifts for selfish ends, and disregard for the rights and needs of the weak especially endanger the young. Yet even in that wickedness those cities still hold many honest souls who, as they hear the startling truths of the advent message, will feel conviction of the Spirit. The time is the darkest period of earth's history, with rapidly increasing darkness, multitudinous errors, heresies, delusions and apostasy leavening professed churches, Satan working with all power and all deceivableness of unrighteousness and leading the world captive, bringing to God's people a night of trial, weeping and persecution for truth's sake, but out of that night God's light will shine.
The present age repeats every feature of Noah's day: disregard for the word of God, living as though there were no God, pushing God from thoughts, despising and trampling His law, and refusing any thought of Him. There are love of pleasure, selfishness, pride, vanity, immorality, unlawful appetites, marriage and property rights disregarded, nature exalted above the God of nature and the creature worshiped instead of the Creator, which always results in grossest evils and loss of all barrier against sin. Men are absorbed in pleasures and pursuits of sense, engrossed with the seen and transitory, losing sight of the unseen and eternal, sacrificing imperishable riches for things that perish with the using, needing uplifted minds and arousing from worldly dreaming. Violence, cruelty and crime fill the earth and reach to heaven, wickedness prevails to an alarming and appalling extent while God's people are few, the earth is ripe for the harvest and nearly at its limit, calamities come as restraining power is not exercised, until God must reveal His majesty and intervene.
Eating Drinking and Marrying
Eating, drinking, marrying, planting, building, trading, dressing and buying and selling are lawful in themselves and even duty when kept within temperate bounds, for marriage was instituted by God. They become sin when made supreme, carried to excess, or allowed to fill the mind and exclude love for God and noble thought, turning blessing of food into curse. Before the coming of the Son of man people will be absorbed in these ordinary activities as in Noah's day, disregarding future accountability, ignoring God and heaven, and failing to repent until judgment comes. Intemperate habits call for prompt reform, every hindrance to spiritual growth must be put away so spiritual blessings can be discerned and the true light shine, and the excess with weakened judgment and spirituality, evil ways and violence shows the likeness to Noah's world.
In Noah's generation eating and drinking were carried to gluttony and drunkenness and sensual indulgence, degrading moral and spiritual nature. Perverted appetite inflamed passions, enfeebled moral powers so sin did not appear sinful, rooted out good principles, and led to general corruption, violence and crime that brought the Flood. The same unrestrained appetite marks the last days, when gluttony and drunkenness are leading sins, liquor sells reason, and excess in food, dress and drink wastes time, money and strength and makes it impossible to offer the body as a living sacrifice. Eating and drinking are blessings when kept within temperate bounds, but excess violates law, harms the whole person, brings suffering, brings bondage to perverted habits, weakened reason and moral degeneracy, and allows sin and crime to flourish.
Marrying and giving in marriage means the relation perverted and defiled even as in Noah's day, seen today in divorce after divorce. Unholy marriages and divorces, amusements and violent contests, and being absorbed or bewitched by the subject of marriage with ill-considered or unsuitable marriages are signs society is rapidly becoming as before the Flood. The great crime then was that those professing to acknowledge and revere God formed alliances without discrimination with the corrupt, marrying whom they would, and the same likeness appears now when marriages are entered without careful and prayerful consideration, as thoughtlessly as a business transaction without true love. Young persons filled with thoughts of getting married become disobedient to parents and wanton, marry without counsel of parents or church and without seeking God's will to gratify loose passions and depraved lusts, with secret courtship, sensuality and polygamy, not to glorify God but refusing to bear Him in thought.
Self-indulgence controls men and women until nature's laws are violated, life-forces extinguished, and men in responsible positions and high life drop dead in what physicians call heart failure, which no miracle prevents when the wonderful machinery is worn out by abuse. Unchecked passion, impulse and disregard for restraint accompany the time before the Son of man comes, with passion displacing restraint and calling for moral vigilance and protection from impure thoughts and actions. Ordinary pursuits of eating, drinking, planting, building and marrying, lawful in themselves, become condemning through heedless excess, and though greatly favored and given much light people fail to live up to privilege and responsibility. Excess in eating and drinking with excessive attention to clothing is among the marked sins of the last days and a sign of soon coming, wasting what belongs to God and harming the body.
Probation Warning and Judgment
God gave a 120-year period of probation while the ark was being built, during which Noah warned the world, preached righteousness, and called all to repent and find refuge in obedience. Most misused blessing for self-gratification and rejected saving truth, and when judgment came only eight persons, one family, believed, obeyed, and were ready to enter. Some who at first believed lost faith through association with unbelievers and pursuit of amusement and display, and some who helped build as carpenters and laborers made only half changes and then apostatized. Helping the work without reformation does not save, and many choose the way to death rather than give up dishonesty, greed, pride, and sin.
After Noah entered the ark God Himself shut him in and shut the ungodly out, fixing doom while for seven days people continued careless, pleasure-loving, ordinary life, mocking warnings of judgment. Even the ordered entrance of the animals two and two under invisible leadership did not humble them, and during the week without rain they derided Noah and his family until rain began gently and then increased to destruction. So the decisive close of probation, the fixing of every destiny and withdrawal of mercy, will come silently and unnoticed before Christ appears, while righteous and wicked still live on earth carrying on daily activities. There will be no second chance after He comes, for the last call of mercy closes and character stands fixed forever holy or filthy, and all must wake, humble themselves, and get ready while time, now very short, remains.
Unbelief and ridicule did not prevent the appointed destruction in Noah's day, and unbelief will not make Christ's coming in the clouds with power and great glory any less certain. Noah was mocked as fanatic and his warning treated as impossible, yet disbelief could not stop the showers or keep the waters of the deep from submerging a scoffing world. Fear briefly awed men when animals entered and Noah made his final appeal, but depraved habit prevailed, discernment dimmed, and trust in apparent stability, reason, science, and learned opinion left them unprepared amid merriment and violence. As Noah faithfully warned despite contempt, so God's people must faithfully present heaven's truth though scoffers and traducers are on every side, for those who believe and obey will find pardon and shelter, and every soul must stand in personal integrity.
As God swept away the wicked and preserved those in the ark, so at the close of history the Son of man comes the second time not as Sin-bearer but as Sin-punisher to destroy the wicked and purify the earth. The coming judgment will not be by another flood of water but by fire, amid convulsions, earthquakes, volcanoes, and burning mountains that plague the wicked. As Noah was preserved in the ark during the Flood, so the saints will be preserved on earth amid the final upheavals, and as Enoch walked with God and was translated without seeing death, so he represents those to be translated. Because the majority will be absorbed in eating, drinking, marriage, and violence with the age ripe for destruction, the gospel standard must be borne aloft, warning given, and workers trained to lift the standard higher and refuse foolishness, frivolity, levity, and trifling.
