Sleepwalking

Spiritual apathy has spiritual consequences. From John Parsons at Hebrew for Christians:

“For as were the Days of Noah (ימֵי נחַ), so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away (οὐκ ἔγνωσαν ἕως ἦλθεν ὁ κατακλυσμὸς καὶ ἦρεν ἅπαντας). Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot – they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building, but on the day when Lot went out from Sodom, fire and sulfur rained from heaven and destroyed them all – so will it be on the day when the Son of Man is revealed” (Matt. 24:38-9; Luke 17:28-30).

So what were these “Days of Noah” like? What can we say about dor Ha-Mabul, the “Generation of the Flood”? Yeshua explained that the “days of Noah” were marked by people who were asleep, blind, and unaware (ἔγνωσαν, “agnostic”). They went about their business willfully ignorant of the spiritual reality around them. For ten consecutive generations — from the creation of Adam until the generation of Noah – people progressively became more and more ignorant of spiritual reality and truth. Eating and drinking, romantic intrigue and marriage, buying and selling, and other worldly affairs were the preoccupations of the day. In short, people lived their lives oblivious to the spiritual reality all around them. They “forgot” who God was, who they were, why they existed, and where they were going. In short, they were “unaware.”

Share

Tags