As It Was In The Days of Noah

"For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah. For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark,  and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so shall the coming of the Son of Man be." (Matthew 24:37-39)

Christ citing the days of Noah as a type for the day of His coming should really call our attention to the earlier events. The first thing to consider is "the world's" condition. God's created order had rebelled and refused to give Him the glory. He was sorry He ever made mankind and you know the rest of the story.

What did He do? He destroyed the earth! Did the physical planet vaporize? No? Then how can scripture say the earth was destroyed?

Then God said to Noah, "The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.  (Genesis 6:13)

The idea of destroying does not necessarily mean the physical removal of every vestige of creation. The covenant God made with Noah made it clear He would never again punish the rest of His creation in dealing with mankind. He made no such covenant with mankind! Those who refused to exalt Him as king would receive retribution at His hand.

God saved Noah by grace and started over but even as the Father of the Second Chance he blew it and mankind once again embarks on a collision course with God's justice, and His plan for redeeming His creation. He chose Abraham as a man of faith and entered a covenant which depended on God's faithfulness alone for keeping both sides of the agreement.

Abraham's attempt to help God resulted in two sons: one of the bondwoman and one of the free woman, but God's chosen lineage was through the free and Jacob became the heir of the promise as fleshly Israel. God then entered a secondary covenant with the children of Israel, but before the ink was dry, they had violated it. Though there were a few bright spots, the covenant people lived as the nations and incurred God's wrath.

He had created a new heaven and earth with that covenant (Isaiah 51:16) but it was to pass away in favor of a new heaven and earth in which righteousness dwells.

As Noah had gathered the prescribed animals into the ark of old, Christ as the Ark of God, gathered the remnant to Himself in preparation for the destruction of the Old Covenant heaven and earth.  When judgment fell on "the holy people" (Daniel 12), the unrighteous of the household of Israel perished, the righteous in Christ were redeemed, and the kingdom of God came in its fullness.

Since that day, people from all nations have continued to flow into the New Jerusalem. Its glory lights the world in which we live through Christ who dwells within us though unseen. The other side of the relationship is that we dwell spiritually in the heavenly realm in Christ even while we reside in our physical bodies.