When transgression reaches its limit and iniquity abounds, God will reveal His majesty, vindicate His glory and law, and intervene in judgment. As men resist the Spirit His manifestation grows less and less until angels fold their wings, watchcare ceases over resisters, restraining power is removed, and the self-willed are left to death, destruction, evil surmising, and conflict. A record is kept of how each treats the Spirit, with characters recorded in heaven's books as faces on photo-plates, and by these records all shall be judged. The delay of the event long foretold is not slackness but wonderful long forbearance, because the work for the wicked is not yet done; yet judgments will surely come, and the long-suffering God will do His work and discriminate with justice and accuracy, while Christ remains willing to help all resist evil as long as probation continues.
The crisis steals gradually as a thief while outward life goes on as usual, the sun keeping its round and the heavens still declaring God's glory. Men still eat and drink, plant and build, marry and give in marriage, buy and sell, issue publications, jostle for the highest place, and crowd theaters, horse-races, and gambling halls in highest excitement, with assurance in nothing human or earthly. At that same time the Spirit is withdrawing with calamity following calamity by sea and land, probation's hour is fast closing, every case is about to be eternally decided with heaven to win and hell to shun, and Satan, knowing his time is short, has set all agencies at work to stir the world and to deceive, delude, occupy, and entrance men until the door of mercy is forever shut. Few really believe with heart and soul, but those few show faith by works, while those who reject warning, turn from truth, and become scoffers will fail to endure to the end of probation and will learn at judgment that the message could have been life and salvation had they accepted its evidence and practiced its conditions.
Prophecy Fulfilled Today
The predictions of this chapter are to be studied, brought plainly to the attention of all, and presented by ministers and teachers as truth that decides eternal destiny, for their fulfillment is taking place in the present time and their unmistakable fulfillment shows that the coming is at hand and on the very verge, calling the church to arouse to questions of eternal importance. The days of Noah give the comparison for the time of the Son of man's coming, and that comparison is applied to the present, for in 1904 the world was becoming as it was then, which is a sign that the end is near. The world at His coming will be like the world in Noah's day, with people continuing ordinary activities such as eating, drinking, planting, building, and marrying until that day, and the events already taking place show this sign, whose meaning reaches beyond what has yet been seen. That likeness is now becoming more and more, and this growing likeness substantiates present truth and is a sign of the times showing that just now is the period for special warnings to go forth with a certain sound to prepare every soul for the greatest issues, while sleeping watchmen and minds absorbed in trifling matters treat those preparing messages indifferently and make them of none effect.
As it was when people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until Noah entered the ark and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so inhabitants today know not that they are living in the closing period of earth's history and in the last days because they do not choose to know. Daily disasters such as earthquakes, sinking ships with great loss of life, destructive floods, burning of costly buildings, fires, and lightnings are admonitions that the end is near and that the plagues of God are already coming, yet many even who have long expected Him are listlessly indifferent to events showing His coming is drawing near and at the doors, and the verse calls to awaken people to their dangerous condition and to watch. As Noah was given the year of the flood so he could know when to build the ark and raise the warning of approaching doom, so the prophecies of Daniel and John together with signs in the heavens, on earth, in the church, and in a wicked world show that His coming and the day of vengeance are near. God looks upon the world today as He looked upon it then and sends His warning message now as He did through Noah, with the wickedness before the flood repeated in this age and with calamities by land and sea increasing, while many help in the work as many helped build the ark yet do not believe the startling message, cleanse themselves from wrong principles, or overcome temptation to do and say things contrary to His mind and will. The daily revelation of the working of sin in the cities — corruption, robbery, murder for gain, bribery, misappropriation, and fraudulent transactions by men with power to release the guilty and condemn the innocent — is only the beginning of what will be revealed, with San Francisco a sample of what the whole world is becoming and the same iniquity filling other large cities, so that the Christian's only safety is to hide with Christ in God. What was revealed in prophecy is moving on exactly as foretold and something great and decisive is soon to take place or no flesh would be saved, for universal desolation under wrath will soon reach all parts of the known world, yet people today are as ardent in games, horse racing, and love of amusement as the antediluvians who refused to listen and declared they wanted their own way and will, mad with an insanity hurrying them to eternal ruin in every species of indulgence until destroyed as in the flood.
The beautiful old world was corrupted by continual evil in every imagination of the heart until God purposed to destroy man and beast and creeping thing and fowl, and the world and the cities are now in just such a Noah and Sodom condition, with people absorbed in eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until Noah entered the ark and unaware until the flood took them all away. This is seen existing in this period of history and fulfills what was declared for the latter days, proving the end is near and that He is soon to come in the clouds with power and great glory, so that those who fully believe it must lift the standard of truth in highways and byways to high and low alike. Drunkenness and violence were among the prevailing sins before the flood, and the violence, cruel bloodshed, drunkenness, and crime seen in the last days fulfill this prophecy, belong to the conditions just before His return, show that He will soon return, and should be plainly brought to people's attention and recognized as significant. Noah remained faithful to God's commands despite contempt and opposition while the world broadly rejected warning and disregarded law and continued ordinary pursuits without heeding until he entered the ark, and when Christ is revealed the saved will likewise be few, represented by Noah and his family. The world is fast becoming as it was then and almost ripe, making urgent the work of warning and helping people dying in sin, and this calls for daily conversion and renewed faithfulness.
His second coming is a message meant to be proclaimed to the end of time, and believers are to wait and watch for Him at the time He has appointed, for He will come without sin unto salvation. The present time is that age declared to be as the days of Noah were, marked by moral darkness and apostasy rapidly filling its cup, and that condition calls for a decided work in presenting sanctifying present truth and for the third angel's message to increase in the power of the Spirit and swell into a loud cry that lightens the whole earth with glory instead of being smothered by discouragement. Because the times are known, faithful commandment-keeping people are to become better prepared day by day to let their light shine in that darkness, setting in operation every agency for missionary work and bringing all powers into active service as those professing the third angel's message. Two great armies are at war in this age, Satan and his great army against Christ and God and the heavenly host, with Satan working with great power and all deceivableness of unrighteousness because his time is short, and this calls believers to united cooperation with God and one another and with the angels carrying forward His appearing in the clouds with power and great glory, advancing into new territories while holding pure principle. People would continue eating, drinking, planting, building, and marrying until the day of His coming, and events show the world is becoming like Noah's world, which describes a sign of the end.
