Preparing for the Return of the Son of Man

Vesuvius had been going on for a long time. The people there knew what it was to have this wreckage come down hard upon them with very little warning, and they stayed put. And maybe the song with that line about sifting through the rubble or our sins, is about that, not learning from mistakes before. Likewise, jesus is stressing this theme very heavily troughout the olivette discourse in matthew 24.