I have to start this blog with a disclaimer. The thoughts I express here aren't very original. Almost everything I have to say about this subject has been said by others before me. But I feel the need to write this blog to draw attention to this subject because it's becoming very urgent, in my assessment. Also, there have been some recent developments which I think shed some fresh light on it, so with that in mind, here goes.
The 24th chapter of Matthew's Gospel is dedicated to the answers Jesus gives His disciples to the questions they ask Him about the end of the Age. He lists many prophetic signs, including an increase in "wars and rumors of wars" and "pestilence" and "earthquakes" and so on, saying "These are just the beginning of sorrows."
He also warns that those who identify with Him will face persecution for it. There will be "false prophets" and "false Messiahs" and a great deal of deception and "lawlessness" and so on.
These warnings of Jesus have been much discussed down through the centuries and in modern times, that discussion has been kicked into overdrive for various reasons. The two biggest reasons, I believe, are the invention of nuclear weapons in 1945 and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.
The first of these two events caused a lot of people to start thinking about "the end of the world" and the second event gave people an excellent reason to open their Bibles and see what they could find on the subject. Matthew chapter 24, and the beginning of chapter 25, is one of the passages that aroused a lot of interest because it contains many signs Jesus said would be visible in the world just before the time when this Age would be nearing its end. You've probably heard a few sermons, and maybe even read a few books, about these passages.
But there's one passage in Matthew 24 that I've rarely heard any sermons about, although there are a handful of books and movies out there about it. I'm talking about verses 37-39, which say; "But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be.
Most of the commentary about this passage says that this is simply a warning that the return of Jesus Christ to this earth will be unexpected. That's a valid point and certainly, there were plenty of people who ignored Noah's warnings about a coming catastrophe just as there are plenty of people who ignore warnings about it today. But I think there's more to it than that.
What did the "days of Noah" look like?
In Genesis chapter 6, we get a glimpse into what "the days of Noah" were like, and why God sent the Flood upon the earth at that time.
Genesis 6:4-6 says; There were giants on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of men and they bore children to them. Those were the mighty men who were of old, men of renown. Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
We know that one of the reasons God chose Noah to build the Ark was because he was, as verse 9 tells us "pure in his generations" which, in the context of the rest of the chapter, seems to mean that his lineage did not include any demons, but only human beings.
As a side note, I read an article in a secular publication back in the late 1990s that speculated that this passage is describing an alien life form that visited this planet in ancient times and interacted with humans. This article also speculated that this event is what inspired much of Greek mythology, implying that the stories about Zeus, Hercules, Athena, etc. were based on real beings, called in this passage the "mighty men who were of old".
The second part of that theory is an intriguing possibility, especially since some of the Greek myths included "special" people who were the product of sexual intercourse between humans and "gods".
But the first part is just a typical example of the New Age mindset which takes passages from the Bible that describe supernatural activity (especially demons) and attributes it to extra-terrestrials.
In any case, this verse indicates to me that one of the things happening in "The Days of Noah" was that demons were interacting directly with the natural world, trying to corrupt it in ways that would frustrate God's plans and purposes for His creation. This is the first way that the era of human history we're currently in is comparable to "the days of Noah."
The rest of the passage kind of doesn't need any elaboration, nor does verses 11 and 12;
The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. So God looked upon the earth, and indeed it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth.
I think these passages from Genesis chapter 6 that describe life on this planet "in the days of Noah" also describe life on this planet in the present day.
Demonic activity breaking through from the spiritual to the natural realm is taking place more and more. If you've ever read a biography of Adolf Hitler, not to mention his own book "Mein Kampf" you must have recognized the demonic fingerprints that were all over his life and the ideology of the Nazi Party he created and led. That was an obvious example of the phenomenon, but there have been many other less obvious examples both before and since.
The current massive increase in anti-Semitism worldwide, including in places like China where it's never been much of an issue, is another example of this. There is NO logical explanation for anti-Semitism to become such a big problem in China unless it's a result of demonic influence in that country, which is officially atheist but has all kinds of pagan idolatry as part of its cultural heritage.
As for violence, there have always been wars and there has always been crime. But the decades since the US Civil War started in 1861 have seen more violence, and more intense violence, than any other period of time in the preceding centuries of recorded human history. There were years when it was in the news more or less than other years, but taken as an aggregate whole, it's been the most violent period in all of human history. Also, although large-scale industrial wars between nation-states slowed down for awhile before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 brought that phenomenon roaring back, civil strife, rioting, and violent crime within countries and across national borders have increased steadily, more than making up for the less frequent wars involving uniformed soldiers and armies.
Corruption of all kinds is also getting worse, and it's appearing in areas that no one could even have predicted. For thousands of years, no one anywhere, in any culture, political ideology, religion, economic system, or whatever, questioned the fact that there were only two genders and that every single human being was either of one gender or the other from the moment they were born until the moment they died. Anyone who would have suggested otherwise wouldn't have been taken seriously by anyone else.
Now, somehow, we've arrived at a place where suggesting otherwise is not only taken seriously, it's become mandatory. It's become completely unacceptable to say that there are only two genders and that God created the world this way. A very large percentage of the human race has decided to start believing catastrophically absurd ideas and demanding that everyone else believe them as well.
This is a "corruption" of reality itself, and it's something that we've never seen before.
For all of these reasons, I believe it's reasonable to believe that we are indeed in the time just before Jesus' Second Advent on this earth, and we need to be URGENTLY about the business of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. If you (or I) have been saving anything, whether it's time, money, effort, energy, attention or whatever, for the right time, I think that's a mistake.
There might not be much "later" for us to save up for, and the time to invest what we have in the Kingdom is right now.
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