Warning and Watchful Readiness
As Noah warned for one hundred twenty years, so now the voice must be lifted like Noah to warn that the end of all things is at hand, for the coming will be just as in the days when people ate and drank and married until Noah entered the ark and knew not until the flood took them all away. The warning of the flood was sent to startle men in wickedness and call them to repentance, and so the message of the soon coming is designed to arouse men from absorption in worldly pursuits, pleasure and money-getting and awaken them to eternal realities and the invitation to the Lord's table. That warning parallels the message to a corrupt world today and must be proclaimed as the foremost concern with every other interest made secondary, even though as Noah was mocked and scorned so this message will be rejected. It is the last message of mercy to be carried by publications to all nations in all tongues to warn and test and prove the world and decide destiny, turning those who see light from transgression to obedience of all the commandments. Faith expressed in work warned and condemned the world then, and so now faith and works are to testify against the world despite resistance without giving up.
Of that day and hour no man knows, not even the angels but the Father only, and as men were absorbed in common life and unaware, so He will come in an hour they think not, separating the ready from the unready as one taken and the other left. Therefore all must take heed, watch and pray, for they know not when the time is, like servants left with authority and work by a man on a far journey who commanded the porter to watch, since the master may come at evening or at midnight or at cockcrowing or in the morning lest coming suddenly he find them sleeping. The message must be given plainly rather than softened with assurances of peace, for it portrays the condition of the church at His coming and should arouse earnest zeal in every true believer. Watchfulness and constant readiness are required, with means invested in gospel work rather than spent in self-gratification and pursuit of worldly riches, and only the faithful and wise servant found doing his Lord's work of giving meat in due season and sustaining gospel workers will secure the eternal inheritance.
Readiness requires being as wholly consecrated to Christ and His service as the world is wholly given to evil, living pure and holy lives, having eyes anointed to discern truth from the enemy's sophistries that undermine faith, putting on the white garments of Christ's righteousness, and walking and talking with God. The debasing customs of the antediluvian world and of Sodom, especially indulgence of perverted appetite and fashionable intemperance in eating and drinking, are repeated before the second coming and must be renounced through self-denial, self-control and reform in every line, because God destroyed that world on account of its iniquity. Believers prepare by practicing self-denial, avoiding intemperance, and eating and drinking to God's glory, bringing appetites and passions under God's will, for only through that subjection is there hope of eternal life. Such wickedness must be rebuked, and the end-time condition connects with the need for Christian temperance including total abstinence from intoxicating liquor, with hygienic reform to keep the brain clear and the body free from disease and guarding every organ from harmful practice. Excessive indulgence reveals whether one belongs to the world or is separated by truth, for unrestrained appetite enfeebles moral powers so sin does not appear sinful.
As in Noah's day people can be so occupied with ordinary plans of eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage that they give no thought to the time they live in or the work to be done, and educators must not become absorbed in worldly methods and customs while neglecting God's special work. Against selfishness that accumulates possessions and retains power, buys up wheat and goods to extort prices, robs the poor and fills the world with violence until destruction comes as the flood came, God designed brotherhood, stewardship of entrusted means to turn men from sin to righteousness, seeking first the kingdom, and recognition of human value as purchased by Christ's life. Those who would serve God must make the world and its interests subordinate to pure and undefiled religion, follow the precepts and example of Christ in loyal worship including the Sabbath, and continually realize God at the right hand showing the way to walk, rather than serving the world and making God's service secondary and becoming the sport of Satan's temptations. Investing time and money to gratify supposed wants and enthusiasms is a species of idolatry that contradicts profession of truth and unfits for the Master's approval, instead of building needed houses of worship and supplying means and workers to plant the banner of truth where the warning was never heard while hundreds starve and missions lack workers. Believers must not belittle faith to link with unbelievers but take a stand for righteousness and truth and remain separate from the world.
The verse is applied to the alarming state of contemporary society and underscores the need to lead and educate children according to God's Word so they can avoid grave wrongdoing, keeping them in pure atmosphere under God's will and guarding them from close connection with selfish customs, excitement and city dangers. Neglect of parental training is connected to growth of wickedness, and people remain accountable for the lives they form each day, which are recorded in heaven as the world hastens toward judgment. The history of the antediluvians stands as a warning because the world lives in the most solemn period when divine judgments are again to be poured out, and God's people must not follow absorption in self-gratification, selfish aims and sensual indulgence but by example and influence win others to higher motives and purer joys as men and women of serious thought and earnest prayer who are not in darkness to be overtaken. The sins that destroyed those before the Flood and the cities of the plain persist even among some who profess to await His coming, and the professed people of God absorbed in worldliness and pleasure-seeking, with love grown cold, will be blinded to instructions concerning the signs unless daily converted. Without preparation, readiness and moral fitness, though the warning may seem like an idle tale, a person has no place in the kingdom of glory and will be caught with the world.
Faithful Noah warned the inhabitants and was mocked and derided, then Noah and his family entered the ark and God shut them in and preserved them riding safely upon the waters while those who made sport drowned and beheld it safe. So the people of God who have faithfully warned the world of coming wrath will be delivered, and God will not suffer the wicked to destroy those who are expecting translation and who will not bow to the decree of the beast or receive his mark. Those who believe the warning and prepare will be watching and not surprised, finding safety by entering the refuge, while the heedless absorbed in pleasure and at ease, who disregard warnings, mock the promise of His coming and trust peace and safety theories, will awaken to danger too late when judgment falls suddenly. Scoffing does not prevent judgment, for the opportunity for mercy can close suddenly, and the coming with power and great glory will bring terror and judgment to those who mocked God's offers of mercy when mercy is withdrawn.
Connections to Other Scripture
The coming will occur in the darkest period of earth's history, when the world resembles both the days of Noah and the days of Lot and Sodom. That likeness is moral in character, seen in absorption in earthly concerns and gratification of desire, in worldliness and pride leading to ruin, and in great dangers to youth, to men and women just reaching adulthood, and to those of mature years. It is a time of rapidly increasing darkness, with multitudinous errors, heresies and delusions, Satan working with all power and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness to lead the world captive, and apostasy leavening even the professed churches until it develops into darkness deep as midnight. For God's people it will be a night of trial, a night of weeping, a night of persecution for truth's sake, including persecution by false religionists, yet out of that night of darkness God's light will shine. This calls Christians to greater refinement in thought and association and to be more elevated and delicate in words and deportment.
