Having explained the importance of the signs leading up to His return and the responses to those signs, Jesus next explained the respective consequences of the two responses.
Many Christians who have read these verses have assumed that they describe believers taken to heaven at the Rapture and unbelievers left behind to enter the Tribulation. However the context is dealing with the second coming of Christ, not the Rapture.924
"It will be a taking away judicially and in judgment. The ones left will enjoy the blessings of Christ's reign on earth, just as Noah and his family were left to continue life on earth. This is the opposite of the rapture, where those who are left go into the judgment of the Great Tribulation."925
"Jesus was not referring to the Rapture of the church in Matthew 24. When that event takes place, all the saved will be removed from the earth to meet Christ in the air, and all the unsaved will be left on the earth. Thus, the Rapture will occur in reverse of the order of things in the days of Noah and, therefore, the reverse of the order at Jesus' coming immediately after the Great Tribulation."926
Some interpreters have made a case for this being a reference to the Rapture because Jesus used two different words for "take"in the context. In verse 39 the Greek verb is airowhereas in verses 40 and 41 He used paralambano. The argument is that paralambanois a word that describes Jesus taking His own to Himself. However it also occurs in a bad sense (4:5, 8; John 19:16). Probably Jesus used paralambanobecause it more graphically pictures sweeping away as in a flood.927
Perhaps Jesus used two illustrations to show that neither gender nor occupation nor proximate relationship will prevent the separation for judgment (cf. 10:35-36). Typically two women--often sisters, a mother and a daughter, or two servants--sat opposite each other turning the small hand mill between them.928
