“Just as in the days of Noah …”
By
James Jacob Prasch
Open
with me please to the gospel of Matthew, Chapter 24, and the Olivet
Discourse. When Jesus outlines what will
transpire in the Last Days before he returns, he makes a very curious
statement, and he warns us the Last Days will be akin to the days of Noah. He tells us this:
Matthew 24:37-39 "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of
Noah. "For as in those days which
were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and
giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not
understand until the flood came and took them all away; so shall the coming of
the Son of Man be.
The Greek text is emphatic. It does not simply say “as in the days of
Noah” but “just as in the days of Noah.”
Hebrew and Aramaic are languages that are different in Greek, but you do
have ways to make something emphatic. You
could say didiuke
or something of this nature in Hebrew.
Jesus would have been speaking the Hebrew dialect of Aramaic, most
likely, but they translate this in the Greek making it very emphatic. Not that it will be “like the days of Noah”
but “just like the days of Noah.” What
happened then will be recapitulated or take place again, on a wider scale, in
the Last Days eschatologically. Jesus
goes on continuing:
Matthew 24:40-42 "Then there shall be two men in the field; one will be taken, and one
will be left. "Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be
taken, and one will be left. "Therefore be on the
alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming.
He continues telling us all of these various things. He said “As in the
days of Noah, they will be eating and drinking, they will be marrying and
giving in marriage.” Notice that Jesus
does not speak of things that are wrong. He speaks of things that are natural: Marrying, getting married, eating, drinking, things of this nature.
He does not warn about things that are wrong. What he warns about, in the Last Days, are
people, specifically his people, believers, Christians, his followers, becoming
obsessed with temporal things. Now Peter,
in his epistle, three times deals with Noah as a shadow of what will take place
in the Last Days. Peter is more concerned
with warning unsaved people or telling Christians how to warn unsaved people,
or telling Christians what to expect when we do warn unsaved people that the
Lord is coming. But Jesus is warning not
unsaved people, he’s warning those who are believers, and he says people will
be marrying, eating, drinking, being given in marriage. The danger in the Last Days is that
Christians will become obsessed with temporal things. Now this undercurrent is throughout his
warnings in the Olivet Discourse. One of
the dangers in the Last Days that we see happening today is when the work of
the Lord becomes more important to people than the Lord of
the work, where ministry itself becomes an idol. People are really building the empires of men
under the guise of calling it building the
This is what Jesus in part meant
when he said “He who is in the field no return for his cloak.” We see the cloak in the Bible often
represents the mantle of authority, such as Elijah and Elisha, wanting the
cloak, the mantle of authority. What is
more important, the work of the Lord or the Lord of the work. Are you willing to lay the ministry
down? We can think of this in terms of
the Apostle Peter fishing. Jesus told
him “I will make you fishers of men.” He
was fishing but when the call came up, it is the Lord,
he immediately dove overboard, putting on his garment. Now, normally one would take off their shirt
to dive overboard. Peter put it on because the garment here represents what
Isaiah calls the garments of salvation, or what Jesus called the wedding
garment. He put something on to go to be
with the Lord. He immediately left his
fishing and went to be with Jesus. That
is the picture. He was
called to be a fisher of men.
Nothing wrong with doing the ministry or the work God has called us to,
but the minute the call came up “It is the Lord” he goes to be with the
Lord. One danger in the Last Days is
that the work of the Lord becomes more important than the
Lord of the work. The result of
this is people begin building their own empires instead of the
Marriage is good; it is ordained by God. Drinking and eating are natural things
ordained by God, but what happens when such temporal concerns
become the obsession of the Church.
The best way for us to put it is “The things that are for here are not
the things that we are here for.” Satan
is very keen to get Christians obsessed with temporal things, things that are
not wrong, marriage, career, business, even ministry. These things are not wrong and could even be
right, as long as God comes first, as long as we keep that focus. But once it goes out
of this focus, good things degenerate, they distract us away from the main
point. We cannot see the forest for the
trees. This becomes a big danger in the Last
Days. Christians
becoming obsessed with temporal things. But now, let us look
at what Peter says about the days of Noah.
Peter speaks three times about the days of Noah.
1 Peter 3:20 who once were disobedient, when the
patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of
the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water.