As in Noah's day warning was given for 120 years through his words and the building of the ark, so warning is now sent in mercy to call all to prepare. People then misused God's blessings for self-gratification, carried on ordinary activities absorbed in them without recognizing approaching judgment, followed their own desires while wickedness, violence, excess and crime abounded, dismissed warnings of judgment, mocked prophecy, and treated the message as impossible. Most rejected God's warning and saving truth, choosing the way leading to death rather than giving up dishonesty, greed, pride and sin, and turning to false teachings; only eight believed and obeyed. Yet escape was offered before destruction came, and those who would have repented could have received forgiveness and protection, for God provides refuge for those who believe and obey, as He swept away the wicked and preserved those who found refuge in the ark. That refuge is now found in Jesus Christ through turning from sin, repentance toward God, trust in Him, pardon through His blood, and obedience; the Flood warns of a coming judgment that will destroy the ungodly not by another flood but by fire. The comparison also warns that corrupt associations can draw people from God and that before the end the Spirit may cease striving with those who persistently reject Him.
The warning given through Noah is given again now that the Lord is at the door, urging those disloyal to God to repent and render obedience to His law. The likeness to Noah's days is seen in that men have chosen darkness rather than light and disregard God, God's image in man is sadly disfigured, and the traces of God's love in the human soul are nearly obliterated. Obedience to God's commands wins eternal life, while disobedience places a person on Satan's side of the question. The call to fear God and keep His commandments must therefore be taken seriously, for people dismiss warnings and reason themselves into a false sense of safety while judgment comes upon the disobedient, and God's mercy does not prevent Him from bringing judgment on those who refuse His requirements. The Sabbath stands alongside this warning as a creation memorial grounded in God's resting on the seventh day and commanding it to be kept holy, and as a sign that He sanctifies His people. Even so, men are still in probation, given opportunity through divine power to return to loyalty to God, whom God at infinite cost in Jesus Christ has undertaken to save from Satan's power and longs to bring back to allegiance, that through the exceeding riches of Christ's grace they may be fully in harmony with God and qualified as missionaries to bear the last message of mercy.
As in the days before the Flood people went on with ordinary life — eating and drinking, marrying, planting and building, buying and selling — absorbed in business, pleasure and money-getting until Noah entered the ark, so outward life will go on as usual until the coming of the Son of man while people are blind to eternal realities.
The likeness means the earth is again corrupt before God and filled with violence, with every imagination of the heart only evil continually, in turning from God, transgressing His law, and following selfish indulgence and intense worldliness.
God gave 120 years of probation while Noah warned and built the ark and only eight were saved, and after Noah entered God shut him in and shut the ungodly out, so the decisive close of probation and withdrawal of mercy will come silently and unnoticed before Christ appears with no second chance after He comes.
As God swept away the wicked by water and preserved those in the ark, so He will come not as Sin-bearer but as Sin-punisher to separate the ready from the unready, one taken and the other left, destroying the wicked by fire and purifying the earth while saints are preserved.
Therefore all must take heed, watch and pray as servants awaiting a master who may come at evening, midnight, cockcrowing or morning, in constant watchfulness, whole consecration and pure holy lives, eating and drinking to God's glory in self-denial and temperance rather than being absorbed in the world.
Discourse Setting and Scope
The saying belongs to the discourse on the Mount of Olives about the destruction of Jerusalem and the coming at the end of the world, given shortly before entering Gethsemane, in answer to the question about the signs of the coming and the end of the world. It traces important events in the history of the world and the church from the first advent to the second and on to the complete restitution of all things, following the church through warfare and sufferings to promised redemption, the final triumph of God's people, the destruction of Satan and his followers, the total extirpation of evil, and the renovation of the earth as the everlasting inheritance of the saints. The two events of Jerusalem's fall and the final coming are described together, and the discourse applies with special force to those living in the thrilling closing scenes of earth's history.
The coming of the Son of man is a literal future coming, not an event already fulfilled at the destruction of Jerusalem. There will be no temporal millennium of a thousand years in which all prepare for eternity, and no flattering signs of millennial glory beforehand. Sin, violence, crime, wickedness and disbelief will remain until He comes; the world will not be converted and at peace, nor the church completely triumphant, before the second advent. As in Noah's day wickedness was great with every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually, so transgressors fill the earth with wickedness and violence through betting, horse-racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices and untamable passions.
The comparison affirms Noah as a literal person and the Flood as a real historical event, with the generation of Noah's day as the pattern for the character of people living before the return in the clouds. Christ's reference affirms Genesis as inspired Scripture and shows the Old and New Testaments belong together. Human nature without the influence of God's Spirit is the same in both times, so many scoff at or disregard warnings while deception works to make them ineffective, the great majority siding with the deceiver toward sudden destruction, while those who heed and show repentance dwell under the Almighty's care and receive salvation.
Jerusalem serves as a type, for its apparent strength and security did not prevent its destruction when warning was dismissed as madness, just as Noah's warning was met with unbelief though judgment was certain. As people carried on ordinary activities and did not recognize danger until destruction came, so the world's destruction at the coming will be still more awful than Jerusalem's, and people must be warned before it is too late. The Jewish people were destroyed because they rejected the message of salvation sent from heaven, warning those given great light not to reject it, connecting the world's condition before the second coming with its condition before the first coming. After describing events from the first advent to the second, the chapter speaks of the coming in the kingdom and of two classes of servants awaiting the return, and that closing account leads into the picture of the last-days church in Matthew 25.
Ordinary Life Until Judgment
As in the days before the Flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, planting and building, buying and selling until Noah entered the ark, so outward life will go on as usual at the coming of the Son of man. People will be absorbed in common life, business, pleasure and money-getting, carrying on ordinary activities without heeding warning or recognizing danger until judgment comes suddenly. They will be blind to eternal realities, living their lives without knowing when it will happen, and the comparison warns against carelessness and worldly preoccupation. The conditions surrounding that coming will resemble those before the Flood, when wickedness and corruption filled the earth yet people carried on without recognizing the coming judgment until it arrived, bringing an unexpected end to the unprepared.
They knew not until the Flood came and took them all away, and of that day and hour no man knows, not even the angels of heaven, but the Father only. So He will come in an hour they think not, catching the unready suddenly and unexpectedly, and therefore all must take heed, watch and pray and be ready at all times like servants left with work by a master on a far journey who may come at evening, midnight, cockcrowing or morning, lest coming suddenly he find them sleeping. Neglect of the warning about nearness is fatal, for as people then failed to recognize that the Flood was coming and suffered the consequence, so men absorbed in ordinary pursuits and gain, dismissing warning with the claim that life continues as before or that the Lord delays, will fail to recognize that judgments are near. Yet though no one knows the day or hour, believers are required to know when it is near from signs, for the verse speaks of the time just before the second appearing when the signs foretold are being fulfilled and the great day is at hand, portraying the condition of the church and arousing earnest zeal in every true believer.
