What Happened the Day Noah Entered the Ark?

In warning us about what the state of the culture would be like before His Second Coming, Jesus gave us two examples of judgment during a time of unrestrained evil on earth; one in a local area, and one that was worldwide. In both cases given, life was going on seemingly as normal; people were eating and drinking, they were planning long term, as in planting for a harvest, building homes, weddings planned, etc. But all of a sudden, without warning for those who were not living in relationship with the Lord, a day came when Lot and his family disappeared with a couple of angels, and Noah and his family got into his boat, and the door was shut. As soon as the righteous were safe, on the same day for each of them in our two examples, the judgment of God fell on those who did not get their lives right before the Lord—those who had not turned from ungodly deeds. There was no time gap in between Noah entering the ark and the judgment of God falling.

²⁶“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. ²⁷People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. ²⁸“It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. ²⁹But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all. ³⁰“It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed (Luke 17:26-30).

Some say that Noah entered the ark sometime before the rain came, but this is not correct. Let’s look at what God’s Word says:

¹¹In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened. ¹²And rain fell upon the earth forty days and forty nights. ¹³On the very same day Noah and his sons, Shem and Ham and Japheth, and Noah's wife and the three wives of his sons with them entered the ark (Genesis 7:11-13).

¹⁶And those that entered, male and female of all flesh, went in as God had commanded him. And the Lord shut him in (Genesis 17:16).

Similarly, in Christ’s second example, too, there was no time gap between Lot leaving Sodom and the judgment on the city. In fact, the angels had to hurry up those God set apart as righteous (Genesis 19:15-17). There was also no second chance where the Lord told those left behind to come back later, and they would get in. No, my dear friends, there is no biblical truth in the Left Behind series of books, it is entirely fiction. Jesus is saying in the passage at the top of the page, that the rapture of God’s people and the wrath of God falling is a back-to-back event. As soon as the catching up of God’s people (the rapture) happens, the judgment and wrath of God will fall.

The wrath of God is poured out only after the true Church has gone through the time Jesus warned us about, the time He called the Great Tribulation (Matthew 24:30-31), a time of persecution on those who will not go along with the Antichrist’s one-world economic system of taking a mark on the wrist or forehead (Revelation 13:16). We are not to compromise our faith, but stay close to Christ during the unrestrained evil poured out on our planet, living a life uncontaminated by the world system.

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (James 1:27).

There will come a day when our God will intervene, and what an awesome day that will be for every one of us who has chosen to walk with Christ. Keith Thomas

If you would like to explore this topic in more depth, click on the All Studies box on the Home Page, then the series called The End Times. The study is number 5, The Rapture and Day of the Lord.