SINCE THE EARTH IS MORE WICKED THAN EVER, WHY HAS THERE NOT BEEN ANOTHER GREAT FLOOD?

QUESTION:
How long has it been since the Great Flood & how has there not been another great judgment by God since everything is far worst than ever? Related question: Does it say anywhere in the Bible how God will judge the earth at the second coming? We know it WON’T be by flood because of his covenant to Noah, but do we have any inkling if it’s going to be to be fire, earthquake, hurricane?

ANSWER:
HOW LONG SINCE THE FLOOD?
First, the timing of the Great Flood of Noah is a subject of some debate. If we simply use the Bible’s genealogies to determine the date, it’s about 4000 BC. If we are not precommitted to those genealogies being complete (IE if there are significant gaps), and if we want to reconcile the text with geology, some known massive flooding events are interesting candidates for the great flood. Namely, the filling of the Black Sea basin or the draining of glacial lakes around 8,000 BC.

IS SIN WORSE NOW?
The meat of your question is about why, in all that time, God has not seen fit to send a similar judgment on mankind, since the degradation of the modern world is far worse.

I think the beginning of the answer to your question is to question your starting assumption: that the sin of the pre flood generation was LESS than what we see today. There is good reason to question this because the context of the Flood narrative in Genesis 6 is very revealing. Remember, the flood happens after that weird passage about the sons of God coming down to marry the daughters of men:

When the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

Genesis 6:4
THE MIXING OF TWO RACES
So let’s assume that we can take this passage at face value. The “sons of god” is a common euphemism in the Old Testament to refer to spiritual, non-human entities. We would call them angels, or in this case, considering their actions, demons. This means we have something truly monstrous happening in the ancient world (a happening that is confirmed in the writings of every extra-biblical culture, BTW).

The satanic realm was transgressing a sacred boundary in order to copulate with humans. The result of these unions was some kind of human/demon chimeras – the “haggibbœrîm”, or “mighty men” or “giants”. Why was that so bad?

THE TWO EVILS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD
The monstrosity of this intermingling was twofold. One is directly linked in the immediate text, the other inferred from the larger context of Genesis overall.

First, the influence of this interaction of two races, God’s angelic realm, and the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, had served to corrupt us to the core. Our desire was likely to curry favor with the gods to advance our own ends. This is true of all animism up to this very day. But back then, it seems the interplay was deep and intimate and manifested physically. Whatever other positive things may have come from this congress, (like access to technologies or spiritual powers we didn’t have before) we know that the main force on the moral life of humanity was devastating.

Moses summarizes this human/angelic mixed world thusly:

“the wickedness of the human race had become great on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”

Genesis 6:5
That seems worse than now.

Secondly, we might impute a motive for Satan in this mixing program. Satan was aware of God’s prophecy against him:

I will cause hostility between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring [seed].
He will strike your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

Gen 3:15 (NLT)
Satan must know that the seed (could be taken as singular or plural) of woman would be his undoing. So, he may have reasoned, how do you stop the Seed from usurping you? Corrupt the Seed! If you make all humanity into something INHUMAN, a human can no longer crush you. Because there would be no true humans left!

AN ANALOGY: LORD OF THE RINGS
It’s like this: remember that core prophecy in Lord of Rings? The leader of the evil 9 Demon Kings (the Nazgul) feared no one because an ancient prophecy had declared, “not by the hand of man will he fall.” But he does, in fact, die. How? Eowyn (a woman) and her Hobbit friend (Merry) join him in battle and she kills him declaring, “I am no man!” If he had understood the prophecy, he would have been sure to avoid deadly encounters with any form of “non-man.”

What if Satan had a similar rationale in ancient times? If the seed of woman will kill me, he reasons, all I have to do is make sure no pure seed of Eve endures. This was why Satan’s hordes infest the earth and corrupt Adam’s line. And this likely shows just how pervasive was his program. It touched almost ALL of humanity.

NOAH: UNDEFILED
We might infer this also from the description of Noah as, “perfect in his generations.” (KJV) Well, this seems like overstatement if the author is speaking morally. Noah will be given to fits of alcoholic excess by the end of the story, so not a perfect man. The key Hebrew word here is variously translated, “without spot” or “undefiled.” So the more sober understanding was that Noah was chosen to preserve the human line, because he was one of few or the only one “undefiled” by interplay with demonic corruption in his genome, his “seed”.

All of this simply underlines the extent of the corruption, the depth of the depravity, and the size of the monstrosity of evil that God had to stop with radical means.

COMPARISON TO TODAY
It seems clear to me there is nothing like that going on today. And the reason is that God erected a boundary on how much the spirit realm can interact with the human realm since then. In fact, that entire narrative is concerned to tell us that God was throttling evil in several directions at once. By the flood, and afterwards by scattering humanity to avoid us collaborating to reach back to the gods (Genesis 11:1-9), and before that, limiting our lifespans:

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.”

Gen 6:4
So, it was that bad. And in ways we can hardly fathom.

All this would explain why no similar judgment as yet befallen the earth. But perhaps that restraint that God has exerted on the Enemy since then may one day be lifted. This is God’s M.O. (Romans 1:24). Even today, listen to the voices yearning for us to merge our consciousness with machine, to transcend humanity 1.0, to edit our genome, to control our evolution, to evolve beyond “homo sapiens”, to usher in the Day man mixes with AI. Dear Lord, this is hauntingly similar in spirit to the world of Genesis 6!!

In which case, we may see a similar kind of sweeping judgment again, if we return to that same level of evil. What if, when Jesus comes back, he, “THE Seed” only comes back for the redeemed seed of Eve? And what if, similar to the days of Noah, a great horde of people will no longer qualify as such, and therefore forfeit God’s gracious provision for Adam’s fallen race, because they altered their Seed, and became a different race?

THE SECOND COMING
And that relates to your final question about the Second Coming. You ask what would be the means of God’s judgement at the End of Days. And you rightly note that it could not be by flood due to his rainbow covenant with Noah. “Never again will floodwaters destroy all life.” But a promise to not destroy by flood does NOT preclude destruction by other means.

We only get an inkling of what those “other means” may be in Scriptures that deal with the final days. But it seems that natural disasters will come before the Second Coming. Jesus, for example, says,

“There will be violent earthquakes, and in various places famines and [deadly and devastating] pestilences [plagues, epidemics]; and there will be terrible sights and great signs from heaven…. There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and on the earth dismay among the nations, bewildered by the roaring of the sea and the surging of the waves. Men will faint from fear and anxiety over what is coming upon the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.…”

Luke 21:11-26

So the means of this Judgment, connected with Jesus’ second coming, is not known perfectly. It may include signs and disturbances in the natural order. What we do know is that Jesus connects his second coming with the Days of Noah directly (Matt 24:37). And the connection is this: ‘people who are not watchful or humble or surrendered to Messiah, will be oblivious to the coming destruction. But one Day it will come, like a flood (if not a literal flood), and your level of surprise will be inversely proportional to your level of readiness (Matt 24:44).