The coming brings sudden judgment and separation of the ready from the unready, one taken and the other left. It contrasts the faithful servant found carrying out his duty with the evil servant who assumes his lord is delayed, mistreats others and indulges himself, and the latter faces judgment. The pre-Flood people were destroyed because their hearts were continually evil and they trampled on commands, and their fate illustrates the retributive judgment awaiting rebels when the Son of man is revealed upon a world marked by wickedness, corruption and violence. These words are being fulfilled as a warning that the return is near, calling believers to watchfulness and to prepare life and character so as not to be taken unawares but to be ready when destruction catches the unprepared by surprise.
Corruption Then and Now
The verse means the earth at the coming of the Son of man will be corrupt before God and filled with violence, with every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only evil continually. People will turn from God, refuse His will and transgress His law, forget God and the future life, and follow unholy imagination, perverted ideas, selfish indulgence and intense worldliness. As the antediluvians set their hearts only on sinful pleasure, did not seek the counsel of God who created them, and stayed absorbed in everyday life until Noah entered the ark and knew nothing until the Flood came and took them all away, so it will be again right up to the coming of the Son of man. The conditions before the Flood thus illustrate widespread wickedness, violence and indifference to warnings of judgment, with human nature without God's Spirit the same in both times.
That corruption appears as amusement and excitement, festivity, theaters, horse-races, gambling, sports, fashions, unprofitable reading, drinking and smoking, with pleasure-lovers crowded in highest excitement. Intemperance will be widespread, churches demoralized and the Bible neglected and desecrated, while many reject truth because it restrains licentiousness, violence and crime. People will be absorbed in worldly excitement, dressing, liquor that sells reason, and games made a passion for supremacy in inferior matters while Satan plays the game of life for their souls, with crowds watching and applauding human violence. At the same time calamity follows calamity, crime and cruel violence increase, people without God's protection find safety nowhere, and human ingenuity produces powerful means of wounding and killing. God's judgments will interrupt the last days' revelries, warning that people are living on probation and must not be lulled into spiritual sleep.
Money has become the measure of manhood and men serve mammon, estimated not by integrity but by wealth, absorbed in gain, buying and selling, and accumulating possessions. Men heap treasures for the general conflagration, buy up wheat and goods to extort whatever prices they desire, become co-partners in robbing the poor, and exercise selfishness and violence until the oppressed are exasperated and cruelty fills the world. This brings oppression, robbery, bribery, fraud, misappropriation, fraudulent transactions by men with power to release the guilty and condemn the innocent, murder for gain, and strife between capital and labor. It brings also cruel violence of the poor against the rich who exalted themselves and oppressed them, with loss of selfishly hoarded property, showing the daily revelation of the working of sin in cities is only the beginning. The lesson is not to be determined to get rich but to abide by simple truth, recognize human value as purchased by Christ's life, practice brotherhood and stewardship to turn men from sin to righteousness, and seek first the kingdom of God.
The likeness includes making God's law of no effect, with a power from beneath leading men to war against Heaven and human beings confederated with satanic agencies to declare the divine standard of righteousness void. From pulpit and press by voice and pen it is proclaimed done away, while human lawmakers who themselves break it make and enforce laws to uphold the first day of the week, which God gave as a common working day, commanding those under them to keep Sunday as the world's sabbath. Betting, horse racing, gambling, dissipation, lustful practices, untamable passions, violence, bank failures that ruin families and leave widows and orphans to starve, divorce, murder, suicide, licentious practice, flirting, impurity and broken propriety prevail, even among professed believers. Youth are trained to love excitement, glorify themselves and follow evil desires of their hearts, with depravity, cruelty, violence and crime as the result, and because iniquity abounds the love of many waxes cold, felt even in health institutions where cherished iniquity opposes God's work of restoring His moral image. Meanwhile worldly business, sports, fashions, amusements and unprofitable reading occupy minds, spoil judgment, divert from eternal realities, and convert the church, with a long procession walking the broad road to eternal ruin amid reveling and drunkenness.
Wicked cities have become like the ancient world before the Flood and like Sodom and Gomorrah, their inhabitants tested and punishment near for rejecting commandments and warnings. Greater New York and other large American cities fast reach that condition, and San Francisco is a sample of what the whole world is becoming, with the same iniquity filling other large cities. Schools need distance from cities because disregard for God, love of selfish pleasure, pursuit of pride, use of gifts for selfish ends, and disregard for the rights and needs of the weak especially endanger the young. Yet even in that wickedness those cities still hold many honest souls who, as they hear the startling truths of the advent message, will feel conviction of the Spirit. The time is the darkest period of earth's history, with rapidly increasing darkness, multitudinous errors, heresies, delusions and apostasy leavening professed churches, Satan working with all power and all deceivableness of unrighteousness and leading the world captive, bringing to God's people a night of trial, weeping and persecution for truth's sake, but out of that night God's light will shine.
The present age repeats every feature of Noah's day: disregard for the word of God, living as though there were no God, pushing God from thoughts, despising and trampling His law, and refusing any thought of Him. There are love of pleasure, selfishness, pride, vanity, immorality, unlawful appetites, marriage and property rights disregarded, nature exalted above the God of nature and the creature worshiped instead of the Creator, which always results in grossest evils and loss of all barrier against sin. Men are absorbed in pleasures and pursuits of sense, engrossed with the seen and transitory, losing sight of the unseen and eternal, sacrificing imperishable riches for things that perish with the using, needing uplifted minds and arousing from worldly dreaming. Violence, cruelty and crime fill the earth and reach to heaven, wickedness prevails to an alarming and appalling extent while God's people are few, the earth is ripe for the harvest and nearly at its limit, calamities come as restraining power is not exercised, until God must reveal His majesty and intervene.
Eating Drinking and Marrying
Eating, drinking, marrying, planting, building, trading, dressing and buying and selling are lawful in themselves and even duty when kept within temperate bounds, for marriage was instituted by God. They become sin when made supreme, carried to excess, or allowed to fill the mind and exclude love for God and noble thought, turning blessing of food into curse. Before the coming of the Son of man people will be absorbed in these ordinary activities as in Noah's day, disregarding future accountability, ignoring God and heaven, and failing to repent until judgment comes. Intemperate habits call for prompt reform, every hindrance to spiritual growth must be put away so spiritual blessings can be discerned and the true light shine, and the excess with weakened judgment and spirituality, evil ways and violence shows the likeness to Noah's world.
