The Pre-Wrath position on the end times considers the days of Noah and Lot a prototype for Christians in the final generation before Jesus’ return. Just as in the days of Noah and Lot, people of the world will be living violent, sinful lifestyles, all the while oblivious that their rebellion will one day be judged. However, before God sent the flood on the earth and the burning sulfur on the city of Sodom (comparable to the Day of the Lord), God rescued Noah and his family and Lot and his family from the regions targeted for judgment. As we further study their stories, we will find an underlying principle that informs end time events—the principle of “the very same day.”
God both preserves us in and rescues us from trials. God preserved Noah through the trials of living as a righteous preacher in the midst of gross depravity, and he rescued him from this time of trial, removing him from the punishment of the wicked during the flood. God preserved Lot in the region of Sodom and Gomorrah, but he saved Lot out from this trial, removing him from the area and then pouring out his wrath on the region, destroying those cities. God knows how to rescue the godly and pour out his judgment on the wicked. When God pours out his wrath, there will be no innocent casualties. Likewise, not a single wicked person will be able to escape God’s wrath. God’s judgments are righteous, and they are also final.
God has established a precedent of always rescuing the righteous before judging the ungodly. Peter caught on to this idea and uses the stories of Noah and Lot to explain that the Lord will first deliver Christians before the Day of Judgment. Peter defines this Day of Judgment as the Day of the Lord in 2 Peter 3:7-10. In 2 Peter 2:4-9 (NKJV) he writes that just as God first delivered Noah and Lot before pouring out judgment upon the earth, he will do the same before the Day of the Lord:
2 Peter 2: 4-9: 4For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved for judgment; 5and did not spare the ancient world, but saved Noah, one of eight people, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood on the world of the ungodly; 6and turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them to destruction, making them an example to those who afterward would live ungodly; 7and delivered righteous Lot, who was oppressed by the filthy conduct of the wicked 8(for that righteous man, dwelling among them, tormented his righteous soul from day to day by seeing and hearing their lawless deeds)— 9then the Lord knows how to deliver the godly out of temptations and to reserve the unjust under punishment for the day of judgment.
Peter was expanding upon Jesus’ teaching on his coming. Let’s read Jesus’ account of what life will be like in the days leading up to his return in Luke 17:26-30:
Luke 17:26-30: 26Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People 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.28It 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.30It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed.
When Jesus highlights the activities of eating, drinking, marrying, buying, selling, planting, and building, he is not condemning those activities as evil. He is emphasizing the blindness of the generation of people in Noah’s and Lot’s lifetimes. They were engaging in normal life activities, unhampered by any sense of injustice at the evil going on around them. They themselves were living in blatant sin, but were unconcerned that they would face any consequences for their actions. The time God gave these wicked people was not an act of accidental oversight on God’s part. Instead, it was God’s mercy to that generation—an act of patience as he waited for them to repent. Eventually, though, the time did come for his judgment and wrath to be poured out.
Genesis 7:11-13 gives us a snapshot of what happened when God’s time of grace and patience ended for Noah’s generation. However, God would pour out his judgment on the land only after Noah and his family were removed from the area. Herein lies the principle of “the very same day.” On the very same day—within 24 hours—of Noah and his family entering the ark, the floodwaters began rising on the earth. Likewise, on the very same day believers are raptured and meet Jesus in the air, the wrath of God will begin to be poured out on the earth.
Genesis 7:11-13 : 11In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. 12And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights. 13On the very same day Noah and Noah’s sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife and the three wives of his sons with them, entered the ark…
Lot’s story is very similar. Let’s read Lot’s conversation with one of the angels sent to destroy the region of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 19:20-25. Lot begins by saying:
Genesis 19:20-25: 20Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.”
21He [the angel] said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. 22But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.)
23By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. 24Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. 25Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.
On the very same day Lot and his family arrive in Zoar—within 24 hours of fleeing Sodom—God pours out his destruction on the region, utterly destroying the cities, everyone in the cities, and even the plants in the region. Fleeing Sodom can be likened to the rapture. The fire and sulfur that pours out from heaven can be likened to the day of the Lord. The very same day Christians are taken up in the rapture to meet Jesus in the clouds is the very same day God will begin to pour out his wrath on the earth.
The stories of Noah and Lot are biblical archetypes for the days surrounding Jesus’ Second Coming
The stories of Noah and Lot relate to the conditions of the world leading up to Jesus’ return. Noah’s and Lot’s lives provide a biblical prototype for what life will be like on the earth for both Christians and unbelievers. Jesus will rapture those who have prepared themselves for his return, while the rest of the world is caught completely off guard in the judgment of the Day of the Lord. But what about the people left on the earth who turn to Jesus when they see him with their very own eyes? What about the Jewish people left on the earth who give their lives to the Lord? What will happen to them? Although the Bible is not explicit in its explanation of how the Day of the Lord will pan out for the people who give their lives to Jesus following the rapture, we do have some clues. Let’s read Isaiah 26:20-21, which contains God’s instructions to the Jewish people during the Day of the Lord:
Isaiah 26:20-21: 20Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until his wrath has passed by. 21See, the Lord is coming out of his dwelling to punish the people of the earth for their sins. The earth will disclose the blood shed on it; the earth will conceal its slain no longer.
This passage is reminiscent of the story of Passover. The Israelites were living in Egypt as slaves under the cruel oppression of the Egyptian Pharaoh, when one day, God rose up Moses to be a leader of the people and lead the slaves out of captivity. Pharaoh refused to let them worship God, so God sent plagues all throughout Egypt. The gravest of all the plagues occurred immediately before their exodus from Egypt. It was a plague in which the Lord would kill the firstborn son of each family in Egypt unless they had applied the blood of a lamb over their doorpost. If the blood was applied there, God would “pass over” the household, sparing the firstborn child and the firstborn animals of livestock. This story is found in Exodus chapters 11 and 12.
We know now that the blood of the lamb represents the blood of Jesus that was shed on the cross to take away our sins. During the Day of the Lord, those who have given their lives to Jesus will have figuratively applied his blood to their hearts, and the judgments of the Day of the Lord will pass over them. Isaiah 26:20-21 urges the people to hide themselves until the wrath of God has passed by. Here, the wrath of God is not directed toward the people of Israel. He is telling them what to do in order to escape it. In this way, the Israelites in Egypt during the plagues are the Biblical prototype for the people of Israel who turn to Jesus during the Day of the Lord. Although the plagues were serious, affecting all of Egypt, the people of Israel were completely untouched and unharmed by their effects. Just as the stories of Noah and Lot provide a biblical prototype for Christians, Exodus provides a prototype for the remaining people on the earth who turn to the Lord.
The following chart compares the Great Tribulation with the Day of the Lord from a Jewish perspective. Jewish people will be exiled to the nations during the Great Tribulation, but during the Day of the Lord, the Lord will gather them back to their homeland. Jewish people living in Judea who heed Jesus’ instructions will flee to the mountains during the Great Tribulation, but the Lord will be a stronghold of protection for all of Israel during the Day of the Lord. The people of Israel are enslaved during the Great Tribulation, but the yoke of slavery is broken off their necks in the Day of the Lord. The Jewish people suffer from living under the oppression of an evil government in the Great Tribulation, but they escape destruction during the Day of the Lord.
The same day rescue of the saints and raining down of God’s wrath will occur just like it did in Noah’s and Lot’s days. In the same twenty-four-hour day in which Jesus comes back, cuts short the Great Tribulation, and raptures Christians, God’s wrath will begin to pour out. The chronological section of Revelation 4-11 reinforces this timeline. After the opening of the sixth seal, the great multitude is seen in heaven having come out of the Great Tribulation (Rev 6:12-7:17). The seventh seal is then opened and there is a silence in heaven for thirty minutes (Rev 8:1). After this time of solemn silence, the prayers of the saints along with fire from the altar is hurled to the earth (Rev 8:3-5). A third of the earth is burned up following the first trumpet blast (Rev 8:7). The fire of God’s wrath falls to the earth, paralleling Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction. It is on the day the saints are raptured from the earth that the seventh seal and first trumpet judgments are released.
Excerpt from the book: The Saints Go Up and The Wrath Comes Down: A Pre-Wrath Perspective on the End Times by Aaron Eggman.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from: THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. (Underlining and added brackets are emphasis added by the author)
Those scriptures noted as (NKJV) are taken from: New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. (Underlining and added brackets are emphasis added by the author)
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