Jesus said in Matthew 24:38, “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.” He also said in Luke 17:28, “Likewise, just as it was in the days of Lot—they were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building.” The sense that one gets from these verses is that folks were going about their day-to-day business (just as they always had) until  life as they knew it was suddenly interrupted.  Forever.

The Day of the Lord, the Bible tells us,  will come “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). It will be sudden and it will be final. On the second coming of Jesus Christ, Matthew Henry says that those who are found outside of Christ, “shall see him whom they have pierced, and, though they laugh now, shall mourn and weep in endless horror and despair.” He also says, “Men of the world scheme and plan for generation upon generation here, but they plan not with reference to the overwhelming, approaching, and most certain event of Christ’s second coming, which shall do away every human scheme, and set aside forever all that God forbids.”

Consider how severe a thing this is.  How then are we to live?  How then are we to conduct ourselves?  2 Peter 3:14 says that in light of this reality, “we are to be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.” He further tells us, “You therefore beloved, take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless people and lose your own stability. But grown in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:17-18).  If there were no other directive in the Bible (which of course is not the case) these words alone  are enough to keep us in the fear of the Lord.

Jesus told us to,“Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (Matthew 25:13).

Listen to the words of Samuel Davies, who counsels the Christian on life and conduct in Life and Immortality Revealed in the Gospel, “Behave as “strangers and pilgrims on earth, who have no continuing city here.” Behave as expectants of eternity, as candidates for immortality; as “beholding Him who is invisible, and looking for a city which has foundations, eternal in the heavens.” In that celestial city may we all meet at last, through Jesus Christ! Amen.”

By God’s grace, let us live each moment with this one surety in mind:  Jesus is coming!