Oh Noah You Didn't
Remember when we quoted Jesus saying that he "knew not the day or hour" of the apocalypse? The Gospel of Matthew, New International translation, continues, "As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away." Most readers would take that to mean we are not going to know when the apocalypse goes down in advance. Yet a few churchmen thought this was a clue. After all, in the story of the great deluge, God told Noah about what was to come and he and his family were saved. And if it was a clue, maybe something in the story of Noah could tip us off about the end. So, based in part on the dimensions of Noah's Ark, several folks did some numerical speculation and decided the world was going to end in 500 AD. The world managed to stay high and relatively dry just the same, until Russell Crowe decided to ruin everything.
