Yet the merciful Lord spared them for a long time. He gave them 120 years for repentance, threatening them with destruction. He brought the flood upon them only when they had utterly despised the longsuffering of God. They were not brought to understanding even by the fact that, before everyone's eyes, an ark was being built for the salvation of Noah alone with his family from the common destruction.
The very beginning of the flood testified to the mercy of God. The flood waters did not cover the face of the earth all at once, but gradually. Thus, in the face of inevitable calamity, many who had not believed God's threats until they were fulfilled came to themselves. They cried out to God for mercy and had time to repent before the water swallowed them.
Such people, though they bore the temporal punishment of drowning, could be delivered from eternal destruction. This happened when Christ the Savior, after His death, descended into the prison of Hades with the preaching of salvation to all who awaited His coming with faith. He preached also to all those souls that "formerly were disobedient in the days of Noah, when the longsuffering of God waited for them" (1 Pet 3:18-20).
Glory to the longsuffering of the Lord toward the people before the flood! Yet He is no less longsuffering toward all careless sinners, awaiting repentance from them. Like Noah's contemporaries, many Christians live for the flesh alone. They do not think about the soul and do not value their human and Christian dignity. "Those who sow to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption," that is, eternal destruction.
Yet while a man lives, he is not deprived of the hope of salvation. Threatened with destruction, he may not fear this threat until death itself, just as Noah's contemporaries did not fear the flood until its very arrival. But the merciful Lord, "not wishing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance," gives the sinner the possibility of repentance when He sends him a final illness before death.
Such illness is not sent to everyone. Some die suddenly, as punishment for despising the longsuffering of God, and perhaps to prevent greater sins. Such a person does not have time to repent. But one to whom a final illness is sent before death must regard it as the greatest mercy of the Lord.
In the face of mortal danger, the sick person must, willingly or unwillingly, think about his lot beyond the grave and about repayment to each according to his deeds. If until now he has not cared to propitiate the Lord by repentance and amendment of life, he will hasten to this work in the short time of life that remains to him. For the Lord, Who accepted the repentance of the thief, also accepts late repentance, if the sinner brings it with his whole soul and with complete hatred for the sins by which he has until now offended the Lord.
O may the merciful Lord grant each of us, at least on our deathbed, to bring repentance to the Lord, if we do not manage to do this in health. Yet none of us can be certain that what has been neglected throughout a long life can be corrected before death. Death is not in our power. It can strike us suddenly. Moreover, before death a man is not always in a repentant disposition, especially if the final illness is unbearably painful.
Therefore, although in His longsuffering the Lord desires no one's destruction, it would be sinful to postpone repentance until death in hope of the Lord's longsuffering. It is sinful and unsafe. There is an end even to the longsuffering of God. It is exhausted by persistence in sins.
Do not forget that the goodness of God spares you while awaiting your conversion. Yet remember at the same time that those who "despise the riches of the goodness, gentleness, and longsuffering of God, by their hardness and unrepentant heart, store up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God" (Rom 2:4-5).
THEOSIS