The Same Day: Part 1

Let me take a moment to summarize the previous posts in this blog for you. We have seen that:

• Enduring unto the end refers to being alive at, and surviving until, the end of this age, not maintaining faith in Christ up to end of your specific life on this earth.
• The last day of this age is when the resurrection of the saints will occur.
• At the end of this age, on the last day, Christ will return in glory. He will gather his saints to him in the air, and they will immediately escort him on the last leg of his journey to the earth.
• The early church fathers taught that the Church would go through the Tribulation, and suffer at the hands of the AntiChrist.
• Great men of God throughout history have held to the belief that the Rapture will be AT the Revelation.

For this particular post, I want to look at what the Lord Jesus says about the timing of the Rapture as it relates to his Coming. Does the Lord rescue the saints seven years before his visible, glorious return? Or, does he rescue them 3 1/2 years before? Or, does he rescue them on the same day as his return?

The Day of Noah

In Luke 17:22-37, Jesus is discussing his Second Coming. He says that it will be as visible and noticeable as lightning that “lighteneth” the whole heavens. Then he says,

“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, UNTIL THE DAY that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.”

TWO things happened on ONE day:

1. Noe entered into the ark

2. A worldwide flood came and destroyed everyone else

Noah built the ark out in the open. It took him decades and decades to build it. Why did he build it? Easy ~ Noah knew the flood was coming, and was not caught unawares. But the flood did come on the rest world unexpectedly like a “thief in the night.”

Two classes of people (the watching saved, and the lost) and two contrasting events (one group rescued, the other group destroyed) BUT ONLY ONE DAY.

Was Noah rescued seven years before the flood? No, his rescue and the world’s destruction occurred on the SAME DAY. BOTH the rescuing and the destroying occur at the Lord’s coming that shines forth as lightning.

The flood is NOT the persecution of the nation of Israel by the Antichrist, as some have taught. No, in Jesus' explanation, He is talking about His own Second Coming which comes suddenly. It is Christ's coming which is the flood, not the Antichrist's coming!

Let me say it again: The flood came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the world. The Lord Jesus said that His own Coming would be like that flood. The Lord will come suddenly and unexpectedly. The same DAY that the flood comes, believers will first be rescued, and then sudden destruction will come upon the world.

It all happens on the same day.