In Noah's generation eating and drinking were carried to gluttony and drunkenness and sensual indulgence, degrading moral and spiritual nature. Perverted appetite inflamed passions, enfeebled moral powers so sin did not appear sinful, rooted out good principles, and led to general corruption, violence and crime that brought the Flood. The same unrestrained appetite marks the last days, when gluttony and drunkenness are leading sins, liquor sells reason, and excess in food, dress and drink wastes time, money and strength and makes it impossible to offer the body as a living sacrifice. Eating and drinking are blessings when kept within temperate bounds, but excess violates law, harms the whole person, brings suffering, brings bondage to perverted habits, weakened reason and moral degeneracy, and allows sin and crime to flourish.
Marrying and giving in marriage means the relation perverted and defiled even as in Noah's day, seen today in divorce after divorce. Unholy marriages and divorces, amusements and violent contests, and being absorbed or bewitched by the subject of marriage with ill-considered or unsuitable marriages are signs society is rapidly becoming as before the Flood. The great crime then was that those professing to acknowledge and revere God formed alliances without discrimination with the corrupt, marrying whom they would, and the same likeness appears now when marriages are entered without careful and prayerful consideration, as thoughtlessly as a business transaction without true love. Young persons filled with thoughts of getting married become disobedient to parents and wanton, marry without counsel of parents or church and without seeking God's will to gratify loose passions and depraved lusts, with secret courtship, sensuality and polygamy, not to glorify God but refusing to bear Him in thought.
Self-indulgence controls men and women until nature's laws are violated, life-forces extinguished, and men in responsible positions and high life drop dead in what physicians call heart failure, which no miracle prevents when the wonderful machinery is worn out by abuse. Unchecked passion, impulse and disregard for restraint accompany the time before the Son of man comes, with passion displacing restraint and calling for moral vigilance and protection from impure thoughts and actions. Ordinary pursuits of eating, drinking, planting, building and marrying, lawful in themselves, become condemning through heedless excess, and though greatly favored and given much light people fail to live up to privilege and responsibility. Excess in eating and drinking with excessive attention to clothing is among the marked sins of the last days and a sign of soon coming, wasting what belongs to God and harming the body.
Probation Warning and Judgment
God gave a 120-year period of probation while the ark was being built, during which Noah warned the world, preached righteousness, and called all to repent and find refuge in obedience. Most misused blessing for self-gratification and rejected saving truth, and when judgment came only eight persons, one family, believed, obeyed, and were ready to enter. Some who at first believed lost faith through association with unbelievers and pursuit of amusement and display, and some who helped build as carpenters and laborers made only half changes and then apostatized. Helping the work without reformation does not save, and many choose the way to death rather than give up dishonesty, greed, pride, and sin.
After Noah entered the ark God Himself shut him in and shut the ungodly out, fixing doom while for seven days people continued careless, pleasure-loving, ordinary life, mocking warnings of judgment. Even the ordered entrance of the animals two and two under invisible leadership did not humble them, and during the week without rain they derided Noah and his family until rain began gently and then increased to destruction. So the decisive close of probation, the fixing of every destiny and withdrawal of mercy, will come silently and unnoticed before Christ appears, while righteous and wicked still live on earth carrying on daily activities. There will be no second chance after He comes, for the last call of mercy closes and character stands fixed forever holy or filthy, and all must wake, humble themselves, and get ready while time, now very short, remains.
Unbelief and ridicule did not prevent the appointed destruction in Noah's day, and unbelief will not make Christ's coming in the clouds with power and great glory any less certain. Noah was mocked as fanatic and his warning treated as impossible, yet disbelief could not stop the showers or keep the waters of the deep from submerging a scoffing world. Fear briefly awed men when animals entered and Noah made his final appeal, but depraved habit prevailed, discernment dimmed, and trust in apparent stability, reason, science, and learned opinion left them unprepared amid merriment and violence. As Noah faithfully warned despite contempt, so God's people must faithfully present heaven's truth though scoffers and traducers are on every side, for those who believe and obey will find pardon and shelter, and every soul must stand in personal integrity.
As God swept away the wicked and preserved those in the ark, so at the close of history the Son of man comes the second time not as Sin-bearer but as Sin-punisher to destroy the wicked and purify the earth. The coming judgment will not be by another flood of water but by fire, amid convulsions, earthquakes, volcanoes, and burning mountains that plague the wicked. As Noah was preserved in the ark during the Flood, so the saints will be preserved on earth amid the final upheavals, and as Enoch walked with God and was translated without seeing death, so he represents those to be translated. Because the majority will be absorbed in eating, drinking, marriage, and violence with the age ripe for destruction, the gospel standard must be borne aloft, warning given, and workers trained to lift the standard higher and refuse foolishness, frivolity, levity, and trifling.
When transgression reaches its limit and iniquity abounds, God will reveal His majesty, vindicate His glory and law, and intervene in judgment. As men resist the Spirit His manifestation grows less and less until angels fold their wings, watchcare ceases over resisters, restraining power is removed, and the self-willed are left to death, destruction, evil surmising, and conflict. A record is kept of how each treats the Spirit, with characters recorded in heaven's books as faces on photo-plates, and by these records all shall be judged. The delay of the event long foretold is not slackness but wonderful long forbearance, because the work for the wicked is not yet done; yet judgments will surely come, and the long-suffering God will do His work and discriminate with justice and accuracy, while Christ remains willing to help all resist evil as long as probation continues.
The crisis steals gradually as a thief while outward life goes on as usual, the sun keeping its round and the heavens still declaring God's glory. Men still eat and drink, plant and build, marry and give in marriage, buy and sell, issue publications, jostle for the highest place, and crowd theaters, horse-races, and gambling halls in highest excitement, with assurance in nothing human or earthly. At that same time the Spirit is withdrawing with calamity following calamity by sea and land, probation's hour is fast closing, every case is about to be eternally decided with heaven to win and hell to shun, and Satan, knowing his time is short, has set all agencies at work to stir the world and to deceive, delude, occupy, and entrance men until the door of mercy is forever shut. Few really believe with heart and soul, but those few show faith by works, while those who reject warning, turn from truth, and become scoffers will fail to endure to the end of probation and will learn at judgment that the message could have been life and salvation had they accepted its evidence and practiced its conditions.
