Signs Furnished by Corruption in Society

Characteristics of Noah's Age

Jesus in the Olivet Discourse draws a comparison between the days before His return and the days before the Flood.

37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

Matthew 24:37–39

According to Jesus, the days of Noah had three principal characteristics: 1) eating and drinking; 2) marriage and giving in marriage; 3) ignorance of impending judgment. Jesus’ presentation leaves little doubt that this ignorance flowed naturally from everyone's preoccupation with life in the present moment. Especially absorbing were those activities which in all societies have been proven sources of pleasure and satisfaction: namely, eating, drinking, marrying, and giving in marriage.

Likewise in the world today, a desire to enjoy the present moment is the driving force behind what many people think and do, and they are pursuing this goal much as people did before the Flood, but often in perverted ways. Instead of finding satisfaction in healthy amounts of food and drink, they are reluctant to stop before they have gorged themselves. Instead of being content with the sexual intimacy provided by marriage, they are exploring all the dark paths of adultery. Immoral sex and overconsumption at dining tables are becoming addictions. One grievous result, as before the Flood, is that men are so focused on the world today that they are blind to the judgment that will fall tomorrow. Jesus found the same fault in Sodom, where "they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all" (Luke 17:28–29).

Eating and Drinking

Although the poorer classes in many regions of the world live continually on the verge of famine, the more prosperous members of society enjoy the unprecedented wealth created by modern industry and technology. They have plenty of food and drink, as well as plenty of the other necessities. But instead of being content with a good life based on moderation, they are using their wealth to build a lifestyle that includes eating and drinking to excess. We have three kinds of data showing that overindulgence has certainly captured America.

Amount of food consumed. Between 1957 and 2000, per capita food consumption in America (as estimated by the total food marketed for domestic consumption without consideration of wastage) rose from 3000 to 3800 calories.¹ In 2000, consumption of calories was therefore about 27% greater than it was only forty-three years earlier, in 1957. Since then the same measure has diminished slightly, to 3641 calories in 2014.² But this small decline does not necessarily mean that Americans are choosing healthier meals. During the same period, from 2000 to 2014, consumption of fruits and vegetables slumped about 10%.³

Portion sizes in restaurants. These sizes began to grow in the ’70s, rose sharply in the ’80s, and continued upward through the ’90s. By 2000, the average meal in a restaurant was two to three times the meal size recommended by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture).⁴

A caloric explosion in restaurant food had become so evident by the turn of the century that it was widely viewed among health professionals as an alarming development. Leading journals published studies giving dramatic evidence of the dangerous trend.

A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association noted that between 1977 and 1996, the average serving of a salty snack increased from 1.0 to 1.6 oz., giving 93 more calories. The average serving of a soft drink expanded from 13.1 to 19.9 oz., yielding 49 more calories. Hamburgers added 97 calories by enlarging from 5.7 to 7.0 oz., and french fries added 68 calories when a single serving became 3.6 oz. rather than 3.1 oz.⁵

A thorough study published in the American Journal of Public Health came to these conclusions:

Our data indicate that the sizes of current marketplace foods almost universally exceed the sizes of those offered in the past. When foods such as beer and chocolate bars were introduced, they generally appeared in just one size, which was smaller than or equal to the smallest size currently available. This observation also holds for french fries, hamburgers, and soda, for which current sizes are 2 to 5 times larger than the originals.

Our research also reveals indirect indicators of the increasing availability of larger food portions. In contrast to practices that were common just 15 to 25 years ago, food companies now use larger sizes as selling points . . . . Restaurants are using larger dinner plates, bakers are selling larger muffin tins, pizzerias are using larger pans, and fast-food companies are using larger drink and french fry containers. Identical recipes for cookies and desserts in old and new editions of classic cookbooks such as Joy of Cooking specify fewer servings, meaning that portions are expected to be larger. Another indicator of the trend toward larger portions is that automobile manufacturers have installed larger cup holders in newer models to accommodate the larger sizes of drink cups.⁶

