There is no truth more certain and unequivocally affirmed in all of Scripture than the second and final and glorious return of Jesus Christ. This momentous event will bring history to its divinely appointed conclusion and fulfill the last remaining thread of unfulfilled prophecy. Kingdoms will crumble, and generations pass, but ‘time’ advances unwaveringly toward this consummation of all things, the visible and final appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” Titus 2:13. History is not an arbitrary sequence of events, nor a random march through time; it is a divinely directed procession moving with exact precision and glorious certainty to that “day and hour,” when time shall give way to eternity, and “the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ.” Revelation 11:15.
As in the days of Noah, so it is now, a world absorbed in its affairs, as ordinary life continues, unaware that the long-suffering of the LORD has an appointed limit, and that beneath the hum and bustle of daily routine, the storm clouds of divine wrath were silently gathering, ready to break forth upon a world that had forgotten God. II Peter 3:9-10. “And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.” Luke 17:26-27. God destroyed them all!
What an incredible thought! I don’t think of it often, surely not enough, but as directed thereto, enough to make me tremble in my thoughts as I attempt to evaluate the carnage. The sheer scale of the devastation defies all reckoning. Their “cup of iniquity” had become full to the brim, and the appointed hour had struck. Jeremiah 25:15–16. Intoxicated with arrogance, and utterly unawares, “sudden destruction” came swiftly and unrelentingly, “as travail upon a woman with child,” and there was no escape! I Thessalonians 5:3. And who shall stand when He appeareth? Malachi 3:2.
I can’t seem to get away from the fact that only “eight souls” were saved from immediate destruction. I Peter 3:20. Only eight people survived. EIGHT! God destroyed them all! Based on lifespan estimates and genealogical reckoning, some suggest the pre-flood population could’ve reached into the hundreds of millions. Could it be that the phrase “as it was in the days of Noah” isn’t just an analogy, but a precise parallel, down to the very number of those alive? Just thinking out loud, and I’m not advocating this position, only just staggered by the sheer thought of it. It’s an overwhelming thought!
This present world teeters under the same weight of iniquity that once brought the flood. Its judgment lingers not for lack of provocation, but because of divine longsuffering. “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.” Psalm 130:3-4. Were salvation not entirely of the Lord, from beginning to end, we would be doomed brethren. “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” Romans 9:16. The flood declares what all of Scripture testifies, that judgment is real, mercy is sovereign, and Christ alone is the refuge from the wrath to come! II Peter 2:7-9. MPJ