As In The Days Of Noah (Parts 1 & 2)

Dr. Bradford Reaves

Crossway Christian Fellowship

Hagerstown, MD

www.mycrossway.org

View Both Messages at:

Week 1- https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/episodes/166093

Week 2- https://mycrossway.churchcenter.com/episodes/167795

We are coming into the season of Advent in a couple of weeks. Advent is a season of the church where the anticipation of the birth of Christ is observed. The advent is the watching for his arrival; the manifestation of Christ as foretold by the prophets. However, in our celebration of advent, we must even more anticipate His second coming. Just as there were signs that pointed the world to his first arrival, there are clear indications of his second. A casual scroll through Scripture (OT and NT alike), will give you clear prophetic indicators of his return. More than 30 percent of the Bible is prophetic in nature. There are more passages in the Old Testament about his Second Coming than there are about his first. The Apostles lived and wrote to the church with the full expectation of Jesus’ imminent return.

I have a clear understanding that anytime you get into prophetic teaching and the Second Coming of Christ, you touch subjects that are theologically controversial and people will disagree. That’s not uncommon when we’re attempting to dissect future events. They are nuances that are debatable. However, there are also clear and distinguishable events that are not secondary issues, like the Rapture of the Church. Some have tried to explain this away, but in doing so, there are serious implications to Scripture that cannot be reconciled.

The way to approach the study of Prophetic Scripture is the same way you interpret Scripture that is historical, narrative, doctrinal, poetry, or prose. You use the same principles of interpretation to study end-times as you would the parables of Jesus. In doing so, you will find that Scripture is not ambiguous on the topic as some people want to say. However, if you abandon the basic principles for the interpretation of Scripture, you add ambiguity, you introduce false teaching, and you increase confusion.

Here’s the bottom line: The Lord wants you to know and understand His Word. What we need to know is plainly revealed in Scripture- both Old Testament and the New Testament. What is plainly revealed in the Bible is that this world is going to end with the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Environmentalists want you to believe that climate change is going to bring our end unless the tide is turned through human achievement, or that there’s a big asteroid on the way. Others want us to get focused on a nuclear doomsday scenario or a pandemic, and then those who believe that aliens will overtake us. Yet with all these speculations and pontifications, it leaves God out of the equation and that He has a plan. You can be certain that when the end comes, everyone will know He is Lord.

We know that the end of this age will arrive with Christ arriving the same way he left (Acts 1:10-11), with the church behind him. That begins with the Rapture of the Church, followed by a 7-year period called the Tribulation as the world faces fierce judgment, which is really God’s final appeal for repentance. All of that will be culminated by the personal and physical return of Christ, followed by 1000 years of his reign here on earth before the final judgment. All of this is presented in the Bible in amazing detail.

What is remarkable in our day is the number of people who will believe anything (including humanism, the paranormal, or aliens) but those simple, but profound truths clearly taught in the Bible. What I originally intended to do was to show you how our world is being deceived by the doctrine of demons (1 Timothy 4:1). But this exploration led me to the passage we’re going to focus on this week and next week. I want to take you today to Matthew 24, a passage of Scripture called the Mount Olivet Discourse. We’re going to zero in on a passage where Jesus likens the days just prior to his return to the days of Noah in verses 36-41. You will find this teaching in Mark 13 and Luke 17.

36 “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone. 37 “For just as the days of Noah were, so the coming of the Son of Man will be. 38 “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage until the day that Noah entered the ark, 39 and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be. 40 “Then there will be two in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left. 41 “Two women will be grinding grain at the mill; one will be taken and one will be left. (Matthew 24:36–41)