Luke 17:22-33

(22) And he said unto the disciples, The days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it. (23) And they shall say to you, See here, or see there: go not after them, nor follow them. (24) For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall also the Son of man be in his day, (25) But first must he suffer many things, and be rejected of this generation. (26) And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. (27) They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered in the ark; and the flood came and destroyed them all. (28) Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot: they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; (29) But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all (30) Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. (31) In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away; and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back, (32) Remember Lot's wife. (33) Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.

Our Lord took occasion, from this ill-designed question of the Pharisees, to instruct his people in respect to the day of visitation, partly, perhaps, with an eye to the destruction of Jerusalem, and partly in relation to the last day. All shall be sudden and unexpected as the days of the flood, or as the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, I cannot help noticing what Jesus saith respecting the destruction of the cities of the plain; that in the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. If the Reader will turn to the account of this awful event, as it is related by Moses, (Genesis 19:24) he will there observe, that it is said, that the Lord rained from the Lord out of heaven; a strong expression, as if Jehovah the Father answered what that glorious person (which seems to have been Christ himself), who was present to this destruction as soon as Lot had entered Zoar, declared; and both concurred in the judgment. And let not the Reader overlook that such, Jesus saith, will be the final overthrow at the second coming of Christ. Beautifully the Lord refers to the awful consequence of an hankering after anything when the judgments of God are abroad, as in the instance of the wife of Lot. It is blessed to sit loose and detached to anything, and to everything here below, that when the angel of death comes, we may be ready to fly with him to our Zoar, Christ Jesus!