Luke 17:22-37…
When responding to the Pharisees, Jesus focused on His first coming. When instructing His disciples, He stresses His second coming. The coming of the kingdom of God means blessings to those who are saved, yet the emphasis here is on the judgment of God which will come upon the lost sinners at His return.
Jesus says that there will be difficult times ahead. Accordingly, many will be seeking for signs of the coming kingdom. So there will be those who are deceiving and those who are deceived about Jesus. Yet we are not to go looking after signs, and we are not to follow the false prophets, because the second coming of Christ will be unmistakable, and the timeline of redemption will be fulfilled. We will not be ready for the Second Coming unless we understand His cross, and remain devoted to the Scriptures. There is a danger of over-zealous expectation.
There is also a danger of worldly preoccupation. Those who dismissed Noah’s preaching and carried on as before were taken away to judgment (2 Peter 2:5), and it came very suddenly. Those who mocked Lot and despised the warnings of the destruction of Sodom were also taken away suddenly to judgment (2 Peter 2:6-7). When Jesus speaks of Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:26), He is not speaking so much of a return to the world, but a reluctance to break with it.
It will happen again. People will be going about all their regular activities, and be caught unawares. Jesus describes a terrible separation that will happen. The wheat and the weeds, the good and the evil, the converted and the unconverted, they will be made distinct forever. These are the words of warning from our Savior, and they weren’t to the wicked religious leaders but to those who said that they believed in Him! Jesus was warning that people will be taken away, by death, and into hell.
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