Pete Garcia
And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of Man: They ate, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Likewise as it was also in the days of Lot: They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they built; but on the day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all. Even so will it be in the day when the Son of Man is revealed. Luke 17:26-30
I know there is already a lot of commentary on ‘the days of Noah and Lot’ out in the ether sphere. I don’t think I’m adding anything significant to the collective group-think for remnant believers (to borrow a coined phrase from Jan Markell). What I would add though, is that all cultures/societies/civilizations have a breaking point.
Every nation and empire has a point of no-return. Sometimes these breaking points are determined by metrics measuring birth/death ratios. For example, if a nation drops below the 2:1 birth to death ratio, the survival of said nation may be at significant risk. If births drop below 1.7:1, a nation’s ability to survive becomes unrecoverable.
Other less tangible things may also be used as a metric…such as morality (or what a nation deems as morally acceptable) may point to its demise. For example, the Third Reich legally and culturally pushed Anti-Semitism to the point to where they arrived at the Final Solution. So bad was this destination that even to this day, some 70 years later the swastika is still reviled as one of the evilest symbols ever devised, because of what it once represented.
There is another metric though, and that is the divine one.
After committing the blasphemy of desecrating the temple “vessels”, God’s handwriting appeared on the wall of Belshazzar’s courtroom. So shaken was he at witnessing this, that scripture records that not only would his knees not stop shaking, but his loins were loosed. King Belshazzar was instructed to bring in the now elderly Daniel, who explains both the words and the meanings behind them. He (and the Babylonian leadership) were weighed and found wanting, meaning that his kingdom would be taken from him that very night when the Medes and Persians infiltrated Babylon-proper and killed the royals.
And this is the inscription that was written:
MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN
This is the interpretation of each word.
MENE: God has numbered your kingdom, and finished it;
TEKEL: You have been weighed in the balances, and found wanting;
PERES: Your kingdom has been divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.”
Daniel 5:25-28
Anne Graham Lotz and others have pointed out, that we are a nation under judgment. If that is true, what is the handwriting on the walls for us? Is it just one thing?
Scripture doesn’t give one specific, but many. In God’s mercy and generosity, He points to many things we believers could see as ‘signs of the time.’ Wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, pestilence, so on and so forth (Matthew 24). Paul and other apostles speak to the increasing moral corruptness of culture in general, and the rising tide of apostasy in the church as signs of the end. Jesus pointed out the lukewarm nature of the final stage of the church. These weren’t mentioned for their peculiarity, but rather for their increasing frequency and severity.
Technically speaking, the state we are at now is one where man is at his most dangerous. This primarily because not only have we created the most dangerous weapons mankind has ever known, but we also lack the moral and ethical foundations to govern ourselves properly.
The main differences between our days vs. Noah’s is that we do not need a global flood to wipe out humanity; we have the technological and biological means to do it ourselves. The proverbial bell was rung when we entered into the Atomic Age. We can’t undo that. We can’t undo the development and proliferation of chemical and biological Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
We can’t undo the internet or computers. We have crossed too many red-lines technologically speaking, in regards to quantum physics, genetics, and artificial intelligence that can’t be undone.
God gave mankind 120 years before the judgment of the flood. Ironically, it’s been 120 years since the First Zionist Congress in 1897, when God began stirring the Jews to leave Europe and get back to their ancient homeland. Jesus used the parable of the fig tree when referencing Israel, and to the other nations as ‘all the trees’ (Luke 21:29). Will we get more time? Will these trees continue to bend, or is there a breaking point ahead?
“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near.” Luke 21:25-28
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