Years ago, Annie Herring, of the group, 2nd Chapter of Acts, recorded the song, Grinding Stone. In it she sings, “I don’t want to be the woman, left at the grinding stone. I don’t want to be the woman left all alone.” She refers to the passage in Matthew 24 which states that two women shall be grinding at the mill. One shall be taken and the other shall be left (v.41). She understands this passage to be referring to the rapture of the Church and therefore, she wants to be the woman taken with Jesus in the rapture to heaven. However, if this passage is not referring to the rapture, but to the 2nd Advent of Jesus Christ, she is then inadvertently singing, I want to be the woman taken in judgment and cast into hell. Obviously, this was not her intent. In that God is a God Who MUST be worshipped in truth (John 4:24), it is extremely important to understand correctly if the Matthew 24 passage refers to the rapture or to the 2nd Advent of Christ.
The problem of interpretation rests in the word “coming” found in 24:37. Does it refer to Jesus coming for His Church (rapture) or with His Church (2nd Advent)? The problem is solved with an analogy that He gives. His coming is likened to the days of Noah. Verse 38 states that in the days preceding the flood, “… they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark.” The activities listed should be understood to mean that prior to the flood, life was being lived in a “normal” fashion. You eat and you drink in order to perpetuate your life, you marry so that the race reproduces and continues. Each day was life as usual. But who was living life as usual? The verse only identifies these as “they.” Two possibilities exist. The “they” could refer to Noah and his family or it could refer to the unsaved world.
There are a number of reasons why the pronoun refers to the unsaved world. Grammatically, if the “they” referred to Noah and his family, it would seem probable that Jesus would have said, “… they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that they [not Noah] entered into the ark.” That Jesus specifically identified Noah in the later part of the declaration seems to indicate that the “they” in the first part was not him and his family. Admittedly, this is a weak argument, but nonetheless a valid one. Of greater veracity is whether Noah and his family were living each day in a “normal” fashion. Simply put, they were not. For 120 years they were building an ark and witnessing to the world around them that judgment was coming.
This leads to a third reason that the “they” refers to the unsaved world. According to verse 39, “[they] knew not …” The “they” is added because the verb (knew) is a 3rd person plural verb. Had Jesus used a 3rd person singular verb it would be translated “[he] knew not…” indicating Noah. But what is it that they did not know? Context reveals the answer. In verse 32 Jesus states that the budding of the fig tree indicates that summer is near. It is a sign that people could know the season of the year. In verse 33, He then states that when people would see all the signs that were described in the preceding verses, they would know that the coming of the Son of Man was near. What “they” didn’t know was that judgment was near. Noah knew! In fact, he knew so well that he built an ark. Not only that, he knew so well that the judgment was close that he entered the ark. The only possible identification, then, of the “they” is the unsaved world.
God used two objects to accomplish His will with Noah and the world. The flood was the instrument that would accomplish God’s judgment upon the sinning and unrepentant world. The ark was the instrument that would preserve Noah and his family from that judgment. Since there is a parallel between the coming of the Son of Man and the events of the Noahic flood, it is necessary to ask what came in Noah’s day. The answer is found in verse 39, “and [they] knew not until the flood came…” In that the flood was used to bring judgment to sinning people, so too the coming of the Son of man is for the purpose of bringing judgment to the world that refused to trust Him as Savior during the Tribulation. This is expressed in the phrase, “took them all away.” The “them” of verse 39 must be the same as the “they” of verse 38.
In verses 40 and 41, Jesus moves from the previous history of the Noahic flood, to the future history of the coming of the Son of Man. In each verse there are two people, one taken and one left. In that the ones taken away in flood were the unrighteous, the ones taken in these two verses must also be the unrighteous. Therefore, the ones left are the righteous who will enter into the kingdom.
This is further confirmed by what comes next. Jesus gives a command to be watchful. The command is not simply to be observant of the events of the day, but includes taking appropriate action in light of them. He illustrates with the analogy of a thief who is coming at an unknown hour. The thief is not coming in order to bring blessing to the house where he arrives, but in order to bring destruction to it. This follows the parallelism with the flood coming to bring judgment as well as the coming of the Son of Man. The “goodman of the house,” knowing that a thief was coming, would do everything he could to keep the thief from accomplishing his intentions. If the coming of the Son of Man was to rapture His Church, then the believer, in order to be obedient to the command given here in verse 42, should do everything he possibly can in order not to be raptured. Obviously, the rapture cannot be what is in view in Matthew 24. Rather, what is in view is the 2nd Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ.