Over 1800 years have rolled by since the Lord spoke these memorable words, and gave this prophetic picture of the state the world would he in at His return. The Son of Man has suffered many things and been rejected of this generation and nothing hut judgment awaits those who form part of that system which, in the word of God, is called "the world." The world has crucified and rejected God's Son. The cross is the standing witness of man's hatred of God. It got rid, as it hoped forever, of the witness for God when it crucified the Son of Man. The nation of Israel, who are specially in view in this discourse of the Lord to His disciples, headed the world in its utter rejection of God's Son come in grace into it, as the Son of Man. " The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against His Christ. For of a truth against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done." Acts 4 This is how matters now stand between God and the world. In God's sight the world is a judged thing, and Christ is simply sitting at God's right hand, " until His enemies be made His footstool."
It is no longer a question of Jew or Gentile, of being moral or immoral, religious or irreligious in the world.
All that was in question up to the cross of Christ, and formed a ground of blessing in the world without raising the question of what should come after this life.
The Holy Ghost has come down from Christ at the right hand of God, and is dealing with the world as a great earthly system that stands in direct opposition to God, of which the cross is the proof. He is here, (we speak not now of His work of grace in individuals to bring them to God,) to bring home to the world three distinct charges upon God's part. " When He is come," says the Lord Jesus, " He will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. Of sin because they -believed not on Me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye see Me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged." There is nothing- here of the testimony of God's grace to save the world, so to speak. It is the ground of the world's judgment. The world is not going to be saved. It is going to be judged, and as a system completely set aside. It is simply full of sin, unrelievedly such, because it does not believe in Christ. It may have its morality and its religion; its civilization and its improvements, but it has all these, good in themselves, without Christ. It had them at the time of the crucifixion of the Lord, hut sin was' at the root of all it was, and thus-was, and is still proved to be so by the rejection of Christ.
The world has no righteousness for God. Nothing that He holds righteousness—as that which will hear the day of judgment, and this is proved by Christ being gone to the Father and no more seen by the world. The one only righteous man in it, like Noah amid the antediluvians, of whom God said, " thee I have seen righteous in this generation," has been turned out of it by man, and righteousness is not in the world at all, last at God's right hand in Christ. If the world were to own Christ righteous, it would acknowledge itself unrighteous, instead of that it laid claim to righteousness in itself, and crucified Christ as a malefactor. Christ is God's righteousness, and the world is without Christ. It has no righteousness for this reason. The world is judged, not executed, as having received its punishment, but morally judged by the cross which proved Satan to be the prince of it. 'Christ was God's anointed king in the world, and Satan proved the World to lie His, by leading men, Jew and Gentile together against Christ. It is this sinful, unrighteous, Satan governed thing, called the world, that Christ, as the Son of Man, is coming to judge.
This testimony, as to what the world is before God, has been borne to it now over 1800 years, and God has been saving people out of the world by simple faith in Christ as the risen one at God's right hand in Heaven.
The testimony to coming judgment to the world, together with the grace that saves from the judgment, have proceeded side by side. As in the days of Noah the ark, with its open door offering salvation to those that would enter it, declared in the clearest way that the flood vats about to overwhelm the then world. So Christ proposed as a Savior, ready to save any and all that will come to Him, announces in the most solemn way that judgment awaits this world. No, the world is not going to be converted. It is but a judged thing going to be executed. The end of all flesh had come before God 120 years before the flood came upon all flesh. The end of this World came before God in the cross, and though 1800 years and more have passed since the world was thus judged in God's sight, its actual end, ha destruction will surely come When the Son of Man comes.
But "As it was in the days-of Noe and of Lot," so indeed is it in the days of the Son of Man. Men are eating and drinking, and Marrying and giving in marriage; building and planting; buying and selling, as if nothing had happened, and as if no judgment was coining.
Those who are getting saved by faith in Christ are as foolish in the eyes of this world, as Noah was building the ark to that before the flood. To speak of coming wrath, and to urge those to flee from it, is as with Lot in his day, to appear unto our friends to mock." But the flood did come. The fire from heaven did descend, and the Son of Man will come. The testimony to coming judgment and the action of those that believed in that judgment, whether in the time of Noah or of Lot, alone gave any indication that either the water or the fire was coming. Doubtless the day was fair, and nature was giving no signs of the mighty storm that was about to burst upon it when " the windows of heaven were opened," and "the fountain of the deep were broken up;" and we read that the sun was shining brightly " when Lot entered into Zoar, and the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah fire out of heaven."
So when the Son of Man comes there will be nothing external to tell of His coming. Like a flash of lightening, "which shineth from one end of heaven to the other," He will appear, and His coming will be instant and everlasting destruction to those that have rejected Him. When rues are saying, " Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape."
Men may laugh, and say, "Where is the promise of His coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation,"
but most surely, "the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God,- and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence; of the Lord, and the glory of His power."
lint ''As it was in the days of Noe and of Lot," so will it be with this world, people will know nothing of this coming judgment until it is on them, and they are forever carried away in its waves.
Reader, where will you be then? Where are you now? If of the world and getting on in it, you belong to a judged thing. To a system in sin, without righteousness, and of which Satan is the prince. The Son of Man is coming to judge it. Alas for you, you are of those of whom the Lord speaks in those solemn words that we have quoted from the 17th of Luke. Read them and be warned, ere it be too late.