Since 2000, the upward trend in meal size at restaurants has leveled off, but they are still offering food in generous quantities except for menu items aimed at health-conscious consumers. More recent studies show that dining out is still a contributor to the obesity epidemic.⁷ They demonstrate also that even though a restaurant meal may fall within an acceptable range for calories, it typically contains very high levels of fat, saturated fat, and sodium.⁸

Incidence of obesity. Public health officials have declared that obesity has reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. In 1976–1980, 47% of adults ages 20–74 were overweight or obese, 15% were obese, and 1% of these were severely obese. By 1999–2000, the same measures had risen to 65%, 31%, and 5%. In just twenty years there had been a 38% increase in the percent overweight and nearly a doubling in the percent obese. By 2015–2016, the comparable figures were still higher, at 71%, 40%, and 8%.⁹

Even more alarming is the sharp upturn in the number of overweight and obese among children and adolescents. The percent overweight or obese in 1999–2000 was 28% and the percent obese was 14%. The latter statistic was triple what it had been 25 years earlier, in 1971–1974, when the same measures were 15% and 5%. By 2013–2014, these had gone up to 33% and 17%.¹⁰

Gluttony as a worldwide problem. The trend toward overeating is not confined to America. One fairly recent study has established that oversize restaurant meals are now a problem around the world.¹¹

We gain a similar picture from other data. When we compare nations by looking at each one’s percentage of obese adults, we find that the United States indeed ranks high, with a measure of 36.2% in 2016, but also that many other nations stand at nearly the same level.

They include many Middle Eastern nations—Jordan (35.5%), Saudi Arabia (35.4%), Turkey (32.1%), Egypt (32%), Lebanon (32%), etc. Even among them is Israel (26.1%). Jesus’ words cautioning against love of food in the Last Days was certainly relevant to the nations that would then surround the place where He stood.

Yet obesity is also prevalent elsewhere, especially in English-speaking countries, such as New Zealand (30.8%), Canada (29.4%), Australia (29%), and the United Kingdom (27.8%). The percentages are also high throughout Europe, South America (28.9% in Mexico, for instance), Russia, and parts of Africa.¹²

One possible interpretation of such statistics is that they simply reflect a longstanding feature of human society in general—that obesity is commonplace in the richest nations. But this interpretation collapses under decisive evidence that obesity is rapidly increasing everywhere in the world. Between 1975 and 2016, the global percentage of adults with this condition tripled.¹³

Still today, obesity in a few nations appears to be fairly uncommon, particularly in China (6.2%) and India (3.9%). But even these two nations dramatically illustrate mankind’s growing passion for food and drink. In both, the incidence of obesity has jumped tenfold since 1975.¹⁴

Christian duty. Are food and drink also becoming an obsession for today’s Christians? Habitual overeating is obviously sinful, both because it wastes good money and impairs good health. But to join with others for a sumptuous meal is not necessarily a bad thing. It is appropriate if it happens only once in a while and if its major purpose is to provide a setting for Christian fellowship—at a church potluck, for example—or an occasion for friends and family to share a time of rejoicing, perhaps in celebration of a wedding or holiday. Yet a word of caution. It is easy to use social gatherings as an excuse for gluttony. There are two simple tests you can use to evaluate your own motives when you sit down to feast with others. Except for the prospect of food, would you be attending this gathering? As you participate, what is the chief object of your attention? Is it mainly the people around you and the meaning of the event, or is it mainly what you are eating now and what you crave in the next round of self-indulgence?

Marrying and Giving in Marriage

In Matthew 24:38, Jesus says that people in the Last Days will be marrying and giving in marriage just as in the days of Noah. One form of marriage that existed and perhaps was common before the Flood was polygamy (Gen. 4:19). This practice was a sharp deviation from what God intended marriage to be. He wanted a one-body union between two people that would be the fullest possible expression of true love. Since one sign of true love is a longing to spend as much time as possible with the beloved, it follows that the intimacy in godly marriage must be an exclusive relationship. Polygamy was invented by sinful men who were interested more in sex than in love, and women were powerless to stop it. It is significant that Scripture’s account of the Flood is at pains to tell us that Noah himself was monogamous (Gen. 7:7).

