Catastrophe or Cataclysm

“[God] did not spare the ancient world, but preserved Noah, a preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when He brought a flood upon the world of the ungodly; and if He condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to destruction by reducing them to ashes, having made them an example to those who would live ungodly lives thereafter.”  2 Peter 2:5-6

 These two verses speak graphically of two different kinds of terrible physical convulsions, both of which were divine judgments. The volcanic upheaval that sent fire from heaven pouring over the wicked cities of the plains was called and “overthrow” (Greek “katastrophe,” from which, obviously, we get our English word “catastrophe”). Great upheavals such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and hurricanes are rightly called catastrophes.

But such events are only local or regional in extent, and occur relatively often. There was one event, however, which was unique in all history. When God brought the flood upon the ungodly antediluvian world, the word used to describe it was the Greek “kataklusmos,” and this word is never applied in Scripture to any event except the terrible Genesis flood, when “the world at that time was destroyed [Greek “katakluzo”], being flooded with water”
(2 Pet. 3:6). From these Greek words we derive the English word “cataclysm.” There was never any flood like this flood! It covered all the world’s mountains, and everything on the land died, leaving great deposits and great beds of lithified sediments all over the world.
   
There has been only one worldwide cataclysm in the past, but another is coming - global fire instead of global water. Jesus said, “For as in those days before the flood [i.e. kataklusmos]...they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:38-39).