Pattern of Things to Come

The two examples of a society depleted of moral character, and what happened to them, are: the pre-Flood world of Noah’s day and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus Christ’s words at Luke 17:26-30 show that these examples have a modern-day counterpart. As God’s chief executional officer, Jesus will hold a worldwide accounting. We read:

“Moreover, just as it occurred in the days of Noah, so it will be also in the days of the Son of man [Jesus Christ]: they were eating, they were drinking, men were marrying, women were being given in marriage, until that day when Noah entered into the ark, and the flood arrived and destroyed them all. Likewise, just as it occurred in the days of Lot: they were eating, they were drinking, they were buying, they were selling, they were planting, they were building. But on the day that Lot came out of Sodom it rained fire and sulphur from heaven and destroyed them all. The same way it will be on that day when the Son of man is to be revealed.”

In both cases, the normal activities of eating, drinking, marrying, building, and so forth, took on a sinister look because God’s warning was ignored. People failed to notice the significance of what happened to their moral environment. For them it was “business as usual.”

“The Days of Lot”

The other example occurred over 400 years later. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which some believe are submerged beneath the southern part of the Dead Sea, persisted in a course of life defiant of God’s moral standards. “The cry of complaint about Sodom and Gomorrah, yes, it is loud, and their sin, yes, it is very heavy,” states Genesis 18:20.

What made the inhabitants so reprehensible in the eyes of God? They were morally bankrupt. Degraded sex practices dominated their way of life. “From boy to old man . . . they kept calling out to Lot and saying to him: ‘Where are the men who came in to you tonight? Bring them out to us that we may have intercourse with them [“rape them,” The Living Bible].’” (Genesis 19:4, 5) The “we” included the youths as well as the adults!

When Jehovah foreclosed on that morally polluted system, only three souls were spared the fiery destruction​—Lot and his two daughters. Why them? Because Lot was a “righteous man” “who was greatly distressed by the indulgence of the law-defying people in loose conduct” and refused to copy their debased way of life.​—2 Peter 2:7, 8.