Just as preoccupation with sexual pleasure corrupted marriage before the Flood, so it is having the same effect today. In this respect also, the Last Days are like the days of Noah. But what we see now may even be worse than any antediluvian plague of sexual sin. Finding pleasure in the present moment has so absorbed modern people that we are seeing an explosion of hedonism in all of its expressions, most notably the pursuit of sex.

One result of mushrooming hedonism is the tottering state of traditional marriage. Statistics prove that the divorce rate in America has exploded. Between 1890 and 1990, it jumped almost tenfold, from .5 divorces per thousand people to 4.7 per thousand.¹⁵ Today the chance a marriage will end in divorce is almost 50%.¹⁶

Yet many people who divorce do not remarry. Indeed, many people on the contemporary scene do not bother to enter marriage at all. One result is a sharp decline in the marriage rate. It was reported in 2017 that "half of U.S. adults today are married, a share that has remained relatively stable in recent years but is down 9 percentage points over the past quarter century and dramatically different from the peak of 72% in 1960."¹⁷

Instead, many in today’s world prefer cohabitation. A recent study of sexually experienced Americans between ages 18 and 44 found that 17.1% of the women and 15.9% of the men were cohabiting.¹⁸ Of those in the same age group who were married, 67% had cohabited before marriage, and of those who were neither married or cohabiting, 51% of the women and 43% of the men had cohabited with someone in the past.¹⁹ Yet these nonmarital unions are proving to be unstable and impermanent. A growing fad is serial cohabitation; that is, moving from partner to partner.²⁰ But, sadly, a growing number of teenagers and young adults are rushing down an even darker path. All they want is sex. As a result, they have no interest in establishing a personal relationship that will last beyond tonight and tomorrow. This promiscuity is a fast-spreading plague reaching into every corner of modern society. One proof, as we have already noted, is the explosion of STDs.

Mankind’s growing fascination with every kind of sexual sin is one fulfillment of Jesus’ prophecy that in the Last Days, people would be slaves to the real or imagined pleasures of earthly life.

Christian duty. As we have stressed elsewhere on this website, the church has a solemn obligation to protect its young people from sexual sin. A strong countermeasure is to discourage dating until they are old enough to consider marriage. Until they reach that age, God has no need to reveal who is their future mate. Other protective countermeasures include keeping the young away from indecent programming in the media and from immodest beachgoers. Yet another is to limit their social interaction as much as possible to other Christian young people, such as they will find at a Christian high school or college.

Ignorance of Impending Judgment

In the days before the Flood, people were too busy with self-seeking of all kinds to seek instruction from their Creator. The preaching of Noah fell on deaf ears.

Likewise today, the world is filled with people who habitually make life choices that are blind to God's will. One reason is that even though the Bible is a cornerstone of Western civilization, nearly all members of modern society are ignorant of its contents. One Scripture-based truth disappearing from public awareness is that the world will soon face divine judgment.

There are at least six reasons why the Bible is becoming a forgotten book.

1. Bible ownership has drastically declined.
2. The language is changing, making the traditional versions inaccessible to today’s reader.
3. Literacy is declining, with the result that people read less, and what they read is at a lower level. For many, the Bible is hard reading.
4. The Bible has been banished from public schools, and is ignored or mocked in the mass media. Even the posting of the Ten Commandments in a public place has been forbidden.
5. The Bible receives little attention in the home. In the late ’70s, 17% of American parents stated that they had read the Bible with their children during the last week.²¹ If false claims could have been sifted out, the percent would have been much lower. What would the true percent be today? To guess more than 1% hardly seems realistic.
6. The ruling preoccupation in the lives of most people is TV. What is the purpose of life, according to TV? Is it to please God and escape His judgment? No, it is to have a good time. TV teaches that life is a situation comedy punctuated by compulsive laughter; life is a game of cops and robbers; life is answering some silly questions to win a refrigerator; life is the latest but by no means the last test of the momentous question, who is better at controlling the motions of a ball—Team A or team B?

From the book of Genesis we glean three more characteristics of the world before the Flood: violence, great wickedness, and apostasy.

