Luke 17:26 And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
27 They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all.
28 Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded;
29 But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.
30 Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.
A passing word so that spellings don’t confuse the reader not accustomed to the KJV. The same person’s name is spelled as Noah in the Old Testament, and as Noe in the New Testament. This is due to a different set of translators, as the Bible was divided among a team of translators. Don’t let the spelling confuse you.
Now to the point:
Jesus foretold that, in the time just before God’s judgment and wrath falls on mankind, at the very end of the church age, it will be like the days of Noah and the days of Lot.. In both cases, people were carrying on life as usual, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and the day that Lot went out of Sodom. As soon as Noah and Lot were taken out of the scene of judgment, the judgment of God fell on mankind in the first instance, and on the city in the second.
Notice that judgment couldn’t begin, until God’s people were moved to safety.
The coming of the Lord will be like that. God’s people will be removed and then the judgment will fall.
That proves conclusively that this coming of the Lord is not the same as the one in which He comes to judge the world at Armageddon (Revelation 19:11).
It will be an earlier intervention, but calamitous and catastrophic for those who are not God’s people.
The point to be stressed is this: Before the judgment, before the Lord’s intervention to save His people, life will carry on as usual on the earth. It will certainly not look as if the world is on the brink of th apocalypse.
That explains some things, doesn’t it?
It explains though economics has been so badly mismanaged by governments around the world, the crash has not yet come! Even building continues despite the housing debacle and trillions of dollars of debt.
It explains why despite the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly threatening the destruction of Israel, Israel has not yet been attacked. It explains why there has been no major blow-up in the Middle East although the antisemitic nations around Israel and even within its present boundaries (the Palestinians) are feverishly amassing arms with the explicit purpose of attacking the Jewish state.
It explains why the church, even those who are born again, is mostly oblivious to what should be obvious, namely, that we are on the brink of the prophecied apocalypse!
There’s a similar passage in Matthew 24:
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