Was Noah a successful preacher? Numerically he wasn’t,
seven people were saved, plus himself.
Eight people were saved, seven people were
saved through the preaching of Noah and they were all related to him! Numerically, he didn’t
have, as it were, a big church. He wasn’t successful as so much of the modern church counts
success, but he was faithful as God counts success because God measures success
in terms of faithfulness. Much of the
church growth movement today would say Noah was a failure; “What, seven people
were saved and they were all his relatives?”
God says he was a success. God
looks for quality, not quantity. Now the
fact that eight people were saved, that tells us two
things about the Last Days. The first
thing it tells us is this: God is in the business of saving families. He is in the business of saving
families. Jesus warned us that many
would fall away and betray one another, parents would betray their children,
children would betray parents, etc. That
will happen. But
God’s perfect will is that whole families would be together waiting for the
return of Jesus. He is in the business
of saving families. You know, after our
personal relationship with the Lord, the next most important thing in our lives
as Christians is the salvation of our loved ones. There is nothing more important in your life
or my life, after our own relationship with Jesus, than the salvation of our
loved ones. The salvation of your wife,
your husband, your parents, your children, your siblings, after your own
relationship with God, there is nothing more important that the salvation of
your loved ones. God is in the business
of trying to save families. Now, in the Last
Days, family prayer time, family Bible studies, these things become crucial. Even in the best of times, every Christians
household, every marriage, certainly every nuclear family is to be a microcosm
of the Church. But
in the Last Days, when persecution increases, in many cases, maybe eventually
in most cases, that will be the only church people have. God is in the business of saving
families. But the second thing it tell
us is, what he told Abraham from the beginning and what he repeats throughout
the scriptures, and what the New Testament reiterates: “Though the sons of
Israel are like the sand upon the seashore, only a remnant shall be
saved.” There was only a remnant of Jews
who ultimately were saved, who repented at the
preaching of the Apostles and of the Prophets, who accepted Jesus as the
Messiah, who did not rebel against Moses, who did not bow the knee the Ba’al. But the Christian Church is
much the same. At any given time in
history, throughout most of the history of the Church, true believers, truly
saved, born-again Bible believing believers have only been a minority within
Christendom. The same as most of
Now the prophet Daniel speaks directly of the
rescue. In Daniel, chapter 12, he speaks
of the great tribulation of the Jews and he says there will be a rescue.
All of these things parallel the story of Noah in
different ways and all of them together prefigure what will happen at the end
of the age.
Peter continues talking about Noah and he tells us more
in his second epistle, while Jesus is concerned with warning Christians, Peter
is concerned with telling Christians to warn unsaved people:
2 Peter 2:5-6 [God] did not spare the ancient
world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when
He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He
condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an
example to those who would live ungodly thereafter.
He uses these two major types of the Rapture in Genesis,
Noah and
2 Peter 3:3-10 Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own
lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all
continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." For when they maintain this, it escapes their
notice that by the word of God the heavens existed long ago and the earth was formed out of water and by water, through which the
world at that time was destroyed, being flooded with water. But the present
heavens and earth by His word are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of
judgment and destruction of ungodly men. But do not let this
one fact escape your notice, beloved,
that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one
day. The Lord is not
slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not
wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance. But the day of the
Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar
and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its
works will be burned up.
We are told in the Last Days
just as Noah was mocked, Christians who warn people to repent will be
mocked. Now we have more and more of the
signs that Jesus gave of the Last Days.
We have the destruction of the environment, we have the globalization of
the world economy, and we have the unification of the world’s false religious
systems, through the ecumenical and interfaith movements. We have the countries that were in the Roman
Empire reconfederating into a non-democratic Europe. We have a magnitude of deception in the
We have a Christological
statement, a statement about Christ, but it is a statement about him as Creator,
that the world was prepared by the Word of God, Ho Logos, the Word, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Ha Davar Adonai. This is Jesus. Jesus is the Word who became
flesh. The Logos became sarx in John Chapter 1 in the Greek text. And we are told that
it was formed out of water, as we read in the book of Genesis. It is interesting that on the periodic chart
of the elements, hydrogen has the simplest atomic number and is the most common
element. “H” – quite
interesting. But
the most destructive weapon in the human arsenal is the hydrogen bomb. H.