Violence

The first violence to pollute the earth was Cain’s murder of his brother Abel.

1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD.

4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.

6 And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?

7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.

Genesis 4:1–8

Later, Lamech boasted that he had killed a young man.

19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. . . .

23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: For I have slain a man to my wounding, And a young man to my hurt.

24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, Truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

Genesis 4:19, 23–24

In the days of Noah, violence had become rife, so much so that the Lord said the earth was filled with it.

The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.

Genesis 6:11

It appears that the social fabric had so unraveled that every man sought to gain as much as he could through fighting and feuding.

In our day also, violence of all kinds is escalating, giving us a universal plague of misery and bloodshed. We are living amidst an epidemic of abortion, abusive conduct in the home, angry people going berserk and gunning down people at random, gang warfare, violence in the workplace and in the school, massacres of whole families, domestic and international terrorism, torture and murder by established governments as well as serial murder by lone killers.

Yet the modern era has been especially gruesome in its toll of deaths due to war. Here are some staggering facts. It has been estimated that in all of human history until 1900, about forty million people died in war. Yet in the years from 1900 to 1987, the year when the scholarly work presenting these statistics was published, the number of war casualties was about 38½ million.²² Undoubtedly by the end of 1999, wars in the twentieth century were more deadly than all the wars in all previous centuries combined.

In every period of history, the number who have died because of genocide, politicide, or mass murder far exceeds the number of war dead. The killing of people by repressive governments is called democide. From 1900 until 1987, the victims of democide numbered 170 million. About 62 million were killed by Russian Communists, 35 million by Chinese Communists, 21 million by German Nazis, ten million by Chinese nationalists, and six million by the Japanese in and before WWII, etc.²³

Great Wickedness

In the time before the Flood, human society sank to such depravity that God could not find any thoughts in the human heart that were not bent on doing evil.

And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

Genesis 6:5

Man’s wickedness had become extraordinary in degree and universal in extent.

How did this plague of wickedness get started, and how did it spread? We know that Adam and Eve originally fell into sin as a result of being tempted by Satan. We know also that Cain murdered his brother at Satan’s instigation. A literal translation of Genesis 4:7 (quoted on p. 96) is, "If you do well, is there not acceptance? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door, and its desire [is] toward you, but you should rule over it."²⁴ The sin crouching at the door pictures the same serpent that tempted Adam and Eve; in other words, Satan. It is only reasonable to suppose that as men scattered over the earth and lost contact with godly ancestors, they experimented with new forms of self-indulgence, thus enlarging Satan’s influence over the human race.

But Satan was not alone in seeking to corrupt men. Working under his direction was a horde of demons. We have good reason to believe that their activity was in large measure responsible for the plunge of antediluvian society into great wickedness.

Just as there was an overwhelming presence of evil forces on the earth in Noah’s day, so in our day there has been an explosion of demonic activity in America and other formerly Christian nations. Before 1965, occult activity kept mainly underground. The media seldom noticed it and put it in a negative light. Since 1965, there has been a groundswell of interest in the occult.

1. The media have turned a spotlight on the occult, often giving it favorable treatment. The turning point was the seemingly innocuous program Bewitched back in the ’60s. Now the occult is a regular theme of rock music, videos, and books. Among the top-selling books for children in recent years is a series featuring a young warlock by the name of Harry Potter.
2. In modern times, a new form of the occult has emerged, packaged in middle-class, quasi-intellectual respectability: the New Age Movement. Bookstores have given it a special place on their shelves. Leading entertainers have promoted it. Yet it is nothing but occultism. People seek paranormal experience and self-evolution to godhood with the aid of spirit guides—that is, demons. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of adherents to New Ageism grew more than threefold, from 20,000 to 68,000.²⁵ Although the number who identify themselves as New Agers appears to have declined since then, some aspects of its worldview clearly persist as a shaping influence on the thinking of more and more people.²⁶
3. Witches and other practitioners of the occult have come out of the closet, openly revealing their allegiance and aggressively recruiting others. In the modern Western world, witchcraft generally takes place in the context of the pagan religion known as Wicca.²⁷ In 1985, the District Court of Virginia declared that Wicca is a religion entitled to protection under the Constitution and to all the other benefits granted by law to a religion. This ruling was upheld by a Federal Appeals Court.²⁸ The attraction of Wicca is twofold. It gives immoral sex a religious pretext. Also, it promises to make real all the dark fantasy that the young enjoy as entertainment. Exposure to the occult in their reading and viewing gives them a hankering to sample the real thing. Wicca is among the fastest growing religions in this country, appealing mainly to educated young people. In 2004, Wiccans, pagans, and druids numbered well over 400,000.²⁹ In 2014, the same religions could claim about 740,000 adherents (0.3% of the U.S. population).³⁰