Prophecy Fulfilled Today
The predictions of this chapter are to be studied, brought plainly to the attention of all, and presented by ministers and teachers as truth that decides eternal destiny, for their fulfillment is taking place in the present time and their unmistakable fulfillment shows that the coming is at hand and on the very verge, calling the church to arouse to questions of eternal importance. The days of Noah give the comparison for the time of the Son of man's coming, and that comparison is applied to the present, for in 1904 the world was becoming as it was then, which is a sign that the end is near. The world at His coming will be like the world in Noah's day, with people continuing ordinary activities such as eating, drinking, planting, building, and marrying until that day, and the events already taking place show this sign, whose meaning reaches beyond what has yet been seen. That likeness is now becoming more and more, and this growing likeness substantiates present truth and is a sign of the times showing that just now is the period for special warnings to go forth with a certain sound to prepare every soul for the greatest issues, while sleeping watchmen and minds absorbed in trifling matters treat those preparing messages indifferently and make them of none effect.
As it was when people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until Noah entered the ark and knew not until the flood came and took them all away, so inhabitants today know not that they are living in the closing period of earth's history and in the last days because they do not choose to know. Daily disasters such as earthquakes, sinking ships with great loss of life, destructive floods, burning of costly buildings, fires, and lightnings are admonitions that the end is near and that the plagues of God are already coming, yet many even who have long expected Him are listlessly indifferent to events showing His coming is drawing near and at the doors, and the verse calls to awaken people to their dangerous condition and to watch. As Noah was given the year of the flood so he could know when to build the ark and raise the warning of approaching doom, so the prophecies of Daniel and John together with signs in the heavens, on earth, in the church, and in a wicked world show that His coming and the day of vengeance are near. God looks upon the world today as He looked upon it then and sends His warning message now as He did through Noah, with the wickedness before the flood repeated in this age and with calamities by land and sea increasing, while many help in the work as many helped build the ark yet do not believe the startling message, cleanse themselves from wrong principles, or overcome temptation to do and say things contrary to His mind and will. The daily revelation of the working of sin in the cities — corruption, robbery, murder for gain, bribery, misappropriation, and fraudulent transactions by men with power to release the guilty and condemn the innocent — is only the beginning of what will be revealed, with San Francisco a sample of what the whole world is becoming and the same iniquity filling other large cities, so that the Christian's only safety is to hide with Christ in God. What was revealed in prophecy is moving on exactly as foretold and something great and decisive is soon to take place or no flesh would be saved, for universal desolation under wrath will soon reach all parts of the known world, yet people today are as ardent in games, horse racing, and love of amusement as the antediluvians who refused to listen and declared they wanted their own way and will, mad with an insanity hurrying them to eternal ruin in every species of indulgence until destroyed as in the flood.
The beautiful old world was corrupted by continual evil in every imagination of the heart until God purposed to destroy man and beast and creeping thing and fowl, and the world and the cities are now in just such a Noah and Sodom condition, with people absorbed in eating and drinking and marrying and giving in marriage until Noah entered the ark and unaware until the flood took them all away. This is seen existing in this period of history and fulfills what was declared for the latter days, proving the end is near and that He is soon to come in the clouds with power and great glory, so that those who fully believe it must lift the standard of truth in highways and byways to high and low alike. Drunkenness and violence were among the prevailing sins before the flood, and the violence, cruel bloodshed, drunkenness, and crime seen in the last days fulfill this prophecy, belong to the conditions just before His return, show that He will soon return, and should be plainly brought to people's attention and recognized as significant. Noah remained faithful to God's commands despite contempt and opposition while the world broadly rejected warning and disregarded law and continued ordinary pursuits without heeding until he entered the ark, and when Christ is revealed the saved will likewise be few, represented by Noah and his family. The world is fast becoming as it was then and almost ripe, making urgent the work of warning and helping people dying in sin, and this calls for daily conversion and renewed faithfulness.
His second coming is a message meant to be proclaimed to the end of time, and believers are to wait and watch for Him at the time He has appointed, for He will come without sin unto salvation. The present time is that age declared to be as the days of Noah were, marked by moral darkness and apostasy rapidly filling its cup, and that condition calls for a decided work in presenting sanctifying present truth and for the third angel's message to increase in the power of the Spirit and swell into a loud cry that lightens the whole earth with glory instead of being smothered by discouragement. Because the times are known, faithful commandment-keeping people are to become better prepared day by day to let their light shine in that darkness, setting in operation every agency for missionary work and bringing all powers into active service as those professing the third angel's message. Two great armies are at war in this age, Satan and his great army against Christ and God and the heavenly host, with Satan working with great power and all deceivableness of unrighteousness because his time is short, and this calls believers to united cooperation with God and one another and with the angels carrying forward His appearing in the clouds with power and great glory, advancing into new territories while holding pure principle. People would continue eating, drinking, planting, building, and marrying until the day of His coming, and events show the world is becoming like Noah's world, which describes a sign of the end.
Warning and Watchful Readiness
As Noah warned for one hundred twenty years, so now the voice must be lifted like Noah to warn that the end of all things is at hand, for the coming will be just as in the days when people ate and drank and married until Noah entered the ark and knew not until the flood took them all away. The warning of the flood was sent to startle men in wickedness and call them to repentance, and so the message of the soon coming is designed to arouse men from absorption in worldly pursuits, pleasure and money-getting and awaken them to eternal realities and the invitation to the Lord's table. That warning parallels the message to a corrupt world today and must be proclaimed as the foremost concern with every other interest made secondary, even though as Noah was mocked and scorned so this message will be rejected. It is the last message of mercy to be carried by publications to all nations in all tongues to warn and test and prove the world and decide destiny, turning those who see light from transgression to obedience of all the commandments. Faith expressed in work warned and condemned the world then, and so now faith and works are to testify against the world despite resistance without giving up.
Of that day and hour no man knows, not even the angels but the Father only, and as men were absorbed in common life and unaware, so He will come in an hour they think not, separating the ready from the unready as one taken and the other left. Therefore all must take heed, watch and pray, for they know not when the time is, like servants left with authority and work by a man on a far journey who commanded the porter to watch, since the master may come at evening or at midnight or at cockcrowing or in the morning lest coming suddenly he find them sleeping. The message must be given plainly rather than softened with assurances of peace, for it portrays the condition of the church at His coming and should arouse earnest zeal in every true believer. Watchfulness and constant readiness are required, with means invested in gospel work rather than spent in self-gratification and pursuit of worldly riches, and only the faithful and wise servant found doing his Lord's work of giving meat in due season and sustaining gospel workers will secure the eternal inheritance.
