Christian Author and Pastor Ron Craig
More biblical light regarding end-time events and the catching away of the church. One more Scripture passage those experts seem to have overlooked is Luke 17:26-30. Teaching on last-days events, the Lord said plainly that, just as it was in the days of both Noah and Lot, so would it be “in the days of the Son of man.” Noah had been warning the people that a flood was coming upon the earth, but they apparently thought he was off mentally. After all, one building a boat nowhere near a body of water capable of floating it was obviously unstable in his mind, so his prophecy of an event never seen before seemed more like a fantasy than something to be worried about.
And so, they kept living the way they had been living until the day Noah and his family and a bunch of animals boarded the ark, which had been about a hundred years in building. The flood occurred not until Noah was safe in the ark (God shut him in—Genesis 7:16.) Noah was lifted above the earth where those flood-waters were. He was not in the judgment flood, which destroyed everyone outside the ark—a type of Christ.
And Jesus said that foreshadowed conditions that would exist in the last days. God’s people, Noah, and his family, were removed from the earth, the dry land, before God’s judgment was poured out on the earth. The Tribulation is about God’s judgment on the rebels in the last days. God’s people will be removed from the earth before that judgment is poured out on that end-time generation.
Lot’s experience was basically the same, which is why Christ used both Lot and Noah to illustrate the same truth. That Judgment Fire descended not upon Sodom (which was representative of the depraved condition of this world in the last days of this age) until Lot had been removed from that judgment scene. On the day Lot left Sodom, the judgment fire fell. Lot did not go through the Judgment of God on Sodom. And Jesus compared that event with something which will happen in the last days of this evil age. Some group will be removed from earth before the judgment of that time of Jacob’s (Israel’s) trouble.