There is also a cobalt bomb but it is the H-bomb everyone fears the
most, the H-bomb. The world was
destroyed by H the first time and the Bible tells us the world will be
destroyed by H the second time. In fact,
the Greek word for water comes from the same word as
Hydrogen, hudor, it is there. Let us
look at what it says:
The first time by water, because it was formed out of water, the second
time it will be destroyed by fire. Now
the Greek text is very interesting in verse 9.
2 Peter 3:9-10 The Lord is not slow about His
promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any
to perish but for all to come to repentance.
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief,
in which the heavens will pass away with a roar [or a loud noise] and the
elements will be destroyed.
In Greek it says the “stoicheo” will be dissolved with
fire. Stoicheo is where we get the word
for the branch of chemistry we call stoichiometry, elementary chemistry, looking
at the elements on the periodic chart with their atomic number, their gram
atomic weight and so forth, their valency, their relationship to each other,
elemental chemistry. The Greeks knew
about atoms, they had the word atoms, it basically
meant “that which is invisible.” They
speculated there was such a thing as atoms but they didn’t know about
sub-atomic particles, they didn’t know about electrons, protons or neutrons,
much less did they speculate about things like positrons or neutrinos, they did
not know about subatomic particles at all, no idea. In fact, prior to Einstein’s Theory of
Relativity, the notion you could split an atom and get explosive energy from it
was absurd. Later on we had enriched
uranium-238, they have plutonium, we have things of
this nature. But
it would have been unthinkable before the age of relativity, before Misters
Einstein and Oppenheimer, to think you could split an element. Yet 2000 years
ago a fisherman from Galilee not only said it is possible to dissolve and element
with explosive energy, with fire, but to get enough explosive energy from that
to destroy the whole world, that is what it says. It is no wonder the scriptures tell us that
if Jesus didn’t return no flesh would be saved. We would wipe ourselves out. You know, I would not teach it as a doctrine
but there is a verse in the book of
Zechariah were it says people’s eyes will be melting in their sockets
and they know from the autopsies done on the people who died in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki that is precisely what happened to people killed in a nuclear
explosion. Their eyes melted in their
skulls, in the orbits. Quite frightening!
Peter actually says not only can you split an atom, as it were, dissolve
a stoicheo, but you can destroy the whole earth by doing
it. Yet, it says people will mock. We live in an age where things have become
very tenuous. I grew up in the era of
the Cold War. I was someone who
originated in the
There is a very interesting book called “The Final Days”
about the closing weeks and months of American President Richard Nixon, during
the Watergate scandal in
But he tells us “the Lord is wanting that none should perish but all should
reach repentance.” Some extreme
Calvinists have tried to read more into this verse than it actually says. In other words, instead of engaging in exegesis,
taking out of the Bible what God put in their, they engage in eisegesis, they
read things into the Bible that God did not put in there. They say “Wanting that none should perish”
simply means God does not want any of the “elect” to perish. This is simply not
what the text says. God does not want
anyone to go to hell. Paul tells us this
in 1st Timothy, Chapter 4:10:
1 Timothy 4:10 For it is for this we labor and strive,
because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men,
especially of believers.
Now this affirms that God is Savior, but it also affirms
that Jesus is God, he is the Savior of everyone, especially of those who
believe. Peter affirms that Jesus is the
Word and the Creator, we have the deity of Christ affirmed and we have God’s
own desire that all men would come to Christ affirmed.
So it was in the days of Noah. Most
people didn’t listen until it was too late and most
people will not listen now until it is too late. But let’s go back to
those haunting words of Jesus: “Just
like the days of Noah.” He didn’t say “like” he said the Aramaic equivalent of “just
like,” something very specific. Turn
with me please back to the book of
Genesis, Bereshit, Chapter 6
and let us see what the days of Noah were like:
Genesis 6:1-18 Now it came about, when
men began to multiply on the face of the land, and daughters were born to them,
that the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful; and they
took wives for themselves, whomever they chose.
Then the LORD said, "My Spirit shall not strive with man forever,
because he also is flesh; nevertheless his days shall be one hundred and twenty
years." The Nephilim were 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 on 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. And the LORD said,
"I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from
man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that
I have made them." But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD. These are the records of the generations of Noah.
Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God. And Noah became the
father of three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Now the earth was corrupt in the sight of God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God
looked on the earth, and behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted
their way upon the earth. Then God said
to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me;
for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about
to destroy them with the earth.
"Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark
with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. "And this is how you shall make it: the
length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its
height thirty cubits. "You shall
make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the
door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and
third decks. "And behold, I, even I am bringing
the flood of water upon the earth, to destroy all flesh in which is the breath
of life, from under heaven; everything that is on the earth shall perish. "But I will establish My
covenant with you; and you shall enter the ark-- you and your sons and your
wife, and your sons' wives with you.
Later on, in the age of the Church Fathers, in the
Patristic literature, there were some speculations alien to the original
thought of the first Christians and of the Jews, giving some other identity to
these “great men” or to who these beings were.
The original thinking, however, is what we see in the Apocrypha. Now the Apocrypha is not scripture, but it is
Biblically important history and literature.
Jude refers to this in his epistle, about those angels who did not keep
their place. What we have here were
sexual relations between demonic beings and humans, frightening prospect. Remember, angels can appear as men. Repeatedly in the New Testament
we see angels appearing as men. Today in
Satanism you have surrogate rituals where inductees
into a coven will have sex with Satan. I
have met and heard the testimonies of witches and warlocks who participated in
some of these rituals; it is sexually connatated. You look at some of the imagery used by
certain rock bands involved in heavy metal music, it
is the same kind of imagery. It is the
idea of having sex with devils or with demons and things of this nature. Well, what is also
conspicuous is this, people who claim to have been abductees, taken away by
UFOs, unidentified flying objects, seemingly in common report some interest in
their reproductive organs by their abductors.
These are people independent of each other. “Just as in the days of
Noah.” Now, Judaism teaches from
the Apocrypha, that this happened in the days of Jared on
Now we make light of
These so-called abductees, or
people who believe that is what happened to them say that these beings had an
infatuation with their reproductive anatomy.
Even people like Uri Geller, the Israeli spoon bender, will tell you
that he believes there are people on other planets trying to contact people on
earth and things of this nature. I was
amazed as a young Christian when I used to go witnessing in the early 1970s,
how many people really believed in extraterrestrial life, even though there was
no scientific evidence for it, in any conventional sense of science. A lot of people
believed in it. To me things like David
Bowie recordings, like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars or Scary
Monsters is simply pop music. For me,
Steven Spielberg movies, such as Close Encounters or ET are simply
pop movies, that is all they are, movies and pop music, it is
entertainment, in and of itself potentially innocuous. But such things are
taken seriously by a growing number of people, including young people. It is predisposing them to what amounts to a
kind of deception. When you are looking
for some extraterrestrial life to bring salvation to mankind
instead of to the return of Jesus, you are putting something else in place of
Jesus. Now the Greek word antichrist
does not only mean, or necessarily primarily mean against Christ, it co-equally
means, and in some contexts mainly means in
place of Christ. When something is
in place of Christ, it is antichrist.
They are looking for salvation from extraterrestrial life or
extraterrestrial beings. We are warned that the False Prophet will call down signs from
the heavens. Obviously
he will try to mimic the miracles of the prophet Elijah, things of this
nature. They will show signs in the
cosmos in order to deceive people. But let us take this a bit further. There was a demonic incarnation. When I was in university before I studied Theology
in my later years as a Christian, I was saved while I
was studying science. There are things
happening today in biogenetic engineering that would have bordered on science
fiction when I was in university that are reality. They were just beginning to experiment with
gene splicing with the Mayfly. Now they
are cloning all kinds of things. With
the Enlightenment, which climaxed in the 18th century, something
happened. Going back to at least the 15th
and 16th centuries, there was a schism, a split between science and
superstition. In the ancient world all
the way to the medieval world, until the Middle Ages under Medieval Roman
Catholicism, superstition and science were mixed. Astronomy and astrology were the same. Medical science and pharmacology
and folk medicine were the same.
Chemistry, physics and magic (alchemy) where the same. There was no distinction between astronomy
and astrology or in alchemy between chemistry and magic; it was all the
same. With the Enlightenment, science
went one way and superstition and the occult went the other. Medical science and pharmacology went one way and folk medicine and belief in curses and things of
that nature when the other way.
