MATTHEW 24:37: "AS IN THE DAYS OF NOAH"

 What does “as in the days of Noah” in the above verse mean?

Look at the immediate context for connecting words.

36“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, not the Son, but only the Father.

37 For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

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

39 and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.”

The word “for”is an important logical connector of ideas. The first appearance connects verse 37 to the preceding verse which says that no one knows the day or hour of Christ's coming. The second appearance connects it to what follows (verses 38-39) as additional clarification of what verse 37 means, i.e., they were going about their daily business and knew nothing about the flood until it came.

Are there any other contexts to consider? Your interpretation might rightly utilize more distant contexts, but it must be consistent with the immediate context. There are prophecy books I have read that totally ignore the context within Matthew 24 and say that we need to look primarily at the Genesis account, which states that the flood occurred because of man's sinful acts. Therefore what Jesus was saying is that we can look around us at the sinful behavior today to conclude that Judgment will happen any day now. These same commentators then wrongly deduce that Matthew 24:38 must be a description of mankind's sinful behavior: eating (gluttony), drinking (drunkenness), and marrying (homosexual marriage).

“When people began to multiply on the face of the ground, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose...The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went in to the daughters of man, who bore children. These were the heroes (giants) that were of old, warriors of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-4)

And if you want to consider an even more remote context, there is above obscure passage in the Old Testament, which may have nothing to do with the reason for the flood at all or with trans-species marriage between angels and human beings. But some people connect this passage to recent experiments in genetic engineering. The conclusion of all these interpretations, that the Second Coming must happen very soon, is again in direct contradiction to the closest context in Matthew 24:37, which says it will happen at a time when we least expect it.