Up until Noah's flood, the idea of a deluge of water so great as to destroy all life and any trace of life on the earth was a preposterous notion to consider. After all, how could the mere dew upon the grass multiply so? What nonsense!

Suddenly, however, at the appearance of the first grey cloud, I wonder how the foundation of an unearned earthbound smugness must have been shaken. The imagination and natural presupposition of man immediately jumped to a conclusion of sudden out-of-place-even-in-its-time activity from the moment of first warning. At its manifestation, of course, the heretofore impossibility instantly became quite natural and easily imaginable to even the youngest child.

The impact of the promised flood was so profound, in fact, that the idea of a time before rain clouds, before tsunamis so powerful as to wipe out thousands of lives in moments, before the planning and cultivation of crops according to the anticipated activities of the sky that to think otherwise is a preposterous notion to consider. Science is quite clear on the cycles and causes of our environment. What nonsense!

God turned man’s logic and reason completely upside down with the merest thought and slightest effort!

With such a precedent before us as this, how is it that, when considering the end of times as declared in God’s Word, we are so prone to fly off into wild conjecture with immediate and jarring scenarios as a plane or car becoming suddenly unmanned at high-speed and then multiply that scene by the sands of the earth?

I suspect perhaps that the reason for this can found in our own conceit. Even we the elect, having the full revelation of Scripture available to us, can easily insert ourselves into the divine narrative to the end that we are held prominent and defined as the central heroes of the story. Such is the sin nature inherent to our flesh.

How great is out God to be so gracious to His children! To those who so readily turn again from His glory almost as soon as we are plucked from the devouring fire.

In the popular and current tale of the end of days, the sudden disappearance of the believer is of such shock and awe as to tip the as yet unrepentant elect from their sinful slumber, and at least for a time, humble the un-elect so as to rock the foundations of their empty hope. In this play, the believer is center and the focus of changes in man’s hearts. I rebel against such thought. This unavoidable conclusion makes the theory proposed lack any credibility for me.

I say this with complete acknowledgement for the verses of Scripture that are referenced for support, such as Matthew 24:36-44. My response, however, is that the suddenness of the Lord’s return is the subject rather than the events of the day surrounding it.

Undeniably, if this were His will, it would be so. God’s nature, as revealed in His Word, however, is such that He will be second to none in all circumstances and all will be done for His glory, as is right and truth defined.

To think about and speculate on the end of days can be a valuable and productive exercise in our Christian growth. It should be encouraged. And in doing so, we should not forget our place, of course, nor should we forget all that God’s will has revealed to us through His Word and the unfolding of history within the parameters of His will.

As I consider the end of days, I find myself forced into a long pause, perhaps the longest, reflecting on just the last century. In this time period ideology has reigned supreme. It has justified unimaginable horrors and been used by men to excuse a multitude of sin; unconscionable acts of individuals and states alike: communist China, North Korea, Vietnam, Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Lenin’s Revolution.

In these examples, simple ideology blossomed into a rich spring of segregation resulting in both the neat and not-so-neat extermination of people, families, genealogies and entire cultures; all the cause; for the children, as it were.

Critical thought was ‘anti-government agitation’, drawing clear lines between right and wrong automatically caused you to be ‘suspect of espionage’, living your life and raising your children in a manner that supported accountability and righteousness made you a ‘socially dangerous element’; all crimes high enough against mankind as to exclude the convicted from freedom, the comfort afforded dogs and even life.

I see in this historic backdrop a far more plausible and natural turning of future events. In the light of these portents I see how identified instances of ‘hate speech’, the superior wisdom of natural evolution (with all of its personal and divine ramifications intact), a culture of personal outrage and retribution and faux-tolerance for the good of all can quickly and sharply separate the elect from the un-elect for the purpose of exterminating those who God would dare use against man’s personal desire in order to shine light on sin.

I see this picture develop as easily as I can imagine the first drops of rain falling on fields during the harvest season.

This, is seems, would be a closer accounting of the future unfolding of revelation and divine providence than a sudden and unforeseen event to be explained away as an alien invasion or new plague to those that remain. The officers of the NKVD from recent Russian history are more likely to rise out of the ashes and seize you like a thief in the night than would faceless aliens or microscopic bacteria gather all of the elect in a sudden fall swoop. More relevant to the point, however, fewer people would turn to God within this context because of the sudden inexplicable absence of one of us than would at the truth of God’s righteousness inherent within each of us when contrasted with its absence in the world we’ve crafted around us.

I end this thought with an all too true story related to the world by the late Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

An astronomer by the name of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Kozyrev was arrested by the Soviet NKVD and saved himself, as Solzhenitsyn relates it, in this way:

“…by thinking of the eternal and infinite; of the order of the Universe – and of its Supreme Spirit; of the stars; of their internal state; and what Time and the passing of Time really are.

And in this way he began to discover a new field in physics. And on in this way did he succeed in surviving in the Dmitrovsk Prison. But his line of mental exploration was blocked by forgotten figures. He could not build any further—he had to have a lot of figures. Now just where could he get them in his solitary-confinement cell with its overnight kerosene lamp, a cell into which not even a little bird could enter? And the scientist prayed: ‘Please God! I have done everything I could. Please help me! Please help me continue!’

At this time he was entitled to receive one book every ten days (by then he was alone in the cell). In the meager prison library were several different editions of Demyan Bedny’s Red Concert, which kept coming around to each cell again and again. Half an hour passed after his prayer; they came to exchange his book; and as usual, without asking anything at all, they pushed a book at him. It was entitled ‘A Course in Astrophysics’! Where had it come from? He simply could not imagine such a book in the prison library. Aware of the brief duration of this coincidence, Kozyrev threw himself on it and began to memorize everything he needed immediately, and everything he might need later on. In all, just two days had passed, and he had eight days left in which to keep his book, when there was an unscheduled inspection by the chief of the prison. His eagle eye noticed immediately. ‘But you are an astronomer?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Take this book away from him!’ But its mystical arrival had opened the way for his further work, which he then continued in the camp in Norilsk.” (an excerpt from the Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.)