Readiness requires being as wholly consecrated to Christ and His service as the world is wholly given to evil, living pure and holy lives, having eyes anointed to discern truth from the enemy's sophistries that undermine faith, putting on the white garments of Christ's righteousness, and walking and talking with God. The debasing customs of the antediluvian world and of Sodom, especially indulgence of perverted appetite and fashionable intemperance in eating and drinking, are repeated before the second coming and must be renounced through self-denial, self-control and reform in every line, because God destroyed that world on account of its iniquity. Believers prepare by practicing self-denial, avoiding intemperance, and eating and drinking to God's glory, bringing appetites and passions under God's will, for only through that subjection is there hope of eternal life. Such wickedness must be rebuked, and the end-time condition connects with the need for Christian temperance including total abstinence from intoxicating liquor, with hygienic reform to keep the brain clear and the body free from disease and guarding every organ from harmful practice. Excessive indulgence reveals whether one belongs to the world or is separated by truth, for unrestrained appetite enfeebles moral powers so sin does not appear sinful.
As in Noah's day people can be so occupied with ordinary plans of eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage that they give no thought to the time they live in or the work to be done, and educators must not become absorbed in worldly methods and customs while neglecting God's special work. Against selfishness that accumulates possessions and retains power, buys up wheat and goods to extort prices, robs the poor and fills the world with violence until destruction comes as the flood came, God designed brotherhood, stewardship of entrusted means to turn men from sin to righteousness, seeking first the kingdom, and recognition of human value as purchased by Christ's life. Those who would serve God must make the world and its interests subordinate to pure and undefiled religion, follow the precepts and example of Christ in loyal worship including the Sabbath, and continually realize God at the right hand showing the way to walk, rather than serving the world and making God's service secondary and becoming the sport of Satan's temptations. Investing time and money to gratify supposed wants and enthusiasms is a species of idolatry that contradicts profession of truth and unfits for the Master's approval, instead of building needed houses of worship and supplying means and workers to plant the banner of truth where the warning was never heard while hundreds starve and missions lack workers. Believers must not belittle faith to link with unbelievers but take a stand for righteousness and truth and remain separate from the world.
The verse is applied to the alarming state of contemporary society and underscores the need to lead and educate children according to God's Word so they can avoid grave wrongdoing, keeping them in pure atmosphere under God's will and guarding them from close connection with selfish customs, excitement and city dangers. Neglect of parental training is connected to growth of wickedness, and people remain accountable for the lives they form each day, which are recorded in heaven as the world hastens toward judgment. The history of the antediluvians stands as a warning because the world lives in the most solemn period when divine judgments are again to be poured out, and God's people must not follow absorption in self-gratification, selfish aims and sensual indulgence but by example and influence win others to higher motives and purer joys as men and women of serious thought and earnest prayer who are not in darkness to be overtaken. The sins that destroyed those before the Flood and the cities of the plain persist even among some who profess to await His coming, and the professed people of God absorbed in worldliness and pleasure-seeking, with love grown cold, will be blinded to instructions concerning the signs unless daily converted. Without preparation, readiness and moral fitness, though the warning may seem like an idle tale, a person has no place in the kingdom of glory and will be caught with the world.
Faithful Noah warned the inhabitants and was mocked and derided, then Noah and his family entered the ark and God shut them in and preserved them riding safely upon the waters while those who made sport drowned and beheld it safe. So the people of God who have faithfully warned the world of coming wrath will be delivered, and God will not suffer the wicked to destroy those who are expecting translation and who will not bow to the decree of the beast or receive his mark. Those who believe the warning and prepare will be watching and not surprised, finding safety by entering the refuge, while the heedless absorbed in pleasure and at ease, who disregard warnings, mock the promise of His coming and trust peace and safety theories, will awaken to danger too late when judgment falls suddenly. Scoffing does not prevent judgment, for the opportunity for mercy can close suddenly, and the coming with power and great glory will bring terror and judgment to those who mocked God's offers of mercy when mercy is withdrawn.
Connections to Other Scripture
The coming will occur in the darkest period of earth's history, when the world resembles both the days of Noah and the days of Lot and Sodom. That likeness is moral in character, seen in absorption in earthly concerns and gratification of desire, in worldliness and pride leading to ruin, and in great dangers to youth, to men and women just reaching adulthood, and to those of mature years. It is a time of rapidly increasing darkness, with multitudinous errors, heresies and delusions, Satan working with all power and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness to lead the world captive, and apostasy leavening even the professed churches until it develops into darkness deep as midnight. For God's people it will be a night of trial, a night of weeping, a night of persecution for truth's sake, including persecution by false religionists, yet out of that night of darkness God's light will shine. This calls Christians to greater refinement in thought and association and to be more elevated and delicate in words and deportment.
As in Noah's day warning was given for 120 years through his words and the building of the ark, so warning is now sent in mercy to call all to prepare. People then misused God's blessings for self-gratification, carried on ordinary activities absorbed in them without recognizing approaching judgment, followed their own desires while wickedness, violence, excess and crime abounded, dismissed warnings of judgment, mocked prophecy, and treated the message as impossible. Most rejected God's warning and saving truth, choosing the way leading to death rather than giving up dishonesty, greed, pride and sin, and turning to false teachings; only eight believed and obeyed. Yet escape was offered before destruction came, and those who would have repented could have received forgiveness and protection, for God provides refuge for those who believe and obey, as He swept away the wicked and preserved those who found refuge in the ark. That refuge is now found in Jesus Christ through turning from sin, repentance toward God, trust in Him, pardon through His blood, and obedience; the Flood warns of a coming judgment that will destroy the ungodly not by another flood but by fire. The comparison also warns that corrupt associations can draw people from God and that before the end the Spirit may cease striving with those who persistently reject Him.
The warning given through Noah is given again now that the Lord is at the door, urging those disloyal to God to repent and render obedience to His law. The likeness to Noah's days is seen in that men have chosen darkness rather than light and disregard God, God's image in man is sadly disfigured, and the traces of God's love in the human soul are nearly obliterated. Obedience to God's commands wins eternal life, while disobedience places a person on Satan's side of the question. The call to fear God and keep His commandments must therefore be taken seriously, for people dismiss warnings and reason themselves into a false sense of safety while judgment comes upon the disobedient, and God's mercy does not prevent Him from bringing judgment on those who refuse His requirements. The Sabbath stands alongside this warning as a creation memorial grounded in God's resting on the seventh day and commanding it to be kept holy, and as a sign that He sanctifies His people. Even so, men are still in probation, given opportunity through divine power to return to loyalty to God, whom God at infinite cost in Jesus Christ has undertaken to save from Satan's power and longs to bring back to allegiance, that through the exceeding riches of Christ's grace they may be fully in harmony with God and qualified as missionaries to bear the last message of mercy.