How Near is the End? Should We Build an Ark?

[newton3005]

The Bible doesn’t give us an exact time when the end of things as we know them will arrive. In the past, some thought they know the answer. Years ago there was a religious publication which said the world as we know it would end in 1975. Well, except for some material things, the world today is pretty much the same as it was before 1975 in terms of needs, and countries hostile to one another.

The Bible gives us signs of when the end is near, but most of these things have place before. What things? Lord Jesus in Matthew 24:6-8 says, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you dare not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places.”

Nation rising against nation? That’s always been the case, yet the world still exists. Famines? Ask the Irish about famine in the 19th century. Earthquakes? Hello, San Francisco! Yet the earth still exists.

There can be no doubt that the end will arrive when these things happen, since the Bible says so, but we just don’t know when the next war, the next famine or the next earthquake will truly signal the end of the world. What should we really do in the meantime? Should we build an ark? I say this because Jesus in Matthew 24, in describing the end, alludes to Noah and the Flood in verses 37-39.

We know that Noah knew that God’s Flood erasing life on earth was imminent, so he didn’t hesitate to build an ark big enough for him, his family, and male and female of every animal. God had judged Noah and his family to be righteous, so they were saved from the Flood that destroyed everything else. The rest, whom God determined to be evil, and who did not know of the coming Flood, perished. Seems to be a parable of sorts: Whoever does not know God as man is capable of knowing Him, is more ignorant of what God plans for the future than those of us who love God are.

But anyway, the end that Lord Jesus envisions in Matthew 24:35 is more transforming than a mere flood. In that sense, building an ark against what will happen is like those Roadrunner cartoons in which Wyle E Coyote, seeing a boulder falling towards him, puts up an umbrella.

Jesus in Matthew 24:42 says to stay awake. Other Verses say to be sober-minded. In the context of the Bible, I tell you to be presentable to God on the day of the end. 1 Corinthians 7:29 says to focus more on God than on even our wives. That is not to say to put our wives aside, but to focus more of our time on God. That goes for the wives too. Since we don’t know when the end will be here, it behooves us to be presentable to God every day.

 

[Sabertooth]

How Near is the End?

One year closer than 1/9/2020!

Should We Build an Ark?

"Thus I establish My covenant with you:

'Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood;
never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.'​

And God said:

'This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you,
and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:
I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant
between Me and the earth.
It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud;
and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you
and every living creature of all flesh;
the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.
The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember
the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh
that is on the earth.'​

And God said to Noah,

'This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me
and all flesh that is on the earth.' ” Genesis 9:11-17 NKJV​

 

[GreekOrthodox]

The church is the NT ark. Peter writes in his first epistle

God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.