And so that you may learn by another thing that the Lord’s silence on this matter is not a sign of ignorance on his part, take note of something else in addition to what we have mentioned. “But as in the days of Noah they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that the flood came and took everything away, so also shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” He said these things in order to show that he would come suddenly and unexpectedly, and precisely when a majority of people would be living luxuriously. Paul also said this when he wrote, “When they shall speak of peace and safety, then sudden destruction will come upon them,” and to show how unexpectedly, he said, “as travail upon a woman with child.”
Here he has glanced at something which he has also said in his second Epistle. For since they indeed were in affliction, but they that warred on them at ease and in luxury, and then while he comforted them in their present sufferings by this mention of the Resurrection, the others insulted them with arguments taken from their forefathers, and said, When will it happen?— which the Prophets also said, Woe unto them that say, Let him make speed, let God hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel come, that we may know it! (Isaiah 5:19) And again Woe unto them that desire the day of the Lord. (Amos 5:18) He means this day; for he does not speak simply of persons who desire it, but of those who desire it because they disbelieve it: and the day of the Lord, he says, is darkness, and not light— see then how Paul consoles them, as if he had said, Let them not account their being in a prosperous state, a proof that the Judgment is not coming. For so it is...
