Fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all

Wis 13,1-9; Ps 18; Lk 17,26-37
15 NOVEMBER

When will the Lord come? When will each of us pass from time to eternity? When will new skies and new earth come? When will Kingdom of God and kingdom of the prince of the world be separated forever? Jesus does not give any answer. However, he offers us two examples that say suddenness and unpredictability of the last events: the universal deluge and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. A moment before people were alive, a moment later they were already in death because they were devoured by the water or fire and brimstone fallen from the sky. From time to eternity time is very short. It suffices a second.

As soon as the seven days were over, the waters of the flood came upon the earth. In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the seventeenth day of the month: it was on that day that All the fountains of the great abyss burst forth, and the floodgates of the sky were opened. For forty days and forty nights heavy rain poured down on the earth. On the precise day named, Noah and his sons Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of Noah’s sons had entered the ark, together with every kind of wild beast, every kind of domestic animal, every kind of creeping thing of the earth, and every kind of bird. Pairs of all creatures in which there was the breath of life entered the ark with Noah. Those that entered were male and female, and of all species they came, as God had commanded Noah. Then the Lord shut him in.

The flood continued upon the earth for forty days. As the waters increased, they lifted the ark, so that it rose above the earth. The swelling waters increased greatly, but the ark floated on the surface of the waters. Higher and higher above the earth rose the waters, until all the highest mountains everywhere were submerged, the crest rising fifteen cubits higher than the submerged mountains. All creatures that stirred on earth perished: birds, cattle, wild animals, and all that swarmed on the earth, as well as all mankind. Everything on dry land with the faintest breath of life in its nostrils died out. The Lord wiped out every living thing on earth: man and cattle, the creeping things and the birds of the air; all were wiped out from the earth. Only Noah and those with him in the ark were left. The waters maintained their crest over the earth for one hundred and fifty days (Gen 7,10-24).

The sun was just rising over the earth as Lot arrived in Zoar; at the same time the Lord rained down sulphurous fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah (from the Lord out of heaven). He overthrew those cities and the whole Plain, together with the inhabitants of the cities and the produce of the soil. But Lot’s wife looked back, and she was turned into a pillar of salt. Early the next morning Abraham went to the place where he had stood in the Lord’s presence. As he looked down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and the whole region of the Plain, he saw dense smoke over the land rising like fumes from a furnace. Thus it came to pass: when God destroyed the Cities of the Plain, he was mindful of Abraham by sending Lot away from the upheaval by which God overthrew the cities where Lot had been living (Gen 19,23-29).

Since there is not even time to repent, to ask forgiveness, to invoke the Lord’s mercy, we must always be ready to leave time. There is no longer any possibility of repentance in eternity. There is only space for eternal judgment there.

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be in the days of the Son of Man; they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all. Similarly, as it was in the days of Lot: they were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building; on the day when Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained from the sky to destroy them all. So it will be on the day the Son of Man is revealed. On that day, a person who is on the housetop and whose belongings are in the house must not go down to get them, and likewise a person in the field must not return to what was left behind. Remember the wife of Lot. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it will save it. I tell you, on that night there will be two people in one bed; one will be taken, the other left. And there will be two women grinding meal together; one will be taken, the other left.” They said to him in reply, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the body is, there also the vultures will gather.”

We are all warned. The Word of Jesus is eternally true. No man has power over it. Let those who modify or change it assume their eternal responsibilities.

Mother of God, Angels and Saints arrange that Christians believe with convinced faith in the Word.