Luke 17:26-27

THE DAYS OF NOAH

Luke 17:26-27. “And as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of man. They were eating, drinking, marrying, getting married, until the day on which Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.” Abel was a holy man, and God's first martyr, succeeded by his brother Seth in the leadership of the antediluvian Holiness Church; while Cain was the patriarchal founder of the Anti- holiness Church, being very religious, as we see from his offering to the Lord; but no blood i. e., no sanctification. After many centuries of separation, unfortunately the holiness people intermarried with the Cainites, the latter predominating and leading the former into worldliness, till the lights of truth and holiness had yielded to an almost total eclipse amid the fogs of worldly wickedness and dead Churchism, till God in mercy found it necessary to interpose, and miraculously give victory and a new start to His truth and righteousness on the earth, lest the last hope of humanity should go down in the gloom of rayless night, thus bringing the flood on an ungodly world, which He saw, if let alone, would do nothing but populate hen. Therefore, in mercy interposing to arrest the otherwise hopeless, hellward-bound trend, He rescued the only surviving righteous family to populate the newborn world, Noah's ark, in which the faithful few mounted the raging floods and rode above a perishing world, emblematizing the cloud in which the faithful few will be caught up when the Lord comes. Here you see our Lord's description of the business rush among the antediluvians, going fight on till the flood came. So the legitimate conclusion follows that this wicked world will be, like the people before the flood, engrossed and bewildered with transitory things, heeding not the solemn warnings we have in this precious Book, amply sufficient to fortify us against all delusion and surprise. So it was in the days of Noah, who knew well that the flood was coming, and preached it to the people; yet they believed him not, but rushed right on in their worldly impetuosity till the flood came and took them all away. Our Infallible Savior assures us that a repetition of these events is impending at the time of His coming. God help us to be true, and, like Noah, warn the people, and thus clear our skirts of their blood! If they believe us, it will be well for them; if not, we have delivered our souls.