Apostasy

Another characteristic of the days of Noah that we find through the study of Genesis is apostasy. Adam had many sons and daughters, including Abel, the godly son who was slain by his brother Cain, but the Bible has nothing good to say about any of the surviving children except Seth.

25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew.

26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the LORD.

Genesis 4:25–26

Reading between the lines, we surmise that Enos helped to stir up spiritual revival among the Sethites and perhaps among others as well. It was in the line of Seth rather than in the line of Cain that Enoch appeared, the man who obtained such favor with God that God took him alive into heaven.

22 And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:

23 And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:

24 And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.

Genesis 5:22–24

Yet a few centuries later, about 1500 years after man was created, righteousness had nearly disappeared from the face of the earth.

5 And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

6 And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

7 And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

8 But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.

Genesis 6:5–9

Only one man, Noah, remained who was "just" and "perfect" and who "walked with God" (v. 9). Noah "found grace in the eyes of the Lord" (v. 8), but the rest of mankind earned only the Lord’s regret that He had made them (vv. 5–7). The sinful ways of Cain and his descendants had spread to all the descendants of Adam. Corruption had even swallowed up the descendants of Seth, creating a nearly universal departure from truth and righteousness. Apostasy had all but erased godly religion.

The analogy that Jesus drew between the days of Noah and the Last Days implies that the latter will be as apostate as the former. Will true religion disappear completely? In the days before the Flood, many who had once walked in the truth turned away from it, setting their own impulses and opinions above the law of God written on their hearts, preferring the approval of men to the approval of God. Yet the tide of evil did not engulf everyone. When God searched the earth for people He could spare from the general destruction, He found one righteous man, Noah. Besides Noah, God also preserved seven members of the patriarch’s family, presumably because they had decided to follow Noah on the path of righteousness. The number found worthy to escape the Flood was exceedingly small—only eight out of the millions then alive on the earth.

Likewise in modern times, we see that the possessors of true faith are becoming alarmingly few. After a long period of spiritual zeal and missionary enterprise, the church has gone into a steep decline. All around us, we see evidence that New Testament Christianity is fading from America and other formerly Christian nations. Even nominal Christianity is weakening. Between 2009 and 2019, the percentage of American adults who, when asked to name their religion, identified themselves as Christians fell from 77% to 65%.³¹ Yet doubtless only a small proportion of these self-identified Christians were born-again believers.

The sharp downward trend will not only continue, but will move ever faster toward the bottom. Yet, as in Noah’s day, some will resist the pull of an evil world and stand firm in their commitment to righteousness. When many others are deserting the ranks of true Christianity, some will remain loyal. How large will the remnant be? We do not know. We need not suppose that the remnant will be exactly eight persons, as in the Old Testament type. Perhaps the number who espouse true faith will be far more. Still today, we find good churches scattered throughout the world. Most of them are small and inconspicuous, hidden from our knowledge. Perhaps the sum total of true believers runs into the millions. But even millions would be a negligible portion of all the people in the world today.

Reconsider Jesus’ question, "When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?" (Luke 18:8). This is surely a somber warning that the end-time church will be rotten to the core. But it is also a challenge. It provokes each of us to examine ourselves to see whether we have faith acceptable to God. Although we cannot force any other professing Christian to cast aside mere pretense and espouse true faith, we can determine for ourselves to stand among the few who will, with no trace of hypocrisy, answer Jesus’ question by affirming, "Yes, I have faith."