Astronomy, astrophysics went one way and astrology went the other
way. Chemistry and physics, physical sciences
went one way and magic went the other way.
In the last 15 to 18 years we have seen an
increasing rapprochement between superstition and science. We particularly see this in certain
fields--one is Holistic Medicine. Acupuncture, for instance, is
based on Taoism, the ying and yang.
Now, I have been to acupuncture clinics in
Not only is this happening in holistic medicine, it is
certainly happening in particle physics.
Particle physicists are telling us that perhaps the universe is neither finite or infinite, but it’s critical, Critical
Universe Theory. They are speaking of
effects called super strings which they can’t be sure
that exist. This approaches mystical
views of the universe, things you cannot quantify. We are beginning to see serious physicists
beginning to look at Transcendentalism, particularly Hinduistic
Transcendentalism. It is happening in
computer video graphics. It is happening
in a variety of disciplines, a rapprochement between science and the
occult. Now this becomes a problem. This is what it was like in the Dark
Ages. We may be plunged straight forward
into a new Dark Age, where once again, science and the occult become
mixed. Already there is a very dangerous
cult, as I regard it, in
What you will see happening within the next 10 years, and
it will be mainstream within the next 20 years, if the world has not ended, is
this: People will begin to use science
and technology to facilitate occult practice.
I have a friend, a nice Jewish believer, a Messianic Jew, and his job
was teaching people to write software programs for air flight simulators. This technology was first
developed to train American astronauts and then it was adopted to train
fighter pilots and then commercial pilots and now it is coming into commercial
entertainment. I went into the mock
cockpit of a 747 that was programmed for me to land
the 747 with manual flight rules at
Genetic cloning. Anything fallen man can use for
evil, he will use for evil. I have a
science background, there is nothing wrong with
science, nothing wrong with medical science.
These things can help people. But you take Jesus Christ out of the equation and anything
man can use for evil, he will use for evil, absolutely guaranteed. We can have diagnostic therapy using x-rays, we can have radio isotope therapy prolonging the life
of people battling cancer. Nuclear
technology is also used to make weapons of mass
destruction. Nerve fibers don’t regenerate; when they die, that is it, they will not
regenerate. We cannot make cytons or
neurons regenerate. It is the kind of
cell that once it is dead, it is dead. There are ways to try to get it to repair or to get dendrites to
reknit but scientists tried to compensate for the inability to generate neurons
by implanted microchips that may help quadriplegics or paraplegics to regain
some motion or blind people to help see using implanted microchips to substitute
some of the function of neurons that can interact with neurons, biointeractive
implants. It can
be used for good. It can also be used for evil.
You combine an implanted microchip in the mastoid with Gestalt
therapy. You take the DNA of a loved
one. ”Oh, he is terminally ill.” “Well, we will clone his DNA.” IVF, in vitro fertilization, you clone that
person. Now, there are natural clones,
identical twins, but now you have an unnatural clone. You use a combination of Gestalt therapy and
bioimplantation, a biochip, an organic microchip, of which already prototypes
exist. “Oh, he is not dead, here he is,
we brought him back to life, he has been
reincarnated.” Do you understand. Now this will go down very well in the Hindu
society, but something else has happened.
When I go to
Put on the simulator.
“Oh, grandmother isn’t dead, we just had coffee
this morning.” You use technology to
facilitate what the Bible calls occult practice. When you have a full human clone, where does
the soul come from? Now, man is triune,
we have a body, a soul and a spirit.
Where does the spirit come from. “Just as it was in the days
of Noah.” It would not be
difficult to understand how biogenetic engineering would result in the cloning
of a human that was demonically in dwelt.
Anything fallen man can use for evil he will use for evil. There is already talk
of cloning human embryos on embryo farms to produce replacement organs for
transplants where there are not adequate donors. Human life has already been degenerated
thanks to abortion and increasingly euthanasia.
Why not just harvest organs from cloned embryos. It is going that way, but why not use clones
to facilitate reincarnation, or what they imagine will be reincarnation. Where will those spirits come from? It’s quite a
question. “Just as it was in the days of Noah.” With the merger of science and the occult, it
is not difficult, it is not even highly speculative to
see how this can come about. In fact,
most of the essentials that would be required for this to come about already
exist. Now, in the Western countries, like