In our daily meditations, we are focusing our thoughts on the Second Coming of Christ. The Lord Jesus provided us with two historical examples of how the world would be before His Second Coming. In both instances, life continued seemingly as usual; people were eating and drinking, planning for the long term, planting for harvest, building homes, and organizing weddings. But suddenly, the day arrived when Lot and his family left the city of Sodom with two angels, and Noah and his family boarded his boat, and the door was closed. On the same day that the righteous were made safe, the judgment of God fell upon those who did not repent from their ungodly deeds. There was no time lapse between Noah entering the ark and the judgment of God occurring. Here’s what Jesus warned:
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26“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. 28“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. 30“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:26-30; emphasis added).
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Some people believe that Noah boarded the ark before the rain began, but this notion is inaccurate. Let’s examine what God’s Word states:
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11In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. 12And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. 13On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark (Genesis 7:11-13).
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And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in (Genesis 17:16).
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Similarly, in Christ’s second example, there was no time gap between Lot leaving Sodom and the judgment on the city. In fact, the angels had to hurry those whom God had set apart as righteous (Genesis 19:15-17). The Lord did not instruct those left behind to come back later to get in. No, my dear friends, there is no biblical truth in the Left Behind series of books; it is entirely fictional and misleading. Through these two examples, Jesus was warning us that the rapture of God’s people and the outpouring of God's wrath are back-to-back events; the door of the ark was shut as soon as the righteous entered—there was no second chance once the rain began to fall. As soon as the catching up of God’s people (the rapture) occurs, the judgment and wrath of God will descend.
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God will gather His people before the wrath of God is unleashed during the period Jesus warned us about, which He referred to as the Great Tribulation (Matthew 24:30-31). It will be a time of persecution for those who refuse to conform to the Antichrist’s one-world economic system, which involves receiving a mark on the wrist or forehead (Revelation 13:16). We must not compromise our faith but remain close to Christ during the unrestrained evil unleashed on Earth by the evil one. We are to live our lives untainted by the world system.
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Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27).
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There will come a day when our God intervenes, and what an awesome day that will be for every one of us who has chosen to walk with Christ. Keith Thomas
To read the more comprehensive study, click the All Studies box at groupbiblestudy.com. Then click on the series The End Times and the study The Rapture and Day of the Lord. The YouTube video teaching of this topic is found at the following link: https://youtu.be/55VR6a8P9Bo